• Arabic Corner
• Audio
• Bible Study
• Coptic Reader
• Children's Corner
• Deacons
• Evangelism & Apologetics
• Evangelism Pamphlets
• Interesting Facts
• Literature
• Pigori Productions
• Priests Corner
• Questions & Answers
• Reading Recommended
• Saintly Studies
• Servants Guide
• Sunday School Curriculum
• Sunday School Curriculum-Special Needs
• Youth Corner

You Thought that I was Altogether Like You

Keraza Magazine issue 37-38 September 22, 2017

Since the first moment when Adam’s eyes were opened after his creation, he had to be aware of both his existence and God’s being. This twofold awareness process is an ongoing eternal task put upon man and without it he would be estranged from himself and alienated from God. The process of knowing God is a continuous process that starts on earth and continues along eternity, "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent" (John 17:3). Adam was not supposed to know himself outside the contexts of knowing God. He was supposed to keep his attention and awareness fixed upon God alone, and through his growth in knowing God he would know his own being. Unfortunately, sin corrupted man’s perception. After the fall, God became no more the pivot of man’s awareness which became centered around his self. He began to acquire the knowledge about his own being not through knowing God but through knowing good and evil. He considered himself to be the origin and reference of himself!! This was not enough for man, but he also began to seek knowing God by referring to his distorted knowledge about himself. He began to project on God what he experienced in himself! At that point, things turned upside down.

God is the origin and man is the image. In order to understand an image, one must compare it with the origin. But comparing the origin with a pale image is in fact a barren distorted trial to understand the origin. In other words, in order for man to understand himself, he must measure himself upon God. If one tries to understand God by measuring Him upon himself, he must then be deluded and go astray from the truth. God is the measure of everything including man’s mind which tries to measure Him! "The human mind determines the things he perceives but God is above all determination" (St. Gregory of Nyssa). This is exactly what God wants to clarify in the message given to man in the psalm saying, "You thought that I was altogether like you" (Psalms 50:21).

The divine revelation meant in many places in the Holy Bible to correct the direction of knowledge in man, "God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?" (Numbers 23:19); "I will not execute the fierceness of My anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim. For I am God, and not man, The Holy One in your midst; and I will not come with terror" (Hosea 11:9); "'For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,' says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:8-9); "How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!" (Romans 11:33).

Many are those who did not know God in person. God turned for many to be mere assumptions and imaginations made by men. They projected on Him their inclinations, attitudes and needs. This made their perception of God to become a distorted sensual perception of a fake God! There is then a truth of salvation that states that man will never be saved unless he knows "the only true God" (John 17:3).

Bishop Youssef
Bishop, Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern United States