Sometimes we judge importance by length. We shouldn’t. I have written many blogs discussing the depths, mysteries and intricacies of God, but I am going to take only one blog to talk about His simplicity. You see, we need to see God as simple. God, vast and deep as He is, is simple enough for a child to understand, and any honest treatment of the nature of God must do justice to this fact.
But first, let me illustrate something about God by using math. Consider the following equation:
∜[a_0+∑_(n=1)^∞ (a_n cos nπx/L + b_n sin nπx/L ) ] = 1.
In attempting to solve the equation, we are prone to think the left side more important and will spend more time on it. Yet the equal sign is just that. It means that the two sides are the same. One side may be complex and one side simple, but neither side is more important. They are equal to one another. We spend more time on the left because it is more complicated, not because it is more important.
God is like the equation above, for God is both simple and complex, and all of his complexity equals His simplicity. God is, on the one hand, the most involved mathematical expression you ever saw. In fact, He is unsolvable. On the other hand, He is as simple as the number one. And both those aspects are equal to one another.
So let’s talk a bit about God being simple. I do not mean, of course, that he is fully comprehensible, for some things are so simple they are profound. Nor do I mean that he is simplistic, for his simplicity is both natural and mature. What I mean is that God may be full of mystery, but He is also the sort of being a child can understand.
God is a whole, and a whole is simple. Children understand this. They may not comprehend the atonement or the Trinity or the intellectual depths of predestination (for that matter, I suppose I don’t either); but they know that God is good, that He loves them, that He cares about a right life, that He is just and strong, and that He is all these things in one. In other words, children know that God is God. They are willing to take God as God and not divide him up into a million seemingly contradictory parts and then conclude that He must not be because the parts don’t make sense. In the end, their “childish” approach is more sensible than we think. It is the common approach everyone takes toward most of life. No one ever divides his mother into a thousand different emotions, motives, and habits (many of which seem quite irreconcilable) and then concludes that Mom must be a figment of his imagination because he cannot make sense of her. No. Rather, we take Mom to be Mom, and we relate to her as a whole person. When we eat pizza, we do not analyze the chemistry of the dough or the physics involved in lifting the slice to our mouth. The notion that the subatomic particles in our pizza are behaving randomly does not trouble us. We never say, “The traits of the particles which are the foundation of my pepperoni are irrational. I just can’t see how this pizza can be what it is.” No. We just eat it. The same can be said for throwing a ball, smelling a rose, or taking a nap. Most people take the childlike approach to most things in life. And when we do so, we have the great advantage of seeing things as wholes. A rose becomes a rose and a sausage a sausage. It is this approach, and this approach only, which sees God as God. There may be different persons in the Godhead, and we may describe different aspects of God’s character; but God himself is a single whole just like any other being, and his character is indivisible. This fact is part of what simple means.
God is pure, and purity is a simple thing. Pure water bubbling up from a mountain spring is far simpler than the waters of Lake Erie. Purity means that there are no mixtures. God is purely God. His love is pure love; his patience pure patience; his wrath pure wrath, and so on. He never has mixed motives for what he does. He may have multiple reasons for doing something, but His reasons are never in conflict. There is no taint to God as there is to us. We muddy simplicity with our mud, but God lacks the mud and exists in his own purity. And because He is pure He is simple.
God is perfect, and perfection is simple. Distortions, imperfections, and weaknesses complicate things. A perfect sphere is simpler than a crushed one. Perfect love is simpler than tarnished love. Wherever we look, perfection is simpler than imperfection, and God is perfect. His character is never distorted or skewed. His anger never gets in the way of his patience; his courage never diminishes his wisdom. His affection is never maudlin; his justice never cold. He does not grow; he does not learn; he does not change. He is steady. He is what he always has been. Simple.
God is humble, and humility is simple. Indeed, God is the most humble being of all. I realize that some people say God is arrogant because He demands unequivocal allegiance, glory and worship, but such people forget who they are talking about. They want to think about God the same way they think about men. If you or I were to demand what God does, we would be devils indeed, for reality would not back us up. We would be a rat demanding the lions to bow before him or a janitor claiming that the kings of the earth owed him their allegiance. But God can demand such things. He is God. He can desire glory for the plain reason that it is right. In us self-centeredness is sin because in truth we are not the center of everything. But in God things look different. If there is any self-centeredness in God, it is because God, properly speaking, is the center of everything. God can demand glory, worship and allegiance without being arrogant. On a smaller scale, we understand this principle. A mother can demand that her children show her respect. An admiral can demand that a seaman show him honor. An employer expects his employee to follow instructions. The mother, admiral and employer do not have to be arrogant to demand such things. They may merely be right. And so it is with God.
God is humble, and his greatness highlights his humility. He is not showy, though, of all beings, he alone has the right to be. He has a respect for our choices and will let us drink the potion we choose, though, of all beings, He alone could disallow all choices save His. He has every right to the most extravagant glories imaginable, yet He willingly entered the world in a stable, submitted Himself to the authority of a carpenter, owned nothing except a single tunic, and took upon his back the filth and guilt of the entire human race. He bled and died like a dog, yet He has more glory than the galaxies. Scripture describes it this way: “being in very nature God, (he) did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross” (Ph2:6-8). That is what humility is. That is God. And He is simple. He is a pure, humble, perfect whole.
Our job is to view Him as such. Only when we begin to do this will we begin to see Him. Those who lose His simplicity lose God. If you think God so complex that you can know nothing of Him, then you shall know nothing of Him.
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