What Gives God the Right To Be God? That He Makes Us Happy?

Last updated on: January 4, 2017 at 10:49 am by Paul Louis Metzger

What Gives God the Right To Be God? That He Makes Us Happy? 2017-01-04T10:49:44-08:00 Paul Louis Metzger

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What gives God the right to be God? That he makes us happy? And if he doesn’t?

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Did someone higher upstairs or those of us downstairs give God the green light to be God, or did God take it upon him or herself to be crowned the Almighty? Beyond these questions, does God’s official status grant total access to do with the world and us whatever he, she or it pleases? Does God have permission to smash babies’ heads against the rocks (Psalm 137:8-9), or tell his chosen ones to kill their firstborn sons, as in the case of the Father of Faith, Abraham (Genesis 22)? Does God have tenure, or can we impeach or dethrone God, if he doesn’t make us happy?

One wonders if Abraham had second thoughts about responding to God’s call to go wherever God led him and his family, especially when God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son and heir, Isaac, on Mt. Moriah. Abraham had waited all those years for a promised heir, and after his prayers had finally been answered, God tells him to go and sacrifice the boy. Isn’t that what Molech would do—a god whom the Almighty despised for demanding that its devotees sacrifice their children, or so we thought? Perhaps there is no difference between these deities. I wonder what Abraham thought. Hebrews tells us that Abraham believed that God would give Isaac back to him from the dead (For a retelling of the backdrop and ordeal, see Hebrews 11:8-19).

Such faith is staggering. Was it blind? Perhaps not. It seems as if Abraham reasoned that God would fulfill his promise through Isaac—the promised heir—one way or another. Abraham had witnessed God’s protection and provision all those years when he and Sarah traveled in search of a home they never found. Like them, we who believe in Jesus—the promised One who descended from Isaac, still have not found the Promised Land that we are looking for, as Hebrews says (Hebrews 11:39-40). Perhaps Abraham reasoned that God had never let him down—even giving them this long-cherished child years after Sarah could not conceivably conceive in their old age; so, God would come through this time as well. But what kind of God would make such demands, and what kind of deity would seemingly play such a cruel joke—that just as Abraham is about to bring the dagger down, the Angel of the Lord stays his hand?

There is no story like this one recorded in the Bible—except the one very much like it to which Christians claim points to Christ: on the mountain of the Lord, it will be provided. There in the thicket was a ram that was caught by the horns; Abraham was instructed to sacrifice the ram in Isaac’s stead. The sacrifice was provided once, and it was provided again. Once again, Hebrews informs us that Jesus is a lamb of sacrifice—the ultimate lamb of sacrifice who takes upon himself the sins of the world (Hebrews 10:1-18). It seems as if from the New Testament’s perspective, the moral of the story is “Don’t do anything you wouldn’t have others do.” At least, that’s how God appears to operate. God does not have us do anything God wouldn’t do, and in Abraham’s case, God does not permit him to do what God alone will do.

Perhaps God simply wanted to know if Abraham was truly his friend—if Abraham was all in with God, just as God had gone all in with Abraham (Genesis 22:12). Remember how God made the unconditional covenant with Abraham to bring down curses and death upon himself if he did not fulfill what he promised Abraham (at that time, Abram; see the account in Genesis 15). What God promised was to make Abram’s name great and bless all the nations through his heir (Genesis 12:1-3). God allowed his own Son, his one and only Son—Jesus, to be cursed so that we would not have to be cursed, as he was hung on that cursed tree at Golgotha (See these references to the cursed tree: Deuteronomy 21:23; Galatians 3:13). Indeed, on the mountain of the Lord, God provided. God does not ask of us something he won’t do himself; nor will he permit us to sacrifice ourselves for our sins; he alone can and does do it.

This accounting of the story does not resolve everything. What kind of deity makes his Son go to such cost, or did it cost God, too, in giving over his Son to death? That’s for a later post. Moreover, regardless that God’s Angel stayed Abraham’s hand on Mt. Moriah, God still made him go through with the ordeal all the way up to that dreadful point.

What does all this say about faith and relationship with God? Kierkegaard would tell us that we must take a leap of faith with God, that faith involves the absurd, that it requires fear and trembling, and passionate choice and commitment that moves us out from hiding behind bland, static, ethical universals so that we must deal face to face as individuals with the personal Absolute—God (Refer here to the commentary on Kierkegaard’s account of Abraham’s ordeal and his work, Fear and Trembling).

While I don’t find Abraham’s faith absurd and irrational, I do find it difficult and hard. He did have a deeply personal and all-consuming history with God, one in which he had found God faithful time and time again. Costly, personal story and personal relationship with deity mattered to Abraham; from the vantage point of Christian Scripture, including Hebrews, the same is required today.

Now, depending on your vantage point, you might consider Abraham a real sick person that he would be willing to go through with such a horrific deed. I can’t blame you. I sometimes ponder those thoughts myself. Who doesn’t? Certainly, nihilism is exhausting, as the Dude acknowledged in The Big Lebowski; so, too, is faith. There is no way out of getting around fear and trembling when dealing with the God revealed in the Bible.

What does this mean for us in an age marked by moralistic therapeutic deism, where many of us operate as if God is a distant deity who is there to do our bidding to make us happy just as long as we live moral lives? Given such a worldview, it is likely we would not befriend God on Facebook or vote for him next election if he doesn’t make us happy and make America great again. After all, we never gave him the right to be God.

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