WHY WE FLATTER GOD....

FOLLOW UP ON WHAT I POSTED YESTERDAY...

Yesterday I observed that we try to reshape God to suit our convenience.

Today, a thought further to that. With that, we come to the crux of the matter.

The Holy Spirit is the true Comforter, or the Paraclete. To 'comfort' is not only to mitigate our misery but also to strengthen us. The word has the same etymological root as the word 'fortify', which means, to strengthen.

The Holy Spirit, the One who comforts us, has no attributes. When Jesus says It is like the wind that blows where It pleases. So, it is clear that the Holy Spirit is clearly beyond human control.

Whatever has attributes cannot COMFORT us for the reason that all attributes are human and what is human cannot comfort, in the dual sense of the word. The Physician has to be different from the patient to be able to help and comfort him.

Human beings control everything through the ascription of attributes. This is the essence of flattery too. Notice much of our worship is nothing but flattery! We flatter in order to control or influence the one we flatter, not to state the truth about the person concerned. This principle holds good, whether it is human beings or God we flatter.

We assume, out of our stupidity and selfishness, that God is like us: vulnerable to flattery! He feels good and grateful when flattered by us.

Now consider Jesus's teaching that God is beyond our ideas of good and evil. God showers his rains (rain = a symbol of blessings) on the good and the evil alike. This doesn't mean that God is ethically indifferent. It only means that God is beyond our ideas of good and evil, all of which are relative and subjective.

The basic principle is this: attributes are only human attributes. By ascribing attributes to God, human beings try to bring God to our level. The motive in doing so is to control God, at least to make Him controllable. This pattern underlies also the 'politics of flattery'.

In the final analysis, God is without attributes, except in the Incarnate form. This should not be mistaken to mean that God is morally indifferent. It only means that God cannot be fitted into our framework of right and wrong, which is highly subjective and inconsistent. As Jesus said, we readily tolerate in us the evil we denounce in others.

In light of the above, we can understand the teaching in the Old Testament that God must be worshipped in silence. 'Be still and know that I am God.'.

The one thing we cannot do is to worship God in silence! That is because we do not want to KNOW God as God. Knowing God is contrary to controlling God, which alone interests us.

Even in the human context, if we know anyone IN TRUTH, we cannot, and will not, flatter him or her. Knowledge and flattery are incompatible.

We believe that God will be sorely disappointed or seriously upset if we don't flatter Him!

Has anyone bothered to wonder, or find out, how this stupid notion originated, or when?

Surely, Jesus is not the source of this sheer stupidity.

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