Some Disassembly Required

DateLine (1/3/07 - Nanuet, NY)

I’ve shared with you before that when I was young I liked to take things apart. I was fascinated by the “secrets” that existed deep within anything electronic or mechanical. Unfortunately I did not always get the “thing” back together. It was a whole lot more exciting to tear it apart than it was to put it back together. All too often I’d break it while trying to disassemble it; patience was not one of my virtues. Sometimes brute force is the “quickest” way to achieve the result, especially if the objective is short-sighted. My reputation within the family was to hide my “activities” in a shoebox full of leftover parts. But I can tell you this, I learned a lot about how things worked.

While in my “discovery” phase there was a by-product to my penchant for disassembly. I realized that by examining these wonderful inventions and appliances of modern living I was learning something about the engineers, designers, and assemblers of these devices. Shoddy design, materials or workmanship could not be hidden as the guts of the devices were laid bare. On the other hand an excellent design could be compromised by shoddy craftsmanship in fabrication and assembly (i.e. loose bolts, misaligned parts, etc.) Some designs were so simple in concept yet valuable in application that they screamed elegance. The complexity of some devices reflected the genius of the person who conceived the design. The ingenuity and creativity of the repair person was sometimes evident. My father inherited my grandfather’s garden tractor after his passing. The tractor was literally being held together by bobby pins. At some point a critical electrical component had failed and my grandfather had repaired it from components snatched from my grandmother’s dresser. Resourcefulness is a great virtue in the country.

The greatest “engineer”, “designer”, and “assembler” of them all has laid out His handiwork before us and implicitly requested that it be examined. Psalms 19:1 states, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” Much like my childhood experience all of us have a wonderful opportunity to learn about God through nature. Nothing has received more scrutiny by humans than this natural world that we call home. This complex and wonderful world screams of the handiwork of God. Some of God’s characteristics can’t be directly examined. "God's eternal power and character cannot be seen. But from the beginning of creation, God has shown what these are like by all he has made. That's why those people don't have any excuse. They know about God, but they don't honor him or even thank him" (Romans 1:20, 21). The crowning creative achievement of God is man himself; created in the image of God. In spite of mortal flaw called sin we see the faint image of a loving benevolent God in ourselves.

To really get to know God you have to get beyond a casual glance at an amazing sunset. We can’t begin to appreciate the nuance of the complexities of creation, and therefore the wonderment of the creator, until we get up close and personal. We won’t appreciate the image of God until we stare deep into the souls of his creation to see His reflection. This only comes through forging deep interpersonal relationships with other people. To really get to know God, “some ‘disassembly’ is required.”

Go ahead, look for yourself. Don’t worry yourself about the fallout of “disassembling” God; even if you could “literally” take God apart, He’d never fit in a shoebox.