Gods Without Godliness

"So, tell me what this Peter Jackson thing is about."

I was trying to start a conversation with my daughter while driving her home from a school event.  I knew that she was reading this Rick Riordan novel where the plot involved some teenagers and Greek mythology.

"What?"  My daughter seemed totally clueless about where I was heading.

"You know, that novel that recently became a movie, about these kids trying to save the world from these crazy Greek gods, or something like that..."

"Oh, you mean Percy Jackson!"  Oops.  Peter Jackson is the movie director who did the Lord of the Rings films.  I was close.

"Yeah, like, at the beginning of the story, Zeus lost his lightning bolt, and like, he thought that Poseidon stole it from him, because, like, Zeus and Poseidon did not like each other, and, like, like..."

I had been trying to get my daughter to stop saying "like" every time she's trying to tell a story, but it looked like it was like not working.

"So, you're saying that Zeus is a god, but he can't even find his own lightning bolt?  Sounds like someone I know who couldn't find her flute yesterday..."

"Dad, stop it!  So, anyways, Percy Jackson and these other teenagers were, like, demigods, but they didn't know about it until..."

"Demigods?  So you're saying that these Greek gods were having sex with humans and got young ladies pregnant?  So these Greek gods can actually lose things, not get along with each other, not know everything, and act like a bunch of dirty old men?  The story sounds like a soap opera to me."

My daughter ignored my religious rant, and continued on with how these half-humans ended up being trained at Camp Half-Blood, somewhere in New York, and how the story somehow ended with the lightning bolt eventually being returned back to Zeus.  Unfortunately, she, like, lost me pretty quickly, as my mind wandered and wondered about just how human-like these Greek gods are.  Am I glad that they're not actually running the universe!

Come to think of it, deities that are conceived by humans throughout history are mostly like these characters who supposedly live on Mount Olympus.  They are typically morally deficient, limited in knowledge, limited in power, and/or limited by the dimensions of time and space.  Such are the products of human conception.  It is therefore of little wonder that our self-existent, all-knowing, all-powerful, omnipresent, eternal, righteous, and good God started the Ten Commandments with the directive,

"You shall have no other gods before me."  Exodus 20:3

A Child's Perspective

Kids say the darndest things.  I remember when my son was four years old, he brightly exclaimed one day while playing in the yard,

"Daddy, when I am really old, like when I'm a teenager, I want to...."

Whoa.  Hold it right there, buddy.  Did he say that teenagers are old?  I guess to a child who's barely in preschool, anyone who has been around three or four times as long has to be pretty ancient.  This conversation was going to get interesting.

"So, you think that teenagers are really old, huh?"

"Yes."

"So, how old do you think teenagers are?"

"Five."

Well, this new math was getting pretty complicated.  To my four year old son, teenagers are old, and teenagers are five years old.  It was too profound for adults to understand.  I suspected that this had something to do with his learning at the Montessori preschool, because my son was inexplicably speaking with a Sri Lankan accent.  His preschool teachers were from Sri Lanka.  I had to pursue this just a little further.

"Do you think that Daddy is old too?"

"Yes."

"Even older than a teenager?"

"Yes.  You're really, really old."

"How old do you think Daddy is?"

"Six."

Somehow I knew he was going to say that.  I couldn't resist asking him one more question...

"How old do you think Mommy is?"

"[bleep]"

Unfortunately, I can't quote what he said without my wife's permission.  Suffice to say that he knew how to recite a few numbers in ascending order.

It turned out that my son was not the only child with such a contracted perspective on time.  I asked another four-year-old girl a similar question, and she thought that her mother was five.

As created, finite beings, our perspective is also limited when we ponder things that are beyond our earthly experience.  When we consider our infinite God's character and promises, it is impossible for us to fully understand the enormity of scale compared to what we can see, hear, feel and think.  When God promised Abraham, then childless, that he would be the father of many nations, He likened the number of his descendants to the stars in the sky or the sands on the seashore, if he could count them.  Abraham believed, but did he truly appreciate the magnitude of the promise?

Likewise, when describing God's character, the psalmist wrote,

Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens,
your faithfulness to the clouds.
Your righteousness is like the mountains of God;
your judgments are like the great deep;
man and beast you save, O LORD.
(Psalm 36:5-6)

The highest heavens, the tallest clouds, the mightiest mountains and the deepest oceans are not sufficient to characterize our infinite God.  Our best efforts to picture Him are not much less contracted in perspective than those of a four year old child.  May we glorify God by truly being in awe of Him.