Psalm 8 O Lord, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth, Who have set Your glory above the heavens! Fear God. Honor the king. 2Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength, Because of Your enemies, That You may silence the enemy and the avenger. 3When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, 4What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him? 5For You have made him a little lower than the angels, And You have crowned him with glory and honor. 6You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet, 7All sheep and oxen — Even the beasts of the field, 8The birds of the air, And the fish of the sea That pass through the paths of the seas. 9O Lord, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth!
Job 42:1-6 Then Job answered the Lord and said: 2“I know that You can do everything, And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You. 3You asked, ‘Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. 4Listen, please, and let me speak; You said, ‘I will question you, and you shall answer Me.’ 5“I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, But now my eye sees You. 6Therefore I abhor myself, And repent in dust and ashes.”
God is the Creator who also constantly maintains His whole creation. The Church downplays this fact, too, and replaces it with a mere reality-detached “personal relationship” with God. However, this represents an open door to idolatry.
The Church is increasingly panic-stricken that scientific studies question the Scripture. In an effort not to allow its faith to be shaken it downplays God’s creation and other facts of the Scripture, or conversely, Church members arrogantly ignore scientific research.
But God put us on the earth as managers of His creation (Psalm 8:1). We must seek to understand as fully as possible that which we are called to manage. Therefore, such learning is not bad; it would be detrimental to reject it.
In doing so, if man’s relationship with God is built merely on a “personal relationship”, then it is very subjective, disconnected from a large number of basic facts of faith. Such a relationship cannot be truly solid and stable.
In this respect, the story of Job is interesting. Job could not understand why he went through such suffering. Even his three friends could not satisfactorily explain the situation. It was only after Elihu, the fourth of them, spoke, that things became clearer.
After that, God spoke to Job. It is worth looking really carefully at what God said to Job, because after this speech everything was clear to Job (Job 42:1-6). Interestingly, he does not even speak about his suffering any more and the most prominent of Job’s statements is: „I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You.“ Job was a righteous man, and yet here he said that his knowledge of God had fundamentally changed. What were the reasons? What did God really say?
Most of God’s speech to Job is about the fact that He is the Creator and Lord of the whole world, of the whole creation. He also talks about issues of justice, but much less so.
Job then does not say that he understands his suffering, but that he got to know God. That’s the key! That seems to be what God wanted: for Job to get to know Him in a way he hadn’t known Him before.
That’s a very important message. Of course we need answers to many questions and it is also right that we seek them. But we must not forget about the main thing – to get to know God. However, to know Him often exceeds the exalted, highlighted „personal relationship“. We need to know Him in all aspects that are provided in the Scripture.
To create a purely „personal god“, whom we disconnect from His creation, from reality, is essentially idolatry. The so-called „personal god“ completes an illusory personal world to a Christian, but he has nothing in common with the real God. Reducing God in His entirety to „my personal god“ is the beginning of darkness, both in individual lives and in Christianity in general.
One of the consequences of when people shut God from His creation in this way, is the fact that they solve more and more things in life according to the rules and standards of the world, because their „personal god“ does not figure in those issues. And if anything, he is too weak to actually do something.
Of course it is correct and biblical to speak about personal relationship with God, but only when it is the true God, creator and also the current maintainer of the whole creation. True faith must never break away from the fact that God is the creator of the real world in which we live.
God in His speech in chapters 38-41 of the book of Job did not give a lecture in physics or in biology to Job. The purpose of His speech was for Job to get to know God better. A very valuable lesson is that even in the most difficult situations, an essential starting point is to get to know God Himself better. The „practical“ solution, or the way out, will then be found or will comeof itself more easily.
Yet getting to know God is not incompatible with a scientific understanding of the world. Sometimes it may temporarily seem to be in contradiction, but that is only because at the moment our knowledge of the Scripture, our knowledge of God, or our scientific understanding is imperfect. But this must not lead to relativization of the Scripture or fear of knowledge. And certainly it must not lead to creation of a purely subjective „personal God“, who does not have much in common with the real world and life.
