What is God like?

Question: "What is God like?"

Answer: Every culture in the history of the world has had some concept of what God is like. There are countless variations on how this concept is addressed in different cultures, but there are a few things held in common. Generally, the concept of God includes awesome power, some form of control over mankind or nature, and a belief in life after death. This article will use history and Scripture to develop a more complete understanding of what God is like.

The non-Christian religions’ views of God contain some common threads. To the Brahmans, God is the Unknowable, without names and attributes, known only by him who knows not. The treatise of Protagoras On the Gods begins, “Concerning the gods I am not able to know whether they exist or whether they do not exist. For there are many things which prevent one from knowing; for example, the obscurity of the subject and the shortness of human life.” Plato declared in Timaeus, “Now to discover the Maker and Father of this Universe were a task indeed; and having discovered him, to declare him to all men were a thing impossible.” Plato influenced Philo, who said that the name “Jehovah” was itself an expression of God's inscrutability. The ancient Gnostics believed there was an absolute separation between the highest God and the world; therefore, the highest God was absolutely unknowable and unattainable. It is clear that from antiquity men have struggled to explain God. This gives us a baseline – God is so far superior to mankind as to stymie all effort to encapsulate Him in words.

Many people in both ancient and modern times have considered God’s incomprehensibility and turned to agnosticism or atheism. But God must be knowable. If God exists, one would expect Him to reveal Himself to mankind in some way, even if that revelation was limited by man's understanding. And a God who could be fully understood and explained would be a small god indeed, hardly worthy of man's worship.

Norman Geisler and Frank Turek, in their book I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, state the following:

- Truth is discovered, not invented. It exists independent of anyone's knowledge of it. (Gravity existed prior to Newton.)

- Truth is transcultural; if something is true, it is true for all people, in all places, at all times. (2+2=4 for everyone, everywhere, at every time.)

- Truth is unchanging even though our beliefs about truth change. (When we began to believe the earth was round instead of flat, the truth about the earth didn't change, only our belief about the earth changed.)

As we try to ascertain what God is like, we are simply trying to discover truths already there.

One of the common beliefs about what God is like is that He has awesome power. Let’s try to uncover the truth behind that belief. In ancient Hebrew, the basic word for God was el, which means “mighty one.” The ancient Phoenecian and Ugaritic languages used similar words. In every culture, the concept of God is tied directly to power, such as power over the sun and rain, wind and waves, or life and death. What is the ultimate display of power? Creation. Every religious belief system attributes creative power to God. According to Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” This is a simple yet powerful statement. It includes time, space, and matter, so that all discernible elements in the universe came into being by God's decree. Albert Einstein's theory of General Relativity revealed that all time, space, and matter had to have a definite beginning, and that they all had to start at the same time. If they had a beginning, they must have had a cause. That is the Law of Causality, and the concept of God easily explains the ultimate cause. Therefore, God is the creator of all that is, and so He must be almighty.

The second common concept of what God is like is that He has some form of control over man or nature. In the Greek pantheon, Poseidon had power over the seas, Chronos controlled time, and many others exercised similar powers. The Greeks’ polytheism allowed for the overlapping of authority by gods of various realms, resulting in the gods acting in unpredictable and volatile ways. The ancient legends are filled with tales of gods and demi-gods wrangling over who would prevail in the affairs of men.

If we take the first truth about God – He is the mighty creator of all – and apply it here, there is no conflict of authority. The same God who made all things also controls those things. He who creates an item owns it and has power to utilize it as he sees fit. The ultimate cause has ultimate authority. In Isaiah 44:24, God presents Himself as the One “who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself.” The next verse says the Lord “overthrows the learning of the wise and turns it into nonsense. This is obviously a God with power to do as He pleases, who exercises His power over man and nature because He is the creator.

The third common concept is the belief in life after death. In most religions, gods are immortal, and thus have authority over men both in this life and in the afterlife. Usually, religions teach there is some correlation between the deeds of this life and a judgment by a god or gods in the afterlife. Again, this finds its logical basis in God being the creator of all. Mankind is given life by God, and at the end of life, that same God passes judgment on what man did with his life. In Revelation 20:12, we read, “I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. . . . The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The God revealed in the Bible is the mighty creator, ruler, and judge of all.

A fourth truth about what God is like is that He is a moral being. C. S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, makes the case that just as we have observable laws of nature (gravity, entropy, etc.), there are also observable laws of morality. He writes, “First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.” Despite varied ideas about what constitutes right and wrong, there is a universal belief that right and wrong exist, and this is a reflection of the God who made us. Every religious system in the world deals with morality and the judgment of God. Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 3:17, “I thought in my heart, ‘God will bring to judgment both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time for every deed.’” If there is a God who creates, rules over, and judges all, then He must have a standard for judgment. This is exactly the kind of God we find in the Bible.

Many philosophers and sociologists have attempted to disprove the existence of God and His moral law. Unfortunately for them, there is just too much contrary evidence in science, history, and experience. God is the eternal, all-powerful creator of all, the one we must answer to for the deeds done in this life. Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

What is God like? He is all-powerful. He has a will which He exercises to exert control over the affairs of the world. He is a wise, moral being who will judge all of us on the basis of His own unchanging perfection.

Recommended Resource: Knowing God by J.I. Packer.