Harping On God’s Nature: It’s Complex

Our attempts to simply the Lord’s complex nature and use a one-trick pony to fix even the most complex problem without the application of principles (“God, send revival to our nation” is our current idol these days) will end with our destruction in spiritual self-impoverishing behavior.

A question was asked on a forum of which I am part asking why God kept changing His name so much in Scripture.

I responded thus:

God didn’t change his name so much as He, through His additional names, REVEALED facets and aspects of His nature.

Because we are His kids, and His nature is so multi-layered and multi-faceted, He communicates a stream of revelation to us.

And we need all of those names so that we don’t pigeonhole the God of the Universe, and the God of the Hunt, and the God Who Plays Chess On a 27 Dimension Board, and the Ancient of Days, and the God of All Days, and the God of the Land Dynamics (Acts 17:26) into a little box that only occupies room enough for one single revelation of His nature.

He is a complex God who has COMPLEX solutions and a COMPLEX nature to helps us weave together millions of principles, in order to grow into sonship, in order to solve hella-complex problems.

The bottom line is we have a lot of names because we have been given a lot of tools to solve a big picture.

For example, if you think about the Wright brothers, when they were solving the problem of fixed-wing flight, they didn’t just throw an engine on a set of wings and hoped it would work. No.

They wove together millions of principles together in order to fly. They studied how birds maneuvered in the air in Dare County, NC, and observed kites. They considered wingform in order to warp the wings in the proper fashion in order to control lateral movmeent (the precursor to ailerons). They considered turning and rotation (rudders and elevators). They were forced to think of forward movement without the safety of a road that keeps a car from moving vertically. They though of thrust and lift, and proper materials needed so the craft would be light enough and sturdy enough.

And then they built their first craft as a glider. Flyer 1 was a glider.

Later wheels were added but the first takeoffs were done a long a fixed track after they successfully handled the gliding experiments.

And they also dealt with the human elements and dynamics. Quite effectively. Read David McCullough’s biography for a better understanding of the complexities in their work.

By way of illustration, God first taught us that he was Father and Creator and Lord before anything else, because we needed those aspects as a framework on which to build everything else.

So, the sum-up is God didn’t change His name. Rather, He revealed additional aspects of his nature and character.

I know I didn’t answer the question you asked, but I gave the response I did in order to help you consider a larger scope of things in Scripture. He wants to give you a wealth of understanding of Him as He is so you can tackle the problems you were made to tackle, understanding that you are a wealthy son instead of a poor slave.