God In Affirmation

We are greatly helped in the mystery of God to sense that he is in affirmation, not in negation.  It takes some doing to grasp that meaning.  We have been told that God is a person, and that tempts us to make God somewhat like ourselves.  Without some of that anthropomorphic perception we would not likely grasp the concept of God to human meaning and participation.  We are greatly helped in the matter by the visit of Christ through incarnation.  We have enough trouble with that matter, an easier factor to manage than the reality of an eternal God in an invisible majesty that is self-sustaining and active in an eternal present.  He has no past and no future but is ever present – has always been and always will be in presence.  His eternity is present and present is always now.  He is even known as: I AM. (Not WAS or WILL BE)  We would say now is: this moment.  He has no moments in that there were none until he introduced time in the ever present for the convenience of creation.  Humanity is not designed on earth forever present.  Without God’s direct assistance we cannot exist without time.  The story of the recession of the clock for Joshua is presumed by the secularist as utterly impossible, causing great collisions in space and catastrophe for civilization.  (Note the interesting story from Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision that made a great wave of discussion during the mid-20^th Century.)  Time is a subdivision in eternity, carved out of the larger reality – natural from the supernatural.  Like most major factors in our lives, there are paradoxes that some persons perceive in creation and some do not.  Even Einstein wrestled with time dimension as a creation.

Our interest on this Page is in the accent of the affirmatives of God.  He has no negatives although he casts some statements in negative terms because we tend to understand the affirmatives partly learned from negatives.  I once had a friendly debate with a Christian philosopher who had difficulty believing that anyone could identify righteousness without knowing unrighteousness.  I admit the point for mankind, limited as we are to the pursuit of truth and God, but there is no negation in God’s Kingdom.  It is likely that the introduction of negation in long distant events introduced the conflict of good and evil that God will ultimately resolve.  Mankind made for moral integrity and creative production in an atmosphere of love and freedom is a biblical presupposition.  The redemptive gospel of Jesus Christ addresses the point.

Everything related to mankind and God is cast in an affirmative context.  Whatever is good and needed by mankind is found in the grace of God, and becomes reality to mankind in what are sometimes termed the promises of God – gifts, nature, prayer, ministries, redemption, maintenance, and the work of the Holy Spirit.  None of the negatives originate in God.  The Christian’s problem usually relates to why God permits the contraries.  He is not offended that we feel as we do about evil, appearing in its varying intensities, but he does ask for our faith to see matters through, and offers reward for such faithfulness.  God is that he says he is and we find some clues to forming something of an outline of God from his nature.  That nature is entirely affirmative in holiness, love, creativity, knowledge, wisdom, power, presence and whatever else may be related to perfection.  That perfection includes a desire to share with other self-conscious beings an analogy of what he finds in himself.  Affirmation of God, the grace giving Deity of eternity, is the secret to understanding how to join the mystery of God to gain what Scripture identifies as hope. Hope is not wishing, although mankind generally uses hope in the concept of wishing.  Hope in God relates to God’s promise that there is immortality, and fellowship with God.  So it is that the Kingdom of God affirms life.  Persons not affirming life in the original holy context and meant for all humankind, often pursue contraries about God.  Jesus gave some attention to evil because mankind may look to evil to recognize righteousness.  God authorizes the formation of those in Christian faith to the affirmation of God.  In that crossing afforded by Jesus Christ, and explained to us in the journey to Christ-likeness, we have fulfilled human affirmation of God. (Read Leviticus in the accent noted: I am the Lord . . . .)