Stripped: Trusting God When He Allows Others to Hurt Youಮಾದರಿ

GOD’S ATTRIBUTES

Traveling is one of my passions. I have had the opportunity to fly dozens of times and witness astounding sights from the window of a plane, including volcanoes, canyons, and the aurora borealis. However, I would not be able to explain how or why a plane can fly. I understand individual elements and parts of a plane, but how they come together into a seemingly effortless flight, I won’t ever comprehend. Air currents, physics, mechanics, and other factors are involved in making the flight a success.

In a similar way, understanding God within the limitations of our human experience can not rely solely on a particular characteristic, but must consider God’s full attributes within the context of what He revealed to us through Scripture and creation. We can get stuck on questions like, “If God is love, why is there suffering in the world?” “If God is good, why did this terrible evil happen to me?” That tends to happen when we focus on one aspect or attribute of God, in this case love, but ignore His other attributes. It’s like trying to explain how a plane flies only by describing the wing’s design, and not considering the engine, gravity, etc.

God’s attributes are always true and never changing. Even if He had not revealed them to us, we can conclude that being a perfect, all-powerful being, capable of creating and designing the Universe, our bodies, the galaxies, and all the mysteries still undiscovered, would require having certain characteristics or attributes.

When we talk about God’s attributes we consider who He is, what He is like, and what kind of God He is.

Some examples of God’s attributes are that He is:

• All powerful (omnipotent)
• Everywhere (omnipresent)
• All knowing (omniscient)
• Infinite, always existed
• Self-sufficient, lacks nothing
• Immutable, doesn’t change
• Full of wisdom
• Faithful, always true
• Always good
• Holy, unchangingly perfect
• Loving
• Glorious
• Merciful
• Just, always right

These attributes must be individually and collectively true, not canceling or contradicting each other. In other words, His mercy and justice work together in perfect harmony. To us and our limited comprehension of justice, it might seem impossible to understand how He can have mercy and be just at the same time. However, we can trust that even as He grants mercy, He will also uphold justice, and do so in a way that does not negate His love.

If God is good and perfect, then that means He is incapable of doing evil, otherwise, He wouldn’t be perfect. If He is faithful and cannot deny himself, then that means He keeps all His promises, otherwise He would be a liar, which means He is not good, not perfect, and therefore, not God.

If God is love, then we must have free will, otherwise He would be depriving creation, made in His own image, of freedom, and would therefore not be just or loving.

I heard a song that stated “if God put the apple in the garden it was for it to be bitten.” That could not be farther from the truth. God put the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil in Eden because having the freedom to choose was a necessity. God always gives us the choice.

God has given us the powerful liberty to choose. The Bible is the most-sold book in the history of mankind. We have access to the Bible in print, large print, digitally, audibly, and in hundreds of languages and versions. But if we do not apply what God commands in it and choose life and blessings, He must allow that. The Scriptures are meant as a guide for our lives, but we only reap the fruit of living according to God’s instructions if we choose to do what He says.

There’s a constant battle between doing whatever we think is right, as opposed to what God establishes as right. Paul calls this the battle between our spirit and our flesh, and doing what we don’t want to do, even when we know it’s wrong. This liberty God gives us is proof of His justice and love, otherwise we would be like programmed robots acting without any ability to choose their actions.

If I analyze what others do to me to determine God’s love, it will never make sense and, quite the contrary, I will assume it negates His loving nature. We need to consider the full picture by remembering all the attributes that make up who He is, which means we must consider His love, without forgetting His justness. The more I meditate on this, the more I realize how astounding, powerful, marvelous, and good He is to work through and despite the evil we invited into the world by choosing to sin (see Genesis 1-3) in order to redeem mankind.

Let’s keep these things in mind as we dig deeper into Joseph’s story and consider our own as they relate to the bigger picture of God’s work with humanity.