How God is Like Your Mom
Ever heard that phrase? “I have eyes in the back of my
head.” I know my parents have used that one. If you aren’t familiar with it,
having eyes in the back of your head basically means you have a keen perception
of things. This can be taken close to literally or very hypothetically. A
literal interpretation: You sneak a cookie from the cookie jar behind your
mom’s back (Oldest one in the book. I have yet to experience having a jar that
always has cookies in it, though. That wouldn’t last long in my house), and she
catches you in the act. As if she really did have eyes in the back of her head.
A more liberal translation: Your mom knows you didn’t clean your room after she
asked you too, even though she didn’t actually check. But of course, she was
right.
Either way, it indicates seeing or perceiving things. If you
hadn’t noticed, I am correlating parenting with this phrase a lot. That’s the
context that makes the most sense to me. There’s something else I ought to
bring up: when I was young, I was inclined to believe that people could have
eyes in the back of their head. Why? Because I couldn’t understand how they
knew or understood the things they did. Now that I’m older, some of those
things that were so foreign and incomprehensible make perfect sense to me. I
now know that my mom knew I sniped a cookie because I was really loud. (Okay,
so that didn’t really happen. Like I said, cookies never last long enough to be
put in a jar. It’s just an example.) It makes perfect sense that my mom knew I
never cleaned my room; both by my facial expressions and my history of not
cleaning my room. (This one actually has happened. Don’t judge me too harshly.)
It’s our capacity to understand that makes the difference.
Do you ever feel like God has eyes in the back of his head? Well,
he does; in the literal and hypothetical sense. He sees what we are doing. All.
The. Time. Always. He also knows everything
we do and why we do it. Infinitely. Once
again, it’s our capacity to understand that changes things. Compared to God’s
infinite knowledge, we only have the understanding of a young child.
Don’t Swear in Church! (Apparently that’s the Only Place He Sees Us)
Have you ever heard anything to that effect? “Don’t swear in
church!” “It’s church, of course I’ll help you.” “You were gossiping at
church!?” “We don’t need to fight at church.” A lot of us do it. Church is
God’s house, so we should be good, right? We shouldn’t sin in the eyes in God!
I’m not throwing any stones here; most of the times when
someone says something like this, I don’t think they understand what they are
implying. They mean it with the best intentions. I’ve said things to that
effect too. Take a minute to understand the implications though. We shouldn’t
sin in the eyes of God. So we shouldn’t do bad things at church. That’s really
all it means? It is, unless, of course, God’s eyes can see past the walls of a
building; but that’s just silly. It goes against everything we as free
Christian Americans are taught to believe!
Okay, sorry for all the sarcasm. To really understand the
problem with phrases like “Don’t swear in church”, we must digress into another
issue. What is “church”? Somehow, American Christians as a whole have the idea
that church has a distinct set of standards. This is partially true. The
tabernacle and the temple in the Old Testament were very sacred and the priests
had to be cleansed before they could enter. The buildings we set apart for use
as God’s house and for his worship should be treated with honor and respect.
Yet, Paul says in 1 Corinthians:
Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself (6:19 NLT)
We are temples of the Holy Spirit. That’s not to say that
the buildings dedicated to being God’s house are to be treated as less sacred;
it’s to say that our bodies should be treated as more sacred. The Church
(capital “C”, meaning the universal body of Christ) is God’s people. It’s not
about the buildings, it’s about the people. With this in mind, what standards
should we as Christians have at church that we do not have at home? Here’s the
answer: none.
We should indeed be exhorting our fellow believers to live
holy lives in the sight of God. Here’s the catch: the sight of God stretches
far beyond any building we have dedicated to him. Almost as if he has eyes in
the back of his head.
You Can’t Put Omniscience in a Box
Check out Psalm 33:
13 The Lord looks down from heaven
and sees the whole human race.
14 From his throne he observes
all who live on the earth.
15 He made their hearts,
so he understands everything they do. (vs. 13-15 NLT)
Is it just me, or do these verses make you realize how big God
is? It’s so very humbling. Seriously, it makes me feel like an ant. Then again,
it also makes me feel so loved, that God would choose to understand everything
I do.
This passage is an example of God’s omniscience. To be
omniscient means to know everything there is to know; to possess infinite
knowledge. To tie all this together, think of it this way. To us, it seems like
God has eyes on the back of his head because our understanding is so minuscule compared to his. As such, we forget that God sees and knows us everything, not
just when we are thinking about him or in his house. Even when we are not aware
of it, God is looking on us; not only is he looking on us, but he observes and understands us.
Pure, infinite omniscience mixed with pure, infinite love.
How could we ask for anything better?
God sees you. Always. God knows you. Infinitely. There is
nowhere you can go to escape his sight. There is nothing you can do that
escapes his knowledge. You can’t put omniscience in a box. So let’s stop
putting limitations on how big God is just because we don’t understand it.
Instead, let’s start living in response, as if God were always watching us.
Because, folks, he is.
