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In another article (089) I painted a very brief picture of what the Bible says about God. At the end of the article, I asked if you believed in this picture of God. In this article I would like to address this issue of belief in the Bible's claims about God.
There are many today, in what is often called post-Christian America, who do not believe in the biblical picture of God. Of those many, some simply do not believe in God at all. These claim to be atheists and claim that they are better informed than the vast majority of humanity (because atheists are a very small minority of the population). Their thesis is arrogant and the Bible puts forth very little hope for them because it declares only a fool says there is no God (Psalm 14:1) and because it declares that God is so easily known by the things that He has made that an atheist is not only not better informed, but more intellectually numb than the vast majority of humanity (Romans 1:19-22). It's amazing what arrogance does to the brain! I don't have much to write for this kind of person except to say that we shall all stand before God whether we believe in Him or not. We don't create reality by what we believe.
However, there are many, many more who do not believe in the biblical picture of God because they are into believing in a different system. They either have a different holy book, or they are into creating God out of their own reasonings. The problem with the other holy books is that they are invariably self-contradictory. Several of these other holy books acknowledge the Bible as a legitimate source for the knowledge of God, but the Bible condemns any other source as legitimate. So, the holy books the Bible condemns, but which admit the Bible is legitimate, are inherently self-contradictory. Thus, they cannot be the truth. Pictures drawn of God from other sources than the Bible are simply wrong. Again, we cannot create reality from our minds by what we believe. Reality is. Faith accepts it as it is. God is reality.
On the other hand, those who create God out of their own reasonings are actually declaring themselves to be God because they are subjecting Him to their own foolishness. The attempt to subject God is an attempt to be God. It won't work, but you are welcome to keep trying until judgment catches up to you.
Finally, there are those who claim their picture of God is biblical, but when pressed to demonstrate that, they appeal to church tradition, verses from the Bible that do not really mean what they claim they mean, or things they have believed for a long time. The only way to believe in the biblical God is to study and examine the Bible long enough to have its picture of God firmly fixed in your mind. If you do not do the study, you cannot have the picture in your mind. If you do not have the picture in your mind, you cannot believe in the God of the Bible. Pretty simple claim; more difficult process.
Are you willing to let the Bible be your last court of appeal? Or are you going to continue to let your religion and traditions keep you under judgment until the day of wrath?