Below is an excerpt from my book, "WHATEVER, GOD": Rediscovering the One I Thought I Knew.  It's from a chapter titled Our Father in Heaven, which talks about who God is and how we can relate to Him as a real Person.  He’s a “He” not an “It”.  This excerpt gives you a small glimpse into what the book is all about: helping you see God as He really is and getting past a lot of the misconceptions we’ve grown up believing. 

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GOD IS NOT LIKE US

We don’t know what God looks like. We don’t know what He sounds like. We don’t know how He thinks or how He feels towards certain things.

We don’t know God because we are not God. We are human beings—always have been and always will be. We don’t know what it’s like to be God, but instead of humbling ourselves and admitting that we have no idea what God looks like, we try to explain Him in a way that fits with what we do know. We make God into someone who’s like us, but just a little better.

It might work for a little but not for long:

• “I am a nice person; therefore, God must be a really nice person.”
• “I get sad when I see people mistreated, so God must get really sad when He sees people mistreated.”
• “I like my children (most of the time), so God must like His children all of the time.”

So far, so good. But what happens when we go a little deeper:

• “I hold grudges when someone lies to me or lets me down in some way, so, I guess God must hold grudges too.” (WRONG)
• “I would never allow something bad to happen to my child if it was in my power to stop it, so I guess God would stop all the bad stuff if He could too.” (VERY WRONG)
• “I am willing to give people a second chance, and a third chance, and maybe even a fourth or fifth chance, but at some point, you run out of chances. I guess God has more chances to offer, but you can probably run out with Him too.” (VERY, VERY, VERY WRONG)

See the problem here? God isn’t like us. He isn’t anything close to us. He isn’t just some superhuman, super nice, Gandhi-on-steroids. He’s completely different from us. HE’S GOD!

Listen to what God says through the prophet Isaiah:

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)

Did you catch that? God says, “With all due respect, dear human, you are NOT like me. Or rather, I am not like you. I am different . . . way different. My thoughts are not like your thoughts. My ways are not like your ways. I don’t think like you, I don’t act like you, I don’t hold grudges like you . . . I AM NOT LIKE YOU!”

In fact, because God knows that we like numbers, He’s quantified the distance between us and Him. He says, “As the heavens are higher than the earth.” That’s the distance between us and God.

How far is that? Let’s run the numbers.

Forget about “the heavens” for a minute and let’s just stick with our own solar system. The “heavens” implies the furthest point in the created world, but let’s start a little closer to home. Let’s start with the Sun. How far is the Sun from the Earth? The answer? Approximately 93 million miles (give or take a half million miles). Do you know how far 93 million miles is?

Once you get into such large distances, scientists stop measuring in miles and start using light years—the distance that light travels in one year moving at (surprise, surprise) the speed of light. So at the speed of light—approximately 186,000 miles per second (not per hour or per minute, but PER SECOND)—a ray of light leaving the Sun takes roughly eight minutes to travel 93 million miles and hit the Earth.

Eight minutes!!!! Are you kidding me? You turn on a spotlight atop the Empire State Building, and within seconds, the whole city can see it. But if you turn on a slightly brighter light called THE SUN, you’d have to count to almost 500 before seeing it down here on Earth? That’s crazy!

“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:9)

And that’s just the Sun. Let’s go further. Let’s take a look at one of the planets in our solar system—every fifth grade boy’s favorite planet: URANUS!

How far is Uranus above the Earth?

Because the solar system is in constant motion, the distance between Earth and Uranus changes daily. At its closest, it is 1.6 billion miles, and at its furthest, it is 1.98 billion miles. Let’s go with the smaller number to be conservative.

How far is 1.6 billion miles?

We just saw that a ray of light from the Sun takes 8 minutes to travel 93 million miles and hit the Earth. At 1.6 billion miles, a ray of light leaving Uranus would take roughly 143 minutes to get here! That’s close to two and a half hours traveling at the speed of light!!!

“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:9)

And that’s just Uranus; that’s still in our solar system. We haven’t even gotten to the thousands of other galaxies that astronomers have discovered outside of our own, such as Galaxy MACS0647-JD, which was discovered to be 13.3 billion light years away!

Not 13.3 billion miles . . . 13.3 billion LIGHT YEARS!

How far is that?

• Light traveling from Sun to Earth: 8 minutes
• Light traveling from Uranus to Earth: 2.5 hours
• Light travelling from MACS0647-JD to Earth: 13.3 billion light years

And God says all that is still less than the distance between Him and us . . . WOW!