I heard something said by someone yesterday that I can’t forget. It’s caused unsettledness in me for a variety of reasons. First, its because I love and respect this person immensely. Second, what was said was said quickly and its context passed by before I could really engage it. Third, from all appearances I seemed to be the only one in the room who got hung up on it.

I won’t share with you who said it or what it was specifically, but if you keep reading you’ll see those specifics aren’t very important.  The jist of what was said would indicate that a particular doctrine couldn’t be embraced because (it seemed) it couldn’t be made sense of.  The person speaking couldn’t understand a particular possible characteristic of God and therefore couldn’t agree with a doctrine that I know many wonderful, good, and Godly people embrace.

The reason? Because it didn’t seem “fair”.  And that has always been the word that stops me in my tracks; in my mind’s thoughts and in my heart.  The idea that we can’t be open to a particular truth that scripture supports because it doesn’t seem fair to us is an idea that has birthed countless splinters among Christians, divisions among churches, and fractures in the Kingdom of God.

To reject anything God does (or has done, is doing, or could do) on the basis of our handle on fairness is a precarious place to be to say the very least.  As humans (and even Christians), we have this incredibly egotistical idea that the Creator of all the galaxies (we’ll never have the technology to even see) somehow owes us anything, let alone any explanation or understanding of anything He does.  That my theology is fenced in by what I deem as fair puts me in control and puts God in a box.  Maybe you’ve heard someone say (perhaps in the midst of a difficult situation), “Well, one day God will explain everything to us.”  First of all, I dare you to find scripture to back that up, and second of all even if He did explain things to us we’d be far too beneath Him to understand it.

So, don’t get caught settling for a God that fits your view of “what’s fair.”  The truth is that God would be completely within His right to strike me with an aneurysm while I type this.  Or better yet, to simply stop thinking the thought that I should be living because when He stops thinking that thought…guess what?

Oh don’t become so comfortable with a convenient view of God that you only allow your view of Him to include those things that gel with your sense of fairness.  Instead, embrace a view of God that invokes a trembling wonder at the magnificence of this God you’ll never fully understand.  I dare say that taking that view will fling your heart closer to His than anything else, especially as you realize that this universe-speaking Creator is intimately interested in speaking with you.