We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Q&A: If God is So Great, Why Would He Care About Us?
Question: I’ve read that scientists estimate that the number of stars in the universe is 10 to the 24th power (10 with 24 zeros after it). I’m told that finding the earth amidst all these stars would be like finding one particular grain of sand in a sand pile the size of the United States piled 25 feet deep! Plus, the universe has been around for 13.5 billion years, while humans have only existed the last 10,000 years or so. This is a mere nanosecond of the cosmic clock. If this is all created by God, it seems far beneath him to care about us little — and very recent — humans on this little planet.
Answer: The question presupposes a dichotomy between greatness, on the one hand, and caring for little people, on the other. I would argue in the opposite direction, however. Rather than saying God is too great to care about us little humans, I’d say God is great preciselybecause he cares about us little humans. For the essence of God’s greatness is love, and love between unequals is greater than a love between equals. A story of a prince who willingly sacrifices his whole kingdom out of love for a peasant girl demonstrates a greater love than a story of a prince who marries the daughter of a king. In this light, the story of God caring about us little humans, to the point of becoming one of us and dying for us, despite the fact that we didn’t deserve it, must be seen as the greatest love story ever told. Calvary reveals the greatest, most beautiful, most loving conception of God humans have ever dreamed of.
In fact, I don’t believe humans dreamed this story up. It’s beyond what we are capable of dreaming. And, in any case, there’s a wealth of historical evidence that it’s actually true. (See P. Eddy and G. Boyd, The Jesus Legend [Baker, 2007]). Our most poignant love stories are faint echoes of the love story given us in the Gospels.
Related Reading
Was Noah’s flood global or local?
Though many regard the biblical story of a great flood in the days of Noah to be an ancient legend, evangelical Christians affirm it as historical fact because Scripture presents it as such. However, a debate has arisen during the last two hundred years as to whether the flood was global or local. Those who…
Seven Lies
hobvias sudoneighm via Compfight Stephen Mattson has contributed for Relevant Magazine, Sojourners (Sojo.net) Redletterchristians.org, and studied Youth Ministry at the Moody Bible Institute. He is now on staff at the University of Northwestern St. Paul, Minn. Follow him on Twitter @mikta. Stephen recently published an article in Sojourners titled Seven Lies About Christianity — Which Christians Believe that we really…
What is Open Theism?
Open Theism is the view that God chose to create a world that included free agents, and thus a world where possibilities are real. The future is pre-settled, to whatever degree God wants to pre-settle it and to whatever degree the inevitable consequences of the choices of created agents have pre-settled it. But the future…
If God anticipates each possibility perfectly, how does he differ from the “frozen God” of classical theism?
Question: If God anticipates each and every possibility as if each were only possibility, how does God ever experience novelty and adventure? It seems that a God who perfectly anticipated (from all eternity) every single possibility as if it were the only possibility would not differ from the timeless “frozen God” of classical theism Answer:…
Greg and Paul Tag Team to Answer Your Questions
Greg Boyd and Paul Eddy answered questions submitted from Woodland Hills Church and podcasters during all three services this last Saturday and Sunday. They covered a wide range of topics so, chances are, you’ll find something here of interest to you. You can download audio or video from the three services below: Saturday evening service…
War in the Heavens!
What does spiritual warfare look like from the perspective of the physical world? Our friend David D. Flowers speculated on that question in a post he entitled Dark Matter vs Dark Energy: War in the Heavens. Referencing Greg’s Satan and the Problem of Evil, David considers the possibility that the interaction between dark matter and dark energy that…