Is there really a God-shaped hole in everyone? by Martin Saunders for Christian Today
GNN Note – I absolutely believe there is a “basket” specifically for God built within each of us. Nothing can fill this basket properly with the just right amount of substance other than God. You can put in it what you like, but only God can be carried for a lifetime. #END
There was a time, back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when one idea seemed to catch the imagination of evangelical Christians everywhere. It’s not clear who coined it (although it was popularised in the lyrics of an Audio Adrenaline song), but back then you could barely listen to a sermon without hearing reference to the God-shaped hole inside all of us.
Like all popular ideas, the genius of this concept was in its simplicity. The Christian believer, trying to explain the need for God in a world of increasing comfort, could point to one mysterious appetite that no earthy pursuit could satisfy. You could get all the wealth and status in the world, but there would still be a nagging sense that something was missing and unfulfilled. As Blaise Pascal put it, in his defence of the Christian faith over 400 years earlier, there is an “infinite abyss” within a person, which can only be filled by “an infinite and immutable object … God himself.” There’s a God-shaped hole, inside everyone.
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Right? Well, this idea feels good to us, because it establishes Christians as the people who carry the secret of worldly fulfilment. But is it an entirely Biblical idea? After all, Jesus never speaks of a God-shaped hole, or anything close to it. Nor does Paul, Moses or any other great teacher in Scripture. It’s not in the Bible.
There’s another problem with the idea too – it plays directly to a consumeristic mindset. It says to the person who has everything: there’s still one more thing to collect if you want the full set; that however successful you might be, there’s still one more space to fill in the treasury. It itemises God as another thing that you need in order to be happy, alongside all the other things.
