Isaiah 40:25 – The Trouble with Talking about God

Isaiah 40:25 asks us to consider who might be comparable with God, and who might be considered his equal.  Now we normally use this passage to talk about God’s great power and how he is unique, the creator, someone greater than anyone we know.  And there’s nothing wrong with that.

But when I think of the passage a bit further, it occurs to me that comparison is part of the act of talking.  We create labels for categories by comparing one item to another and then mentally producing a category.  How effective that category label will be depends on how well we observed, and how well we put things into categories.  For example, I find such labels as “table” and “chair” which generally produce a picture in my mind that is likely to correspond with what someone else may think.  I’m very dissatisfied with labels such as “left” and “right” in politics, because it is very hard to know who is in such a category.

Even verbs, such as “walk” and “run” denote categories of activities, and they are fairly useful.  In fact, without this abiity to categorize things and label them, we wouldn’t be able to communicate.  I wouldn’t be able to write this.

Enter God.  Of what or whom do I speak now?  What is the category?  What are it’s boundaries?  It’s limitations?

Isaiah 40:25 thus alerts us to a problem.  We can put God into a category, place a label on him, note his boundaries, and expect him to stay within them.  God doesn’t fit in a category.  He cannot be compared to anything else.  He is not even “he” which compares him to creatures of the masculine gender.

So when I go to speak about my experience of God I should be unsurprised when I find that my vocabulary runs out and that others have difficulty understanding what I say.  God isn’t easily tamed, even by the rules of language.