We simply need to admit it:
All our concepts about God are wrong.
Yes, that includes yours.
Oh, we could soften it and say:
All our concepts about God are incomplete.
But I prefer the stronger incarnation:
All our concepts about God are wrong.
Just as our concept about another person is always wrong
because the concept can never be the other person;
the other person is always something other
than what we think
(though we may have some things right about that person, sure),
so too with God.
Once you've embraced that
(and I encourage you to do so now...
go ahead, do it now, say:
"All my concepts about God are wrong."),
then you will have advanced mightily
in the Christian (or any other) faith.
You will have grown.
You will have taken
a necessary step down,
a step down from arrogance into humility,
which is, paradoxically,
a step up,
because it's a step of maturity
a step up into greater faith.
You are now liberated
from the need to be right about God,
because you know,
as surely as you know your name,
that the idea of God you hold
isn't God,
that you don't have it right,
that you, along with everyone else,
are on the same journey of seeking, yearning, hoping.
Yes, it's humbling;
it's a liberating, joyful humbling.
All our concepts about God are wrong.
And God absolutely understands this,
and invites you into relationship just the same.
And those of you who haven't yet said it
(because I know you're out there),
repeat after me:
All my concepts about God are wrong.
Doesn't that feel better?
Text and image © 2017 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
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