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A Very Big Rock
By D. M. Parkinson
Whenever I lead worship at our local church, I try to communicate the feel I want to achieve from a particular song a few days before rehearsal. This gives the team time to think and pray about how to deliver the song to the congregation. As you might guess, trying to get those feelings across in words is a bit like trying to tell your mechanic about that weird sound your car makes when you start it on a cold day. Sometimes words just don't work. I've found that by providing website links to bible verses and performances of the songs everyone on the team understands the general direction I want to go and it gives them an opportunity to apply their own creative tweaks and offer suggestions. It usually works out pretty well.
One day not too long ago I was busy looking for a variation of a song we were going to play and I noticed some of the comments that other people had posted about the song. One person posted a comment praising God. Another person thanked God for all of His blessings and especially for what this song meant on a personal level in his life. Finally there was a post from what I can only assume was a hard core Atheist. After berating the other posters as "mindless sheeple" he went on to state that "if God is all powerful and God can do anything then He should be able to make a rock so big and so heavy, even He can't lift it."
The opening salvo had now been fired. One of the previous posters replied with something about Jesus being the way the truth and the light and I think that angered our friend the Atheist quite a bit. He quickly fired back a response and over the course of 20 minutes I watched as the two camps jousted back and forth across the electronic highway. One was focused on God and one focused on the fact that no one could solve his little puzzle. He wanted proof that God could create something so big and heavy even God couldn't lift it. To quote him, we Christians should "PROVE IT OR SHUT UP."
Let's take a moment and look at this question of God lifting a really big rock from purely a logical point of view. First, we have to assume we're talking about the same God. The Christian God is the eternal and all powerful creator of the universe. If we agree on that God as the subject of our conversation, rather than some island god of tree bark then we're off to a good start. From an Atheist point of view it doesn't matter what God we talk about. They're all equally ridiculous, so this point probably won't matter to him.
Next we need to talk about what kind of things actually impact the Christian God. For example, is God impacted by time, gravity and the rest of the constraints of the physical world? Everything we have says that our God operates outside the realm of our natural world and that He isn't affected by these things. He is timeless and all powerful. Stating that a rock is too heavy for God to lift implies that somehow He can be impacted by gravity. If the god is impacted by gravity, it's not the Christian God we agreed to talk about. Clearly something is wrong.
The point is not whether God can create a big heavy rock and lift it. The very premise of the question is incorrect. It takes human constraints like gravity and size which don't apply to the Christian God and then it turns right around and applies them to Him. Once those human constraints are in place, we no longer have the true Christian God, but the Atheist still wants that god to perform like he thinks the Christian God should.
Constraining God like this is a very common problem but it doesn't apply to just Atheists. This story applies to most of us Christians just as much as it applies to Atheists. We take our preconceived notions of what God is and how He operates and we limit what we believe He can do. When God is constrained by us, it is not Him who is being limited, it is we who are limiting God. It's like only turning on the faucet a little bit and complaining that there isn't enough water. There's plenty of water just waiting to come out if we'd just crank it all the way open! Consider that as you talk to Christians and non-Christians alike. Maybe the rock that is so impossible for God to move is our own lack of belief!
Finally, there is one rock we know God won't move. It is the unmovable "Rock of Israel" Genesis 49:22 - 49:24
One day not too long ago I was busy looking for a variation of a song we were going to play and I noticed some of the comments that other people had posted about the song. One person posted a comment praising God. Another person thanked God for all of His blessings and especially for what this song meant on a personal level in his life. Finally there was a post from what I can only assume was a hard core Atheist. After berating the other posters as "mindless sheeple" he went on to state that "if God is all powerful and God can do anything then He should be able to make a rock so big and so heavy, even He can't lift it."
The opening salvo had now been fired. One of the previous posters replied with something about Jesus being the way the truth and the light and I think that angered our friend the Atheist quite a bit. He quickly fired back a response and over the course of 20 minutes I watched as the two camps jousted back and forth across the electronic highway. One was focused on God and one focused on the fact that no one could solve his little puzzle. He wanted proof that God could create something so big and heavy even God couldn't lift it. To quote him, we Christians should "PROVE IT OR SHUT UP."
Let's take a moment and look at this question of God lifting a really big rock from purely a logical point of view. First, we have to assume we're talking about the same God. The Christian God is the eternal and all powerful creator of the universe. If we agree on that God as the subject of our conversation, rather than some island god of tree bark then we're off to a good start. From an Atheist point of view it doesn't matter what God we talk about. They're all equally ridiculous, so this point probably won't matter to him.
Next we need to talk about what kind of things actually impact the Christian God. For example, is God impacted by time, gravity and the rest of the constraints of the physical world? Everything we have says that our God operates outside the realm of our natural world and that He isn't affected by these things. He is timeless and all powerful. Stating that a rock is too heavy for God to lift implies that somehow He can be impacted by gravity. If the god is impacted by gravity, it's not the Christian God we agreed to talk about. Clearly something is wrong.
The point is not whether God can create a big heavy rock and lift it. The very premise of the question is incorrect. It takes human constraints like gravity and size which don't apply to the Christian God and then it turns right around and applies them to Him. Once those human constraints are in place, we no longer have the true Christian God, but the Atheist still wants that god to perform like he thinks the Christian God should.
Constraining God like this is a very common problem but it doesn't apply to just Atheists. This story applies to most of us Christians just as much as it applies to Atheists. We take our preconceived notions of what God is and how He operates and we limit what we believe He can do. When God is constrained by us, it is not Him who is being limited, it is we who are limiting God. It's like only turning on the faucet a little bit and complaining that there isn't enough water. There's plenty of water just waiting to come out if we'd just crank it all the way open! Consider that as you talk to Christians and non-Christians alike. Maybe the rock that is so impossible for God to move is our own lack of belief!
Finally, there is one rock we know God won't move. It is the unmovable "Rock of Israel" Genesis 49:22 - 49:24
D.M. Parkinson is a diverse Christian writer with credits on several web and print publications.