The Way You Think About God is Wrong

Do you ever have doubts about God? Has the way you think about God ever been messed with? Maybe it was a question about your faith that you weren’t ready to answer. Or perhaps it was someone else’s strong convictions that conflicted with your views. When the way we think about God gets challenged, we can feel uncomfortable.

God’s Word is wonderfully overflowing with comforting words. But solely relying on these simple truths can lead to a damaged view of Christ. When we engage with Scripture, we are confronted with truths that are complex and confounding. The Bible is both beautifully simple and absolutely baffling. But this isn’t a bad thing!

It’s true, proper biblical interpretation and revelation through the Holy Spirit are crucial when reading and applying Scripture. We need to pay special attention to our theology and doctrine. But if you feel like your relationship to God and his Word has become comfortable enough that you’re not challenged by it, then maybe something is wrong with the way you look at theology.

As Christians, we are called to live according to the Scriptures. This life is a stark contrast from the world around us, and it should be challenging. Following Christ should not be neat and clean, but messy. If you find that your life is easy, maybe it’s time for the way you think about God to be messed with. The best way to do this is to let the Bible speak for itself.

“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

Hebrews 4:12

The Bible is not a butter knife! It’s a blade that’s sharp enough to do surgery on the soul. Let it work in your life, and it will mess you up. God’s Word will change the way you think about him. Are you ready? Here are five questions you can ask when reading the Bible:

1. What’s happening?
2. What inspires me?
3. What messes with me?
4. What does it say about God?
5. What am I going to do about it?

It might be helpful to focus on the third question. In the passage, what offends you? What confronts, disrupts, or challenges the way you think? Maybe you’ve found that something you believed to be true about God actually contradicts what the Scriptures say. I have found that it isn’t the mysteries of God’s Word that mess with me, it’s the basic truths that tend to bother me the most.

The best thing to happen to my theology was realizing that the way I think about God was wrong. That doesn’t mean that my thoughts aren’t true. Something can be true but not convey all of the truth. In our culture, we have a judicial sense of right and wrong. We don’t just want to be right–we want to be certain. We are most comfortable in our circumstances when we are entirely confident in our conclusions. When I admit that my theology is wrong, I create space for improvement and change. I can begin loosening my grip on my thoughts about God and begin to walk along paths of thinking that my mind hasn’t gone down yet.