“Say
this to the people of Israel, ‘I am has
sent me to you.’” (ESV)
Jesus
said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” (ESV)
Pulitzer-winning author and professor of cognitive science Douglas
Hofstadter has spent his career exploring analogies. He has observed that all of our thinking
comes down to saying this is that. He
and many others have determined that when we look out our window, we do not just
see tall, brown, and green. Our brain
processes these visual inputs as a tree.
Nothing ever just is. Everything
is always something.
This is indeed how you and I process our world. It is central to who we are, and for that
reason, these two verses about God are all the more extraordinary. While it is true that God is loving,
powerful, and good, at His core He simply is.
In this life I must identify myself as something. I am a husband, a father, a teacher. God is.
I am an American and I am a writer.
God is. I am a Christian. God is.
Do you see the difference? We
add more and more adjectives and nouns to our description, striving to get
close to an identity. God simply is, and
for this reason, I can worship Him. To
worship anything else is idolatry.
Copyright © 2014 by Steven R. Perkins
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