The Temptation to Outsmart God

Just in my life-time, the world has changed more rapidly with technology than at any other time in the history of the world. The rate at which computers are becoming smaller and faster accelerates exponentially. Our knowledge of the workings of our environment, universe, and even our own bodies at the genetic level is at a point at which discovery creates more questions than it answers. The cell and atom have been discovered to be much more intricate in their constructions than were thought to be just a handful of decades ago. But how does this compare to what God knows?

In the breath you just took, you inhaled millions of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms. God knows where each of those atoms were 127 years, 3 months, 10 days, 9 hours, 3 minutes, and 13.5 seconds ago, whether in the blood stream of a zebra in Africa, in the needle of a pine tree in the Smoky Mountains, swirling in a typhoon off the coast of Japan, or even as part of a molecule. To the omniscient Creator, knowing this information is of no effort whatsoever.

How is it that the more we think we know, the more we forget what God knows? We let our perceived wisdom muddy the waters of true wisdom. This is what God meant when He responded to Job’s challenge, saying, “Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?” (Job 42:3) It can be easy to think that we know what we need, or even know what we want. But only God truly knows those things. We must never assume that God’s words lack relevant application to our lives. We must never doubt what God can do with our lives when they are in His hands.

The technical marvels of the Hubble Space Telescope are fascinating to me. It has sent us about 150 terabytes worth of celestial images since its launch.¹ Consider this description of NASA’s precision engineering that makes this possible: “In order to take images of distant, faint objects, Hubble must be extremely steady and accurate. The telescope is able to lock onto a target without deviating more than 7/1000th of an arcsecond, or about the width of a human hair seen at a distance of 1 mile. [This] is like being able to shine a laser beam on President Roosevelt’s head on a dime about 200 miles away.” If man-made precision can do this, should we worry whether or not God can providentially align our lives in the direction He thinks best?

The key to letting God’s knowledge reign is humility. “‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ says the LORD. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. ‘For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it’” (Isaiah 55:8-11).

¹https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/story/index.html

-Cary Gillis D.Min.

December 14, 2018