GOD IS A PUZZLE
We don’t think God is offended when we say that he is a puzzle. If that were not true, why did he conceal himself in pillars of cloud and pillars of fire? And he would not have shrouded knowledge of himself and his ways in dark sayings, proverbs and riddles, figures of speech, words of the wise and riddles, dreams and visions, enigmas and difficult problems, shadows, types and patterns, and symbols, signs and allegories if he wasn’t purposely trying to be mysterious.

Considering these truths, it seems reasonable to say that God and the Bible that tells us about him are like a giant puzzle. Both are like a zillion pieces scattered across a large table in a room filled with a dense fog. Our challenge, if we choose to accept it, is to assemble the puzzle. But in order for us to see, God needs to shed light on pieces of the puzzle and open our spiritual eyes and ears so that we can begin to hear God’s voice which teaches us how to connect the pieces together.

When we think about it, it seems like an impossible mission. Not everyone is willing to accept this mission. We don’t know what the rewards of solving it will be, but there is something in some of us that is hungry enough and curious enough to try.

Some are curious about God but not hungry enough or thirsty enough to make a serious, sustained effort to know him. They take the easy route of paying someone else to figure God out and report their findings at church, in a synagogue, in music, in a book or at a conference. These people have only a dim picture of God that will soon pass away and they will need to go somewhere again to get their “god fix.” The knowledge they have of God is just a shadow and they do not know him in a deep, intimate sense. They will get their ears tickled every weekend by preachers and rabbis with smooth speech who tell them what they want to hear, and they will read the Bible, but they will never come to a good understanding of the truth about God.

Such people are ever learning without coming to knowledge of the truth. In their spiritual poverty, they miss out on all the wonderful things that God has prepared for those who love him and seek him with all their heart. They are those who think they are rich in their knowledge of God but are neither hot nor cold in terms of their love for God. People such as these who do not hunger and thirst for righteousness will not solve the puzzle. 

Those who do hunger and thirst for God, on the other hand, have a big,  but not impossible task before them. They have all the pieces of truth about God distributed in thousands of verses in hundreds of chapters in hundreds of pages of the Bible. And, like we suggested above, they begin in a spiritually dark place — meaning they have little or no truth or light to guide them.

All they do have is a fuzzy, obscure drawing created by religious leaders (i.e. pastor, rabbi, prophet, priest, writers, etc.) who have tried to teach them what little knowledge they have. If they have done a little Bible study on their own or been in a small study group, that is a beginning but all that teaching and learning is of no spiritual value — except that the law leads us to faith.

When we begin, all we have to work with is a tiny flashlight that allows us to look carefully at a few words of a few verses at a time. We scan the chapters and verses inspecting each word looking for concepts that relate to similar sounding words and concepts you identified earlier. We set those that are similar aside and keep looking for more pieces that seem to relate to the ones we have already found.

Some pieces are upside down and some right side up. Sometimes it is hard to tell which is the right side and which is the back side. These are the mysteries (i.e. parables, dark sayings, proverbs and riddles, figures, words of the wise and riddles, dreams, enigmas and difficult problems, figurative language, dreams and visions, shadows, types and patterns, and symbols, signs and allegories) that conceal their real meaning. At first it seems like there are more of these kinds of pieces than those that can be clearly understood, but God designed it that way to test our hearts. You just need to keep on looking and setting aside those that seem to relate to each other in a meaningful way.

Along the way, however, occasional doubt rises up to confuse the process. You may remember a teaching you heard from a respected religious leader that seems to contradict what you are finding. If you want to know God as he really is, you need to forget what you think you already know about God. Take a fresh look and trust that he is now teaching you and will show you the truth.

There will also be those bothersome contradictions within the Bible itself that seem irreconcilable. But you must push these conflicts aside and continue to trust that there are no contradictions in God. The only problem is in your understanding. This may cause you to doubt that you are up to the task. When this happens, remember that God is testing your heart and that those who doubt will not receive anything from God.

Doubt may creep in when you remember religious leaders who claim that they have assembled the puzzle and strongly imply that you should trust them for understanding. Their claims are strongly reinforced by titles, degrees, and large followings of people who praise them for their wisdom. Don’t trust them if they have a good reputation. They are religious man-pleasers who have reduced obedience to God down to a few rules. 

They will say that the key to knowing God is prayer, regular attendance at church or synagogue, fellowship with like-minded believers, paying your tithes, regular morning devotions and regular participation in approved religious ceremonies and traditions. They are very convincing and it seems doable because many others seem to be prospering by following these rules. They seem to be doing OK in their spiritual lives, and they seem knowledgeable about God, so you think they might know what they are talking about.

The only thing wrong with this scenario is that the picture your religious leaders and friends have of God is an incomplete shadow. And if it is incomplete, it is wrong. If we stop to wonder how a big God can be simplified the way religion represents him to be, we will begin to understand how wrong and incomplete that picture is.

Furthermore, as you observe your own life and the lives of religious people and carefully, you notice that neither you nor they are as spiritually competent as you have represented yourselves to be. You gossip, grumble and argue about all kinds of issues — in church and out of church. You have addictions, marital and family conflict, financial problems and all the other problems that exist within the general population. When we stop to really look, no one appears to be at peace in themselves or in their relationships. You all have an appearance of godliness, but something is missing in your lives that provides a clue that you do not understand as much as you like to have others think you do.

Indeed you all have fabricated religious lives according to a pattern prescribed by your chosen religious sects, but it is not a real picture of God. You have force-fit pieces that do not go together to make them fit — but they really don’t fit. Some pieces fit but they are upside down. And there are whole sections of the puzzle that are missing altogether. Despite the picture of Godliness you want to represent to the world, your picture of God is a mess. It looks good on the surface from a distance because you have filled in the gaps and painted over upside down pieces to make it look presentable. But upon closer inspection, you can see that something is very wrong with the picture.

You begin to notice these problems and wonder what the truth is. After you leave religion, you notice that the puzzle your friends have assembled and the one you previously trusted is smaller than the puzzle you are now assembling. Your puzzle includes a zillion small pieces while the old version was more like a child’s puzzle with only a few large pieces. Your unassembled puzzle pieces are scattered all over the table with hardly any space between them, while your old assembled puzzle fit neatly on a small table with nice neat borders.

As you study the Bible seriously on your own with no one to guide you except God, you discover that beneath the physical image of each piece is a spiritual image that appears dimly at first but which you eventually learn to discern. And you soon learn that trying to create a picture of God using the literal words of the Bible does not work. You learn that the literal pieces do not fit but the spiritual pieces do fit. And you also find that it is not a two dimensional puzzle that you are trying to assemble but a puzzle with many dimensions to it. This fact is not mentioned on the cover of the box, but you eventually learn that the picture of God you are trying to assemble has depth to it that you were never told about and that you never imagined could exist for as long as you listened to religious people who wanted you to share the limited picture of God.

Lacking a picture on a box, all you have to go on is the knowledge that God lives in a pillar of cloud and in a pillar of fire. You wonder how you can realistically begin to put the pieces together if that is the only image you have. But then you remember that God has given you many promises about knowing him and understanding the mysteries of the Bible. And then, encouraged by these promises, you continue to assemble  the puzzle piece by piece.