Whenever I ask people the question: Where does God lives? I get one of two answers. Depending on the religious leaning of the individual, some answer with; God lives in our heart. While others answer that God lives in Heaven. Both answers are correct, as verified by the Bible text in Ecclesiastes 3:11; He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
God is eternal, from everlasting to everlasting, from eternity to eternity. Before time to after time. Before the creation of the universe of time and space in which we physical beings that are part of nature that exists in time, to when our physical beings no longer exists in time and space.
This brings us to the title of this piece, whenever religious people are confronted with the statement that they are fooling God, they immediately back off and go into denial, proffering the generic statement that nobody can fool God, while non-believers do not bother to address or proffer such statement. In the past, I myself, have approach the matter in a different manner. I used to say to people” You can fool me, you can fool yourself, but you can not fool God”, something that we as ‘believers’ sort of understand.
However, this universally agreed statement ‘you can fool me, you can fool yourself, but you can not fool God’ lands us squarely in the arena of “Fooling God by proxy”. By now, you are shocked with this assertation. Well do not be shocked, since you as a believer probably answered the opening question of, where does God lives, with one of the two above stated answers, in conformity with the Scripture text in Ecclesiastes 3:11. Logical deduction tells us that since we stated that God lives in us, any time we deceive ourselves or others, then we are deceiving God, since God lives in us.
We all have secrets that we do not share with another living soul, some of us who are parents do not tell our offspring the truth with ‘good intentions’, some of us do not share certain information with our spouses with ‘good intentions’, some of us do not share our opinions of others with them because of decorum or civilization, modernity, politeness, not wanting to offend or in order to avoid hostility. Whatever our justification is, as long as it is not rooted in Christ, since Jesus Christ is our Justification, our Justifier, then we are literarily Fooling God by Proxy. Stupendous, that we are literarily fooling God our Creator, the All-knowing God, the All-seeing God, the God of Wisdom, the Omnipresent, Omniscient, Omnipotent God. We are indeed ignorant! May the Lord forgive us, for we do not know what we do. Amen.
