A knock on the door interrupted our family dinner. I sighed and got up from the kitchen table to greet our would-be, family-time intruders. I opened the door to two well-dressed young men with Bibles tucked under their arms.
Door-to-door evangelists.
Great.
“Excuse me, Sir,” Said one of the men. “I was wondering if you had found Jesus.”
“I didn’t realize that Jesus was missing,” I said cheerily — my go-to line for these kinds of situations. “If he shows up here, I’ll be sure to let you know. Have a nice evening!” And then I closed the door and returned to my meal.
I always admire the zeal of those who are so certain that they have ‘found Jesus’ — just not quite enough to sacrifice my evening meal. After all, at various times throughout my ‘faith journey,’ I have felt supremely confident in my beliefs as well.
At other times, though, I have had doubts. Major doubts. As someone who writes about religion and spirituality regularly, I can assure you that there is no shortage of people who respond with comments that mock the idea of belief in God as some fanciful notion — a fairy tale, a cosmic crutch for the emotionally and mentally weak. This adds fuel to the fire of my personal doubts, but also my desire for the truth, in equal measure.
At some point, real believers have to stop and really wrestle with the question: How do you know that you’ve really found God and not just made him up in your head? As for me, I have spent many hours contemplating the question and arrived at a few conclusions that I have found helpful for me.
Here are some ways that you can know that the God you are supposedly following and worshipping isn’t, in fact, a construct of your own imagination.
If you always agree with it, it ain’t God
Let me ask you this question: Where do you and God currently disagree? What is God telling you, or teaching you, that doesn’t sit well with you or challenges you somehow? Is there anything?
If you and your God agree about everything, then I suggest there is an excellent chance that your God is, in fact, yourself. I have never observed a relationship between two separate and distinct entities where there was total agreement on everything. Therefore, if God were a separate entity or being to you, it would make sense that he or she would have some different thoughts and opinions to you, right?
Yet, it’s funny how many so-called Christians I meet, whose God happens to merely support and affirm every single perspective and prejudice that they themselves possess.
The fact is if your God is really God, then, at the very least, he or she is different from you! That means God might vote differently to you — if God were the voting kind. God might have different views on abortion, gay marriage, or nationalistic pride. God might be more liberal than you — or conservative. God might think differently to you on any number of issues. God might actually oppose you in some areas.
So, if you want to know if your God is actually God, then do this test: Make a list of things where God disagrees with you. I dare you! If you can’t find any, then perhaps it’s time to stop and ask why.
Image By FrankHH on Shutterstock (purchased with license)
If you fully understand it, it ain’t God
You might understand certain things about the nature of your God, or the way your God thinks or acts, from your personal experience. But you can’t know everything. Therefore, if your personal belief system allows no space for mystery, paradox, and ‘not-knowing,’ then I question its legitimacy.
I am always wary of people who have neat and tidy answers to every spiritual question. I suspect that more than likely, they have created their own box-sized version of God that comes neatly packaged, portable, and suitably small. However, I think that in reality, for God to be God truly, he must be, at least, somewhat wild, untameable, and beyond the understanding of human minds. If he wasn’t beyond the understanding of human minds, then why not just follow a smart human? After all, it would be easier to follow someone you could see in the flesh!
If you understand it, then it can’t be God. I consider what God says of himself in Isaiah 55:8–9:
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Doesn’t it make sense that any God worth following knows a fair bit more than you? Why would you want a God who only possesses the same knowledge and understanding that you do? Why would you want a God that you can completely understand?
I put to you that if you completely understand your God, and he fits neatly within the confines of your own mind, perhaps it’s because you made him up in your own mind.
If it asks nothing of you, it ain’t God
It is amazing how often I meet people who supposedly ‘hear’ the voice of God instructing them to do the very thing that they would like to be doing anyway. However, in the Bible, we find, time and time again, that when God asks people to do something, those people are resistant to the idea — I would say, more often than not.
