Philosophical Reflections With

Matthew M. Umukoro

mattmukoro@gmail.com  (08034052655)

God is an inexhaustible topic. The more you discuss Him, the more there is to say. He is at once controversial and indisputable, depending on the mindset and mental disposition of the individual. On the one hand, He is abstruse and abstract to the contemplative mind; on the other hand, He is so familiar and so real that you can almost give Him a hug. “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,” says the great Classical poet, Alexander Pope, “the proper study of mankind is man” (Pope: An Essay on Man).

When we talk of God creating man in His own image, it is more in the psychological sense, than the physical sense. What it means is that God has invested man with a similar creative and discerning capacity that makes him to achieve great feats which initially seemed impossible, just as nothing is impossible with God. Perhaps the best measure of God, the means by which one can begin to appreciate His true nature, is man himself.

The dictionary is certainly short of the right diction to describe God. To say that He is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, does not fully capture the essence of God. He is the Creator that was never created; the Supreme owner of Heaven and Earth, and the entire Universe; the One who was, who is, and will ever be. He is the ‘I am that I am,’ the He who is, the Being that surpasses all beings. Glory be to God Almighty!

In Exodus 3:13-14, Moses was so overwhelmed by God’s invisible presence that he hid his face and could not look God directly in the face. “Behold, I will go to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you.’ If they say to me, ‘What is his name?’ What shall I say to them?” (Exodus 3:13). At this point, Moses was filled with confusion and trepidation, finding himself in the awe-inspiring presence of the Almighty One. But God calmly responded to

Moses: “I AM WHO I AM…Thus shall you say to the sons of Israel: ‘HE WHO IS has sent me to you’” (Exodus 3:14). To give greater clarity to this cryptic and confusing answer, God added: “The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:15). Recalling his powerful ancestors was to put Moses at ease, while listening to the message he was meant to carry to God’s people.

One thing is very clear: even God Himself saw the need to make Himself known to His creatures from the beginning of time, and shed some light on His bewildering nature. Thus, He set about revealing Himself through the different Epiphanic occurrences reported in the Bible. But God can never fully reveal Himself because His very nature is synonymous with everlasting mystery; so, He will continue to reveal Himself, bit by bit, from one generation to the next for all eternity. The more you think you know of God, the less you get to understand, and the more you know there is still to know. But we must never give up. We must continue to try to know God; for, he that does not know Him, and knows that he does not know Him, and does not wish to know Him is nothing but a compound fool. According to Psalm 13:1, “A fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”

As complex and as mysterious as God’s nature appears to be, He is amazingly simple and incredibly compassionate. God does not want to be considered as one brutal and overbearing Creator, but as a gentle and loving Father to the human beings He has created. His disposition is best captured in the parable of the Prodigal Son, where the indulgent father welcomes his erring son with open arms and kills a fatted calf for him, to the indignation of his elder brother (Luke 15:17-32).

He is also the Good Shepherd with a hundred sheep in the parable of the Lost Sheep, who abandons the remaining ninety-nine sheep in the desert to go after the one lost sheep, and having found it carries it home on the shoulders, and calls his friends and neighbours to a feast, saying: “Congratulate me! For I have found my sheep, which had been lost” (Luke 15:4-7). That is God’s nature for you. He hates sin, but loves the sinner who repents, and He is more concerned about the sinner’s salvation. Jesus proved this position by relating more to public sinners than those pharisaic characters, the Scribes and the Sadducees, who pretended to be holy. “It is not those who are well who need a doctor, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the just, but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:31-32). That is precisely God’s attitude to every creature, whom he loves so much up to the hair of his head. “Are not two sparrows sold for one small coin? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father. For even the hairs of your head have been numbered. Therefore, do not be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:29-31).

All these are aspects of the true nature of God the Father, the First Person of the Holy Trinity, as revealed to us by Jesus, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity; Three Persons in one God.

The good news is that God is so kind, simple, generous, and loving to us, to enable us take advantage of His eternal goodness to get to know Him better and benefit from His exceptional mercy, through repenting of our sins. God appreciates our sinful nature, and He is ever ready to welcome us back each time we stray. As far as God is concerned, Hell may well become empty and the Devil rendered redundant; there is adequate room and there are enough mansions in Heaven for the entire mankind.   From Paradise we all came; and to Paradise we shall return. But the choice before us is between eternal damnation in Hell, or eternal salvation in Heaven.  Having paid the supreme price by dying for us, Jesus has paved the way to eternal salvation for those who diligently work their way to Heaven, through doing God’s Holy Will, while still alive. There are no more excuses, and there is no time to waste.