We struggle with life trying to make sense of it, ducking and weaving, hoping to hit an occasional boundary while avoiding being hit ourselves. But life is much more than a game and always more complex.

It may seem to some that the idea of God adds complexity to life, but would life without God be less complex. Does faith matter? God of course has to be more complex than we are.

But perhaps the wonder of a complex God is that God has the power and brilliance to communicate with simplicity so that we less complex creatures can understand.

That God the Son, Jesus Christ, would become one of us, offers unmistakable clarification and communication.

This reality is at the heart of the Christian faith and through a series of articles I want to offer a summary of God’s communication and help people understand what it is to be a Christian.

I am aware that not everything about Christianity will be palatable because some would prefer God to be other than He is. With that in mind, the first, potentially unpalatable truth, is that God is not of our making but we are of His making.

As such, God rules over us with creative wisdom. God lovingly made this world and expected his creation to live under his creative rule.

One Christian writer put it this way, “the world and everything in it, including people, belong to God. What we do in God’s world and with it, is important to God.

God never loses interest in his world and it is always important to God. Some people think that God made the world and grew tired of it, but that is quite contrary to what the Bible says (Psalm 104).” 

Creation belongs to God and the death and resurrection of Jesus are clear signs that God rules over his creation and that all creation, including us, should submit to our creator. 

To remove a confusion, God doesn’t create out of a personal need for us to love him. That would make God dependent upon us when the opposite is true.

God will not be lonely without us or diminished by our rejection of him.

It is the other way around - creation proves lonely and diminished by absenting God from our life and relationships. 

The privilege of being created in his image is the value and dignity accorded us. But the real joy is in the truth that what God created, God has chosen to love.

The creator may not need us but he is committed to loving us. 

The struggle with all this is letting God be God and not trying to replace him with ourselves.