There Is No Adequate Analogy
A few weeks ago we were discussing the enormous difference between God and a human being. (If you’re interested you can read about that here: Me and You Compared to God (and our dependence on Him): Following Christ for Exhausted People.)
Today someone shared this quote with me, and I just had to share it with you:
There is no adequate analogy in the universe for the One who created the universe.
–Nathaniel Jonathan Bennett
It’s in our nature to try to find some way to explain God. Aristotle defines man as a “rational animal,” and while that doesn’t fully encapsulate what it means to be human, it is nevertheless true. We are made in His image and likeness, the image and likeness of the Logos, the divine logic, and as such we want to explain things, and even more to understand things.
I just looked up the etymology of the word “understand.” The way we use it today, it’s synonymous with “comprehend,” which comes from the Latin comprehendere, meaning “to seize or capture.” We try to seize and capture knowledge, and in doing so we subject it to ourselves. This was God’s second job for us in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were told to subdue the world, to comprehend it and care for it.
But we can’t do that with God.
In Isaiah, God says:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
But that’s just how we use the word now. The word “understand” comes from Old English, and the early speakers of those old Germanic languages meant something only slightly different, but enough so to be significant.
The prefix “under” often meant “among” or “in the midst of.” If it helps, the Latin equivalent of this prefix would be “inter,” like in “international” (between nations). Then “stand” means basically what we know it to mean now; in this case it’s a sort of metaphorical state of being present with knowledge. In other words, while we can’t comprehend (seize or capture) who God is, and every analogy falls utterly short, we can understand (stand in the midst of) Him. And He does the same with us. Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God and the Second Person of the Trinity, literally came to understand us: to stand in our midst, and for us to stand in His.
There’s no adequate analogy in the universe for the One who created the universe. All we can do is stand in His midst.
Notes:
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has revisited one of its most iconic and popular images: the Eagle Nebula’s Pillars of Creation. This image shows the pillars as seen in visible light, capturing the multi-colored glow of gas clouds, wispy tendrils of dark cosmic dust, and the rust-colored elephants’ trunks of the nebula’s famous pillars.
The dust and gas in the pillars are seared by the intense radiation from young stars and eroded by strong winds from massive nearby stars. With these new images comes deeper contrast and a clearer view for astronomers to study how the structure of the pillars is changing over time.
Credit: NASA, ESA/Hubble and the Hubble Heritage Team
