"I Am That I Am"

This is a segment from a previous post, but it was near the bottom of a rather long article and I decided it deserved its own attention.




When Moses approached the burning bush and asked God his name, God replied, “I Am that I Am” (Exodus 3:13-14). As a child, I considered this answer either cryptic or trite. Now I realize that it was the only answer. God said in effect, ‘there are certain absolutes, of which I Am the first.” Some things are because they are, and the thread of their absolute truth is woven into the fabric of life.

Jehovah told the people of Israel all that they needed to know, all they were able to endure, when he declared his absolute truth. There is a God. He spoke from heaven. Whether or not they were present to hear his voice didn’t matter, because the Spirit of Truth could speak to them personally, and this knowledge would be no less potent to the heart as a voice to the ears. If they knew God, they could meet every need of a brief mortal lifetime and go on to an eternity of greater learning.

A humanist, whether he knows it or not, does believe in absolutes. But his absolutes come from secular science, books and studies written by other secularists, and the ruminations of his own intellect. He is blind to God not because he cannot know, but because he will not.

“I Am that I Am,” Jehovah declared, and it’s consequently more effort to refuse this first absolute than it is to acknowledge it. A humanist contests that his anger is against religion or religious people, but it isn’t religion from which he can’t escape—it’s from the Omnipotent, Omniscient God, from whose knowledge and gaze he cannot hide nor façade of hiding maintain except with perpetual rebellion. So said the Savior during his mortal ministry: “He that despiseth you despiseth me; and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me” (Luke 10:16). A humanist hates God for being real. As C.S. Lewis, a reformed atheist, said, "I gave in, and admitted that God was God."

Comments