Why Does Humankind Resist God?

“... the tree [of the knowledge of good and evil] was to be desired to make one wise...”

— Genesis 3:6 (NRSV)

“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.”

— C.S. Lewis (1898–1963)

There is a very simple answer to the question of the title: we want to be God. We want to be gods over all our circumstances, relationships, problems, and encounters.

We relish control. And we do not want to surrender to something that is better for us. After all, we feel we know better than God what is best for us. We reason that our desires are good enough to gauge what is needed. Only when we go the wrong way, having been swayed by our desires, do we reconcile the fact that mistakes are regrettable.

We resist God—whether we are saved or not—when we allow our sinful nature to rule us. But those of us who are born-again have the awareness, inspiration, and wherewithal to accept God—in saying “yes” to Jesus—moment by moment, day by day, every day.

Accepting God in Our Day-To-Day

This may sound simple, but, we should know, the humility required in consistently surrendering before God, is much harder than it seems.

The moment we take the time to consider the abovementioned truth, we recognise the impossibility of sustaining change without the power of God.

This is where God’s grace combines with our obedient will, for, the moment we accept God, and stop our efforts of resistance, is the moment a flourishing miracle occurs.

Accepting God in our day-to-day has about it the method for redeeming God’s power in order that we could live in a way that would please God.

Another way of thinking about this is, when we resist God—by being our own gods—power for life is removed from our possession. God withdraws. All power we could otherwise know vanishes, yet we may still be fooled by the possession of some alluring worldly power.

Being Actively Blessed

We can only be blessed in everyday life through the execution of our obedient will.

Rejecting the temptation to be our own god, we place God where God belongs.

God needs no raising in actuality, only in our estimation. God is already Sovereign, but we must make the Lord sovereign over our hearts—that God would not only be our Saviour, but our Lord and King also.

We might all wish to be actively blessed. The only way to consistent blessing is through the execution of our obedient will.

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We resist God because we want to be God, or it least be our own gods. But that is the way to death. True life only comes via the application of the obedient will—to allow God to be God; to direct all our ways. This can only be managed one moment at a time. That is our sole Spiritual directive.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.