Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other.

• Deuteronomy 4:39

All the peoples of the earth
    are regarded as nothing.
He does as he pleases
    with the powers of heaven
    and the peoples of the earth.
No one can hold back his hand
    or say to him: “What have you done?”

• Daniel 4:35

“ln God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give. The doctrine that God was under no necessity to create is not a piece of dry scholastic speculation. It is essential. Without it we can hardly avoid the conception of what I can only call a managerial God; a Being whose function or nature is to ‘run the universe, who stands to it as a head-master to a school or a hotelier to a hotel. But to be sovereign of the universe is no great matter to God. ln Himself; at home in ‘the land of the Trinity,’ he is Sovereign of a far greater realm.”

• C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

The question of whether or not God needed to make mankind usually brings the argument to how big God is, not by size, but all His attributes combined.  He is self-sufficient.  God needs nothing.  Therefore God does not need us.

But I have heard one pastor explain the make-up of heaven before Creation, that makes some bit of sense.  And I have heard a myth that parallels the Bible that sounds like a very interesting viewpoint on the whole thing.

In the myth, the narrator says that God was “lonely.”  In human terms, that would mean that God needed companionship, but if we can think outside our created mind, we can see that God wanted people with a free will that wanted Him in return.  That would give Him pleasure.

To us humans, seeing the hundred to one failures, or more, we would cut our losses.  We would say that the Return on Investment (ROI) was ridiculously poor.  But again, we are created beings and we would not last a nanosecond in God’s way of thinking of things.

So, that has an element that sort of makes sense.

But the pastor’s explanation is that there were three archangels.  Gabriel headed the group of angels who were the messengers.  Michael was the warrior archangel, leading the army.  And then Lucifer was the worshipping archangel.  Lucifer rebelled.  Lucifer fell to earth.  And we are the substitute worshippers to replace Lucifer and his angels.

Again, that makes a little bit of sense, but if God did not create the heavens and the earth, who would Gabriel send messages to?  If there was no creation, do you need that many angels to fend off Lucifer?  Could not God just hit the erase button?

So, blending the two together might be something that makes sense.

God does not need us, but those who repent and turn to God please God.  We owe our eternity to Him, so we would gladly worship Him.

But to think that God needs us, means that we have a very high opinion of ourselves.  We are the created beings.  We are made in God’s image, but that only means we have potential.  That potential can never be found if we do not humble ourselves.

And in humbling ourselves, we have to get back to the reality that God does not need us, but if we love Him for all the effort that He has done to give us the right of being adopted, then we please Him.

And that is enough for me.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.