How Should We Think about God?

...in categories we all understand: merciful, faithful, righteous, just, preserver, loving and kind, trustworthy.

How should we think about God? This question is as old as time and is not really dodged by unbelief. An unbeliever doesn't believe in God but the idea of greatest good -- or ultimate value -- cannot be expunged. I admit insufficient knowledge and wisdom on the matter, but it seems self-evident. The idea of God is indistinguishable from the idea of the ultimate or the greatest possible value or the greatest good.

I say the idea of God because there are of course various ways of defining what that highest possible good is. I think the idea of God is in the category of greatest possible good. Indeed I believe in "God the Father Almighty" and I believe He is the greatest possible good. This does not mean He is some amorphous creature concocted to theoretically embody our highest ideals. Nay! And this gets to the heart of the issue.

The greatest possible good must needs surpass the idea of goodness into being very goodness itself. He -- yes we think in terms of person and even gender -- is not embodied, but is Spirit and He does not somehow exist in reality but is very reality itself.

And yet this is not true either, for God and Creation are not one and the same. God transcends. But here we reach, in C. S. Lewis' terms, "the greatest miracle." For though He transcends, He also descends and becomes one of us. This is the incarnation, the "God taking on flesh," and it is also in the category of "highest possible good." Or to put it another way, this God who is the highest possible conception of good reveals Himself to be one who comes to be with; nay, more, He comes to become one of us.

Here I attempt to say the greatest picture of the nature of God is his willingness to become one of His creatures. But there is more. Primary to, and enabling this view, is the Trinitarian reality. How should we think about God? As "three in one." Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are eternal, coequal, divine persons.

Here we are all out of our depth. Skeptics say, "Of course! It's balderdash!" To which it is reasonable to ask, "Ok. How do you understand reality? How do you square the circle of one and many, unity and diversity? How do you make sense of the relationality innate to all we know as human?" This tells me the Scripture is in some sense secondary to the Being of God, and yet Scripture gives rise to the musings above. Psalm 36 speaks of this Trinitarian, Incarnational God, thus:

Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens; and thy faithfulness reaches unto the clouds. Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep: O Lord, you preserve man and beast. How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings.

How do I think about God? As eternal Trinity, as "God with us." And as relating personally to me, an individual person, in categories we all understand: merciful, faithful, righteous, just, preserver, loving and kind, trustworthy.

This I desperately need. This I dare to believe is true. And today I ask the Holy Spirit, that too easily forgotten Person of the Trinity, to make real the very Being of God to me.