God’s character is the most complicated thing there is

Knowing someone’s character is more difficult the more sophisticated they are. The more sophisticated a person is, the more variations and layers will exist in what they do, why they do it, and how they feel across varying situations. The more sophisticated a person’s character, the more partial your understanding of their character will be, and the more your understanding can increase in breadth and accuracy as you observe and analyze them in different situations over time. The more knowledge they have, the more nuanced their beliefs, the more complex their desires, and the purer their motives, the more there is to learn and the more opportunities there are to make mistakes in predicting their experience in a specific situation.

God’s depth far exceeds the depth of the deepest person.³ A superficial understanding of God’s character is insufficient to know his character well enough to even begin to replicate it in any recognizable way. The Psalms contain as much information about the character of God as any other book of scripture, and yet the Psalmist wrote:

5 O Lord, how great are thy works! and thy thoughts are very deep.
6 A brutish man knoweth not; neither doth a fool understand this. (Psalm 92)

Common Christianity criminally oversimplifies God to great detriment. An illustrative example of this is the question, “what would Jesus do?” Some Christians don’t seem to mind that they can’t answer this question for the vast majority of the situations they face in life. Others answer it in nearly every case with something like “be nice,” ignoring how often Jesus was far from nice in the gospel accounts or how much worse those situations would have been if he had been. Few stop to consider that an answer to this question in any degree of accuracy requires far more knowledge of God’s character than they possess. One reason why so few bother to exert any significant effort in knowing Jesus is that they think there isn’t much to know. To presume that knowing the Lord is quick or easy requires contradicting every verse of scripture and every ounce of common sense. And yet, Christians and atheists alike tend to believe exactly that.

The character of God takes serious time and effort to discover. Consider what you would need to know in order to fully know God’s character.⁴ You would need to know what he does, why he does it, and how he does it. Because everything he does is for the benefit of the world,⁵ you would need to know everything necessary to calculate the best possible circumstances across all time, all situations, and all people. There is certainly more to God’s character than can be learned in a lifetime.

To know the Lord is not only difficult—it is the most difficult thing you can do. It is also the most valuable thing you can do. It both requires the highest cost (everything you have) and provides the greatest benefit (everything God has, notably including the greatest joy that anyone can have).