He Was Always At Our Level

It's been asked many times by many people, "How can God act as if He's surprised when people act a certain way or do a certain thing?  How can He get angry when people choose to disobey Him?  He's God, isn't He?  He's omniscient.  He sees all, knows all."  This is a good question.  Yet clearly, the Bible shows that God has indeed been surprised, hurt, angered, frustrated, and pleased by the actions of human beings.  And clearly, God is omniscient.  He knows all and sees all.  So what gives?  How can both statements be true?

Please take what I write here with a grain of salt.  I'm only putting down what's in my heart and what I believe has been revealed to me.  Your experience may vary.

Here's the short answer to the questions above as spoken through Isaiah:

Isaiah 55:8
"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD.

I think that pretty much sums it up.  If you believe God, then you can accept that He is an oxymoron.  What seems like a conflict of His being is nothing more than our inability to grasp His ways.  However, if you believe that He loves His children, calls us to understanding, and has provided a conclusive testament in His Word, you can find out how God can exist both in limitless form and in limited form on earth.  Please note that I say "limited form" for lack of a better term.  Even when interacting with us in linear time, He is God:  all powerful, present everywhere.

The first problem to tackle would be the how of it all.  Let's take forgetting, for instance:

Heb 8:12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more."

So, God can forget?  Yes.  He said so through Jeremiah, quoted here by the writer of Hebrews.  Did God mean maybe something else by this?  If He meant something else, He would have said something else.  So I think it's clear here that He forgets things.  But how?  To answer this question we will need to go back to the very beginning for a basic clue that helps us infer things from the Bible:

Gen 1:26 Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; ..."

God made us to be like Him.  Let's set aside the big discussion on where our similarities with God begin and where they end.  It's safe to assume for the sake of argument that because we are like Him, we can look at our own abilities to determine what His may be, in some cases.  One such ability is a high mental ability called compartmentalization.  If you've watched a spy movie, you've heard of it.  Many spies and undercover detectives will compartmentalize their minds to keep their true identity and their false identity straight in their heads.  Don't read too much into that.  I'm not saying God is a spy or undercover.  What I'm saying is that He has the mental capacity to separate what He knows from who He Is, just like we do.

But why would God want to compartmentalize in the first place?  Perhaps we need to view God's motive for compartmentalization to see why He did it. God desires a relationship with His children.  Words are important.  They are especially important to God.  I've highlighted in bold the ones I think speak specifically to the reality that God wants to have a relationship with us:

John 1:12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

• He gives us the right to become His children.
• We are born from Him.  God gives birth to us.

John 6:40 And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day."

• God wants to give us everlasting life.  Eternity is a long time.  God wants us around forever.  I don't want anything I can think of forever.  That's some serious desire, right there.
• It's open to ANYONE who believes.

John 17:3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

• Jesus' entire purpose was to enable anyone who was willing to know God.  That's it, just to know Him.  It's that important to Him.

Rev 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. 21 To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.

• Jesus wants to have lunch.  I realize that's oversimplifying the scripture here, but it fits.  He wants to share a meal with us, but only if we are willing to open the door.
• He'll let us take the throne for a spin.  Are you kidding me?  That's awesome.

So, clearly we can see that, since Jesus was already planned to be sacrificed from the beginning of time so that we could "know God", relationship with His creation (humans) is His number one priority.  If that's His highest goal, then He has sufficient motivation to allow Himself to share in an actual relationship with us.

Consider your own life and your own relationships.  What fun would they be if you knew everything ahead of time?  Let's take a step back.  Consider an amazing movie you've seen.  Maybe one with a super shocking twist at the end of the film.  Wasn't it exhilarating when the plot twist surprised and shocked you?  Now consider the same situation except now let's insert someone or something telling you the end of the movie before you went to see it.  It makes the movie pointless.  So, suppose in one of your closer relationships you have a friend who is engaged in some high-stakes life event.  Maybe they are in trouble or are simply going after something risky like starting a business or having children.  What value is there in that relationship if you somehow know 100% what the outcome of the high-stakes life event would be?

Now imagine the entire universe being like a book you already read.  If you are God, you not only know how every single relationship is going to go, you also set it all in motion!  What a boring creation.  Now imagine that, perhaps, just maybe, God did set all things in motion before time and then compartmentalized all of that in order to have a relationship with as many of us as would allow it?

What if, when He interacts with us, He both does and does not know what is going to happen?  Let me explain.  You see, science talks about this "Big Bang" that created the universe.  The image it brings up in my mind works with scripture, so I'll take it.  But I will also add to it divine programming.  That means that every single plan, every law, every probability, every flower, every star, every Ninja Turtle doll, and Cabbage Patch Kid existed inside that "Bang" that was so "Big".  Don't ask me to explain.  The best I can say is it's like the unfolding of a flower.  Ponder that for a bit.  So, God sets this amazing God-flower of creation rolling, then He jumps in and tweaks some things, just for fun.  He speaks all creatures into existence and then.....He goes hands-on and sculpts Adam out of dirt.  I believe somewhere between the "Bang" and Him creating Adam, He started to compartmentalize.

You see, I heard something a long time ago about struggling.  I was under the impression that if only everything in life would do what I wanted, I would not struggle and life would be good.  No struggle equals life is good.  But that was just a juvenile thought.  I had never experienced life without struggle, so how would I know that it would be good?  A friend of mine stopped me in my tracks one day and said, "Without struggle there can be no value."  We only appreciate things we work for.  Take video games for example.  Not long after the Nintendo Entertainment System came out in the 1980's the cheat code made its debut.  Normally, you would play through every level of the game until reaching it's finish.  Each level would grow progressively harder.  This can end up being 100s of hours of fun and/or frustration.  If you got too frustrated, you could use a cheat code that would allow you to bypass some of the harder aspects of the game.  This idea was too tempting to ignore.  I cheated my pants off.  Over the years I've cheated my way through 100s of games.  Know what I learned?  Cheating is a great way to ruin a good game.  Hard and frustrating as playing legit may be, it allows the game to retain value.  Each level won is worth something.  If you remove struggle, you remove value.

So, when God stepped into the Garden many thousands of years ago, I believe He truly did not know that Adam was going to eat of the forbidden tree.  Consider this exchange:

Gen 3:9 Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, " Where are you?" 10 So he said, " I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself." 11 And He said, " Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?"

Pastors and preachers have related this to God acting for Adam's sake here.  But I think that would have been dishonest for God, not to mention cheating.  I believe God set aside his foreknowledge of history-yet-to-come in order to struggle, if you will, with His children.  I believe God recognized that if He attempted to love us while having foreknowledge, there would be little value in our relationship.  And while He does perhaps separate His foreknowledge from His current knowledge, He does not leave us to chance.  He knows that He exists outside time and space.  He also knows that while He is outside time and space, He still loves us.  So, in a sense, even God has to trust God.  Jesus illustrates this idea ("never-the-less not my will but yours be done").

Now, I don't know if the idea that He limits His sight in order to cultivate valuable relationships humanizes God or if it Godifies us.  But I believe it fits His character.  The Bible is clear about the fact that God has humbled Himself on many occasions for our sake.  I don't think it's at all a stretch to believe that He would set aside His foreknowledge to get the most value He can from our relationship.