because He is God

To the extent that all that we get is all that we deserve, I feel that the hand that each person has been dealt with is just as difficult as the next person’s. Each one of us receives a serving of thorns and thistles and none of us can complain because our sinfulness skews even our sense of fairness and justice. However, you may ask, how is it fair for a 3-month-old to suffer from cancer or a 4-year-old to be raped by their father? Well, I once asked a group of people why evil exists, why a good God would let the very beings he created to suffer, and no satisfactory answer was given to me other than, “... because He is God.” And I wondered for nights what exactly that even meant. I laid awake in my bed, sometimes crying myself to sleep, sometimes talking to the walls in my room as if talking before God, sometimes numbing myself with whatever thoughts, acts, or entertainment I could find to relieve myself of the burden of attempting to understand God. And because I have been accused of pride, perhaps rightfully so, I felt ten times guiltier for even posing the questions I have asked on God’s nature. Yet I confronted myself on whether seeking to understand God is a sin of pride. It’s like essentially asking, is putting on one’s snorkelling gear and diving into the ocean prideful or is it simply an act of curiosity, mixed with a teaspoonful of adventure-seeking? In the same manner, it cannot possibly be contemptuous to seek answers on the infinite source of my being.

See, God is a vast body of all that underlies our existence. As a matter of fact, He is the only prerequisite for existence because before Him and outside of Him, nothing exists which has come to exist. God is the derivation of being and also its culmination. He is the raw product and the final product, or as the Bible puts it, “And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment” (Revelation 21:6). So even when we don’t acknowledge God, our mere existence is evidence that there is a God. The reality of there being a God is so potent that it needs not our fickle minds to support it. Yet what shall we call a heart that is so far from touch with reality that it does not inquire to know more about its creator, about its origin for being? I think that is a form of self-injustice, namely, to deny oneself of the escapade with God’s substance. Yet even when we don’t seek to do so, our mere capacity for inquisitiveness is a testament that there is a God and he is calling to be known, to be seen, and to be pondered upon. To attempt to learn anything in this world is to want to know more about God. Whether it is to study neuroscience or to fly to the moon, to hike mountains or to dig mines in search of diamonds… all our aims lead to the knowledge of God. All our life is a series of searches on God’s way, to know what he created, how he made it, when he created it, which varieties he made, where it was created, and most importantly, why he made it the way he did. So, once again I ask, is seeking to do so insolent? Doesn’t the Bible read, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! (Romans 11:33)? How dare I entertain the assumption that I can even begin to search God’s mind?

I actually don’t think when the Bible says God’s thoughts are unsearchable, it means “not to be searched”, but rather I think it means “cannot be thoroughly searched”. And the perfectionist in me will be shocked to read this next clause but… isn’t that the beauty of it all, that is, to engage in dialogue with parts of God that are so mysterious that we will never waste a breath to brag, “I know God”? Isn’t that the enticement of it all? To forever seek after God’s heart, to want to sit at his feet evermore and ask him whether he handcrafts each snowflake, if it is nature or nurture, why there is one queen bee per hive, how he felt watching Jesus bleed at the cross, why women orgasm less frequently than men, whether the multiverse is real, why my socks keep getting lost in the laundry rooms, where aborted babies go, if races and gender are a social construct, why BTS had to enlist in the Korean military and other grave matters of concern that plague my ever wandering mind. I think it is a testament to great design that God created us “empty” in some sense so that we are always thirsting after Him and always pursuing some aim that is inevitably tied to Him. And the Bible says, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13), but what does it even mean to “find” God? I certainly don’t think it means that we will come to fully know him because as we have established, that is not going to happen. But rather I think it means that we will get to a point where we will be so in awe of all that he has done, still does, and will do, that …….. I don't know... I have paused to think about this for long enough, but I just cannot seem to find the answer, so I guess we’ll find out when we find God.