I love watching college football. And I especially love it when a player or coach recognizes the Creator with a victory. Reactions in TV interviews range from “I give all the glory to God” to “First, I want to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
And yet, when a player or coach says he is thankful or gives glory to “the Big Man Upstairs,” I can’t help but cringe. I realize they meant well, but the compliment seems pretty flippant, if not patronizing.
It is notable that no major religious holy book such as the Bible, Quran or Torah refers to God as “the Man Upstairs.” They aren’t so nonchalant when it comes to speaking about God Almighty.
So, where did this “Man Upstairs” idea come from? If you believe AI (which I don’t always), it apparently originated in a 1914 short story by P.G. Wodehouse. But the concept gained popularity during World War II, when a Saturday Evening Post article featured an American pilot who credited “the man upstairs” for saving his life.
The “Man Upstairs” also ties into a business concept in which the “boss” is a higher authority whose office is on the top floor.
Which leads us to the question, “What is God really like?”
Since the beginning of time, humans have been trying to figure out where we came from, where we’re going, why we’re here and who or what started space, time and matter. They’ve also been trying desperately to answer the ultimate question of “what is truth and what is reality?” Many of those thinkers, including the ancient Greek philosophers, believed in some kind of divine being. While some deduced that God or the gods were transcendent, many of them believed that the divine world mirrored the human world.
This idea was illustrated best in a 1971 song called “Aqualung,” performed by the band Jethro Tull. The opening lines declare, “In the beginning Man created God; And in the image of Man created he him.” Obviously, this is a satirical (if not blasphemous) inversion of Genesis 1:26, in which God creates man and woman in His image.
In a way, it’s easy to understand why humans try to figure out the divine from the lens within the human mind. They have no other reference point. They did what came naturally.
And that’s just the point. Nature is limited. Humans – even very smart men and women – are limited…finite…mentally restricted. We can’t know everything. And we can’t through human reason always figure out truth and reality.
We need something outside of nature – something Super-nature – to reveal to us where we came from, where we’re going, why we’re here, what is truth and what is reality. And most importantly, we need that Supernatural Being to reveal to us what that First Cause is really like.
And God has done just that. He’s revealed Himself to mankind. He’s given us a sneak preview through General Revelation – the stars and planets, oceans and mountain, sunrises and sunsets, and the birth of a baby, to name a few. His fingerprints are all over creation.
But God needed to go beyond those things, because He doesn’t want us to worship created things (that would be pantheism or “all is god”). He wants us to worship the Creator. So, God gave us His Word – the Bible, to give us specifics about who He is… and who He isn’t. The Bible is God’s Special Revelation. And when you read the Bible, one thing is for sure — He isn’t the “Man Upstairs.” As Numbers 23:19 says, “God is not a man, so he does not lie. He is not human, so he does not change his mind. Has he ever spoken and failed to act? Has he ever promised and not carried it through?”
No human language can adequately capture the true essence of the Almighty. If you want a great summation about just a few descriptions about the true nature of God, as He has disclosed to humanity, I highly recommend your reading A.W. Tozer’s classic book, The Attributes of God. Here’s a quick list of some of God’s amazing characteristics:
- Infinite (Unlimited)
- Immense (Boundless)
- Good (Kindhearted)
- Just (Unwavering Justice)
- Merciful (Unconditional Compassion)
- Gracious (Blessing the undeserving)
- Omnipresent (Everywhere)
- Immanent (Present within creation)
- Holy (Intrinsic purity)
- Perfect (Complete)
- Self-Existence (Dependent on nothing – “I AM that I AM”)
- Transcendence (Surpassing all creation)
- Eternal (No beginning or end)
- Omnipotence (All-powerful)
- I hateImmutability (Unchanging)
- Omniscience (All-knowing)
- Wisdom (Perfect understanding)
- Sovereignty (Ultimate authority)
- Faithfulness (True to His character)
- Love (The essence of God)
It’s important to appreciate all of these, but three key aspects really leap out to me about God – that He is eternal, infinite and self-existent. This means that God has always been and will always be. He had no beginning; He has no end. When people ask, “Who made God,” they fail to realize that God wasn’t “made.” In fact, the question violates a fundamental law of logic known as a “category fallacy.” Basically, to ask “who created the uncreated?” is nonsensical because the uncreated obviously has no creator. If someone or something created God, then He would be an effect, and whoever or whatever created Him would be the cause. Thus, God’s creator would be greater, superior and therefore The Supreme Being. The first cause of all things must be eternal, infinite, all-powerful and self-existent. God isn’t a “might exist,” but a “must exist, because something doesn’t come from nothing, life doesn’t come from non-life, and intelligent life dows come from non-intelligent life. That’s basic science.
One of the most significant revelations of God is the concept known as the Trinity. God is Three- in-One – three distinct persons in One Godhead — the Father, the Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Not three gods but three person in one God. No human can fully comprehend this truth, but God, through Scripture, has revealed this reality. And it’s not just a phenomenon that is introduced in the New Testament. In the very first book of the Old Testament, God says in Genesis, “Let us make man in our image.” He didn’t say, “I’m going to make man in my image,” but “let us….” Who was God talking to? Not the angels, because humans aren’t made in their image. This is a conversation between three eternal persons of the godhead.
A.W. Tozer said of the Trinity, “Such a truth had to be revealed; no one could have imagined it.” No human can fully understand this profound revelation, and while the concept of the Trinity may go beyond reason, it does not go against it. God is Who He is, not who we think He is.
In The God Delusion, Oxford professor Richard Dawkins famously describes the God of the Old Testament as “… a petty, unjust, vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” Obviously, Dawkins never had a real encounter with God. His perception is just as flawed as Jethro Tull’s.
But Moses did have an up close experience with the true and living God. When he encountered God on Mt. Sinai, he desperately wanted to know more about this God he was speaking with. And so God obliged with one of the best self-descriptions of all Scripture, “I am the Lord! The God of compassion and mercy! I am slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness. 7 I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations. I forgive iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But I do not excuse the guilty.”
This holy God is perfect, but He is reaching out to imperfect humans with love, mercy, compassion and faithfulness. God isn’t the man upstairs who is out of reach; He’s so much closer than you think. Take his hand and let him walk you through this life and the next.
michaelwmschick 