Unchangeable

“What I don’t like about religion is its all confined to a book” a very inquisitive guy named Brian told me. “If God is so infinite, don’t you think that his book should be ongoing?”

I thought that was a pretty good question. Brian had alluded to it earlier when he wondered why God wouldn’t be evolving through time, and that maybe some of his archaic laws written in the Bible would be modernized today.

I immediately thought of James 1:17, which says that God is “the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”

God never changes. There are many biblical passages that make this claim. Even Jesus, God in the flesh, has this same attribute of unchanging character, called “immutability”: Hebrews 11:8 says “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever”.

But why can’t God change? After all, doesn’t change allow for improvement? And isn’t improvement a good thing?

But this begs the question: “How can someone who is perfect improve?” God’s character attribute of being unchangeable is closely tied to his attribute of perfection, which could help explain to Brian why the Bible isn’t ongoing; God can’t be improved upon.

But there is another reason why Brian wondered why the Bible is limited to the pages of one book. He understands that the Creator of this vast universe must be absolutely infinite in nature – bigger than any mere book could describe.

I respected his insight and thoughtfulness about the immeasurable vastness of God.

But there are a few things that can help us understand why God’s revelation of Himself is limited to one book, or, more accurately, one huge but closed-ended collection of books. One is that although God is unlimited in nature, we are not. We can only take in so much. Likewise, our time here is limited, for some more than others.

Psalm 90:10 tells us “The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.” More hopefully, Genesis 6:3 gives us more time than that: “Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.”’

Our time on earth is limited, and so is the knowledge and understanding we can have here about our infinite Creator. Yet, the opportunity to learn what we can of God – through reading His word and experiencing what it means to live it out, is worthy of lifelong pursuit.

And we don’t have to worry that our knowledge of God will grow obsolete like it does with so much of our knowledge of worldly things. God never changes like the world does. Our understanding of God may change as we read His word, and His revelation of Himself only increases as we progress through His word, so it might seem like God is changing.

But it is, in fact, we who are changing, and that’s the way it should be.

Thanks, Brian, for allowing me to record our conversation. It can be seen on my YouTube channel.