The reason we cannot fully understand God is because He is transcendent. He is bigger than what we can understand. By vastness of His very nature, God is incomprehensible.
If God were finite enough to be fully understood, He would lack the breadth of power to sustain the universe. And while all human knowledge can be documented, God’s knowledge and thoughts can never be exhaustively recorded or measured.
If God’s expansive knowledge could be captured, catalogued, and learned by others, then His wisdom would have limits.
Just as sparks leap upward from a fire and fly out of reach, so God’s wisdom, power, and knowledge soar far above humanity’s ability to grasp and understand them.
Because of our limited scope and vision, it is easy for many of us to take God to task—to criticize what we see Him doing, to complain about His lack of action, to wonder if He is at work.
Because of God’s transcendence, however, He lives outside time and space. He sees the future and the past at the same time. The entire time line of humanity lies before Him like a panoramic photograph. He comprehends it all at once.
Is God uncaring because He doesn’t act? No. Because of His transcendence, He sees the outcome of every scenario and can select the best course of action.
Is God mean-spirited because He doesn’t relieve our suffering? No. Because of His ability to see the future, He knows how today’s events shape tomorrow.
How does God’s transcendence affect our view of God and our worship of Him? To put it simply, we do not worship God because we have the human ability to raise Him above ourselves; we worship God because He is, by His very nature, above us.
How would you describe the transcendence of God to a child?
