And yet in Genesis 3 we hear God ask Adam and Eve where they had hidden themselves after they had succumbed to the lies of the evil one who had tempted them to break the only rule that God had given them. Did that mean that God didn't know where Adam and Eve where hiding? Of course not. What it means is that God talks to us in terms we could understand. He could have appeared in a formidable storm of nature, or accompanied by the honor guard of heaven but instead He chose to walk in the garden among His creation, the same creation that had just disobeyed Him and ushered a future history of sin and evil that their human minds could not comprehend.
When my daughter Grace was younger we used to play a game where we would go outside, find a colony of ants (which were always in great supply) and start reading to the ants the book that we had just been reading inside. She would laugh and say there was no way that the little insect could understand the words I was saying - it's brain couldn't understand the words I was saying. And yet the chasm that separates our wisdom and knowledge from what God himself possess is light years greater. In fact, there is no distance that I can comprehend that I could then use to measure the difference between my knowledge, wisdom, experience and potential and the mind of God Almighty.
So when my life experiences and reality don't align with what I believe a fair and just God should provide to me at that point I'm assuming the mantle of pride that the evil one targeted in our first ancestors. When Job after losing almost everything he valued in this world finally broke and questioned the goodness of God how do you think God responded? I used to think for a long time that God's response was too rough on Job who had just lost all of his children, wealth and health. I used to imagine what I would have wanted God to say and do if I had been in that same situation. Job had been asked to endure a season of unparalleled horror and then to have his friends conspire to blame him for his situation was the final straw. So he lost it, he cried out for God to give him an answer that he, as a faithful follower of God surely deserved. And God did answer Job. But as with many stories in the Bible, not in the way that I imagined that God would respond. In fact, God's response was just about the opposite of what I believed Job deserved. And that is just a small taste of the gulf of knowledge that I can never cross in reality but yet in my mind I can freely navigate. How is it that my mind can so quickly disregard truth for my own fabricated reality?
I think the primary answer is that I'm a fallen creature. My thoughts are not the thoughts and perspectives of God and yet I pretend to know what is best for me on a daily basis.
And despite my many shortcomings, God has mercy, not just to me but to all of His creation. Look how God chose to relate to man, not just in the garden but throughout history culminating in the greatest event of our time. God himself stepped out of eternity into the very world that He created possessing the attributes of the human creature that He had designed. He became man so that we could better understand Him, not so that He could better understand us. He knows everything there is about each one of us and loves us anyway. His desire is to see all of His creation in a relationship with Him for all eternity.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:8-9.
