There is a level of nervous excitement at the beginning of every school year. It doesn’t matter whether you’re dropping your child off for the first year of kindergarten or the first year of college: We become increasingly aware of our limitations in their developing lives. Oh how we wish we could perfectly protect them! That’s why I want to take this time of year to humbly consider the following axiom:
God is God and we are not.
Could there be any more obvious statement? And yet we try desperately to hold and control things that are truly only God’s to hold and control. Our kids’ safety, salvation, and health, for starters.
Throughout history, theologians have compiled lists of ways that God is supremely, completely, unequivocally other than us. They have called these the incommunicable attributes of God. These are things about God that could never be shared (communicated) with humans. Things like God’s omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and sovereignty.
But God also has communicable attributes. These are areas where God is supreme but humans can actually share in them, grow in them, and (however imperfectly) reflect His character. Try as we may, we can never be all-knowing or all-powerful. But in Christ we can grow in mercy, patience, and love.
Yet even knowing these attributes aren’t ours to have, something in us still craves them. For example, I love those little conversation-starter games. Games like “We Aren’t Really Strangers” or “Table Topics” or “Vertellis.” A frequent type of question is: “If you could see how the rest of your life unfolds, would you want to?” or “If you could go back in time and alter history, would you? If so, what would you change?” These are god-status questions. Fun to ponder but terrifying too. We aren’t meant to have all knowledge or control. Part of authentic worship is our contentment being the human and letting God be God.
We may not want to go back in time to alter our children’s histories, but in what ways are we tempted to micromanage their lives now? This might look like pressuring them to perform in sports or academics, curating their social status, or trying to protect them from all pain and danger. These impulses are some of the ways we can inadvertently try to grasp control over things that are ultimately out of our hands.
There’s a wonderful little book on this rich topic that I highly recommend called, “None Like Him” by Jen Wilkin. In it she discusses how there is a sinful tendency in each of us to strive to be like God in the ways we aren’t meant to, while also diminishing or shunning the ways God has asked us to be like him. According to Wilkin, we naturally choose to be God-rivals, rather than God-reflectors.
The devil tempted Adam and Eve with the promise that by eating the fruit, “your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). But as Christians, we are instead instructed to “be imitators of God, as beloved children” and to “walk in love” (Ephesians 5:1–2). Rivalry is rebellion. Reflecting is ordained.
In my posts throughout the month of September, I am going to challenge us to meditate on these attributes of God: the ones we crave and grasp after that aren’t ours to have, as well as the ones that we should be striving to develop in our personal lives and practice in our homes. For example, we can never be omniscient, but we can be wise.
Remembering that God is God and we are not, actually brings incredible freedom to us as parents. Our kids’ lives–their safety, salvation, and health–are in God’s capable hands. We are stewards, not sovereigns. We can faithfully teach and model wisdom, goodness, and patience, but God alone gives the growth and God alone gets the glory.
Oh Lord God Almighty, may we never try to take your place! It is an honor that you would empower us to be conformed to the image of Your Son! May we embrace that pursuit as our joyful calling each day. Amen.