Reflections for November 19, 2009

"The Awesomeness of God"

Last year, I read on Fox News Website about a new supercomputer that has been built by IBM for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. It is called Roadrunner. The article explained the speed of this new computer this way: “To put the computer's speed in perspective, it has roughly the computing power of 100,000 of today's most powerful laptops stacked 1.5 miles high, according to IBM. Or, if each of the world's 6 billion people worked on hand-held computers for 24 hours a day, it would take 46 years to do what the Roadrunner computer can do in a single day.” Additional research revealed that it could operate at one petaflop, which means that it can make one thousand trillion calculations per second.

As I read about this new supercomputer, I was amazed at the ingenuity of man. Then I thought about how tiny man is in comparison to God. The words of the Psalmist came to my mind. He wrote, “Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O Lord, You know it all. You have enclosed me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it.” (Psalm 139:4-6 NASB). If man can build a machine like Roadrunner, God should have no trouble knowing everything about His creation. He should have no problem knowing our every thought. He can operate at an infinite number of petaflops.

When I think of the awesomeness of God, I am troubled by the way modern society has attempted to reduce Him down to an entity that we can interact with on an even plane. In so doing, we have lost our sense of reverence. We have ceased to fear Him. When reverence and fear are gone, we find it easy to thumb our nose at Him, whenever His teachings interfere with our desires. While this lax attitude might be expected in the world at large, it should never be seen within the body of Christ. It shouldn’t be but it is.

In many ways the Church, which is the Body of Christ, finds itself in the same shape as Israel thousands of years ago. The Prophet Isaiah admonished them with these words, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil; who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight!” (Isaiah 1:20, 21 NASB). Isaiah had much more to say but this is enough to demonstrate that they had lost their awe for God.

The answer to this dilemma is for the people of God to recognize their failures and to turn from the image of God that they have created in their own minds to the image of God that is clearly spelled out in Scripture. We need to recapture the awe the Psalmist had when he wrote, “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained; what is man that You take thought of him and the son of man that You care for him?” (Psalm 8:3, 4 NASB).