Moses doesn’t want to be the man to lead the nation of Israel out of Egyptian slavery, Gideon doesn’t want to be the leader of an uprising to drive out the nation’s Midianite oppressors, Esther doesn’t want to plead for the lives of her people before King Xerxes of Persia in the face of unthinkable genocide. Jeremiah doesn’t want to speak. Jonah doesn’t want to go, Martha doesn’t want to stop.
I could go on.
The fact of the matter is that if God is a separate entity to you — one that you cannot entirely understand — and he in possession of some different ideas to you, then there is also every chance that he will ask you to do something that you won’t want to do. In fact, every time I get a sense that I ought to do something that I wouldn’t usually want to do, I pay special heed to it because I believe it is more likely to be God than those occasions where I hear an ‘inner voice’ telling me to do exactly what I would like to do anyway.
Image by By Jihan Nafiaa Zahri on Shutterstock (purchased with license)
If you don’t change, it ain’t God
When we marry, we enter into the closest possible physical and emotional relationship we can have with another human being. As a result, we are changed. I observe my own parents, who have been married for nearly fifty years, and how, over time, they have both changed to accommodate one another and, in many respects, have become like one person.
We all know that you become like the people you spend the most time with. In fact, spending large amounts of time with another person will unavoidably change you. So, it makes sense that, over time, if you are, in fact, in a close, personal relationship with a living Christ, then you ought to be changing over time — reflecting, in increasing measure, his nature.
C.S. Lewis once said, “if conversion to Christianity makes no improvement in a man’s outward actions — if he continues to be just as snobbish or spiteful or envious or ambitious as he was before — then I think we must suspect that his ‘conversion’ was largely imaginary; Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in ‘religion’ mean nothing unless they make our actual behavior better.”
If it doesn’t free you, it ain’t God
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”
Galatians 5:1
In this Bible verse, the “yoke of slavery” refers to a dependence on obedience to Biblical law to please God and earn personal salvation through effort, self-discipline, and constant striving.
Therefore, any spiritual belief or practice that leads to less freedom is not God. The Christian faith is based purely and completely on the idea that God’s love is poured out unconditionally, indiscriminately, freely, and graciously on all of humanity. It is not dependent on human goodness or effort. You cannot get God to do anything by trying harder, praying more, being good, going to church, reading the Bible more, or participating in any performance-based religious activity.
In fact, God leads you to freedom from the need to do these things. For the best example of what it is supposed to look like when we have found that freedom, I look at my seven-year-old daughter and the glorious, free-wheeling way that she lives and moves about her life safe in the knowledge of her total acceptance and love. She has no doubts about it. In fact, she is so secure in the fact that she is loved and accepted by her parents that she doesn’t even think about it.
At some point in life, we forget that we are loved just because we are loved. We start to strive for approval and acceptance. We begin to perform for others. We project this onto God, and wrongly believe that we need to win him over as well.
If you have really found God, then, in a spiritual sense, you will become more like a seven-year-old over time: gloriously free and confident in your inherent value and acceptance. Are you heading in that direction? Are you becoming more like a seven-year-old?
Photo by MI PHAM on Unsplash
The bottom line: If it’s just like you, it ain’t God
There is one place that I know you won’t find God: In the mirror. If your God thinks like you, acts like you, speaks like, says the kind of things that only you would say, and asks nothing of you save for that which you would normally ask of yourself, then I think there is a very good chance that the God you follow is one that you have constructed for yourself!
As for me, I think the biggest proof that I am dealing with God is that he is nothing like me. He is infinitely more loving, compassionate, and gracious than me. He is far more patient and kind. He is much less selfish. He doesn’t think like me. He doesn’t act like me. He knows a lot more than I do. Thank God!
…
Want to hear some good news for a change? Sign-up for my monthly emails to hear more thoughts on life, faith, and spirituality.
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
***
If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project and want a deeper connection with our community, please join us as a Premium Member today.
Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS. Need more info?
A complete list of benefits is here.
—
Photo credit: Shutterstock