Monday morning at breakfast, I somehow found myself talking to the boys about how we attempt to understand God through a variety of our human relationships. I’m honestly never quite sure how we get into some of these conversations (kids have the most amazing baffling questions), but they are always interesting.
I explained that God is unknowable in many ways. (Just contemplate that God is a trinity for a few moments and you’ll see what I mean.) He is so far beyond us that we only get glimpses. Those glimpses are enough that we can trust Him and trust that God is who He says He is. God is also far more than we can comprehend. God is so far beyond us that our present lives are entry points to knowing God.
I discussed two primary ways we learn to relate to God, though there are more. What I didn’t tell them, because breakfast is only so long, is that how we use these analogies matters. We take what we know about how the human relationships should be and use that to understand an aspect of God. We don’t take what we know to be true of God and then move it down to people. We go bottom-up here and use what is better known to understand what is lesser known. You’ll see why in a minute.
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