What if Water were God

The Absurdity of Treating Water as God

What if water is God?

Then that would mean God is both in us and all around us, that God is both above and below us, why a woman's water breaks when we're born, and why some religions observe the ritual of baptism. But if water was God, then that would mean that God has no gender, that God takes the shape of whatever container God appears in, which would explain why we have so many different belief systems, which begs the question, what is the spiritual significance of poisoning the water in Flint, Michigan, or the oil burning in the Gulf of Mexico, or the large islands of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean?

If God was water, would that not mean that every natural place is holy, that every thunderstorm was a church without walls, that when the rain falls, it's an act of God's death giving life, and when it evaporates again, it's the day of resurrection, and life itself was just a test of learning how to be and flow like water, how to give life to other people, and how to refresh their spirits and quench their thirst with your presence.

Divine Revelation as the Only Basis for Knowing God

All right. Well, there you go. Let's address this. What if water was God? Well, we could easily respond by asking, what if God was a cheeseburger? Or what if God was a taco? You see, these kinds of questions are clearly absurd because they ignore a fundamental truth.

The only way we can truly know anything about God is if he's taken the initiative to reveal himself to us. And this is exactly what the Christian worldview offers. We don't have to speculate about God's nature because he's revealed himself to us, both through general and special revelation.

In general revelation, God has made himself known through nature, as Psalm 19, verse 1 says, the heavens declare the glory of God. In special revelation, he's revealed himself, right? Specifically through scripture, and ultimately in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

And so, the point here is that we know who God is because he's told us. Now, when you reject the foundation of divine revelation, you end up with these kinds of nonsensical questions like, what if water was God?

Why Water Cannot Be God

Now, such a concept is completely incoherent. First, water is a limited and contingent substance. If water were God, that would mean God is neither omnipotent nor omnipresent. Water exists in specific places under certain conditions.

It evaporates when heated, freezes when cooled, and is dependent on external factors. Now, that alone shows that water cannot be a representation of an all-powerful, sovereign God. Furthermore, water is impersonal.

There's no mind, no rationality, no will in water. If God were water, he would be incapable of possessing knowledge, let alone omniscience. An impersonal God could not know or relate to us, and would be incapable of creating or sustaining the universe in a coherent and purposeful way.

Furthermore, since water is in constant flux, changing states between liquid, vapor, and ice, it lacks the stability and immutability necessary to ground something as foundational as, say, the laws of logic.

Logic is universal, invariant, and immutable, traits that could never be attributed to something as inconsistent and dependent as water. Now, this idea also, I think, crumbles when you consider something like morality.

Objective. Moral values and duties require a stable, unchanging foundation. If God were water, he would be subject to external influences, changing according to environmental conditions. And such a God could not provide an absolute moral framework, let alone sustain it.

When heat is applied to water, it evaporates, not by its own will, but due to external forces. A God who can be manipulated by outside forces would not be sovereign, and certainly not the unchanging source of something like a moral law.

Now, in short, a God that can evaporate, freeze, or boil is not the sovereign, absolute God who can meet the deepest needs of humanity. Such a God could not atone for sin, nor could he provide the stability needed for human life to have any real meaning.

Scripture Reveals the True God, Not a Contingent Substance

And the concept of a water God is weak and inadequate, an anemic substitute for the true God revealed in Scripture. But beyond all of this, the more fundamental issue is that these kinds of what-if questions lead nowhere.

If God is going to be anything or reveal anything about himself, he has to take the initiative to make himself known, which is exactly what he's done in Scripture. We don't have to guess, we don't have to speculate, or ask hypothetical questions like, what if water was God, or what if cheeseburgers were God?

We can know what God is truly like because he's revealed himself to us as the eternal, all-powerful, unchanging creator, not as some contingent and limited substance like something like water.