The way God thinks is so inconceivably different than the way you think that, according to God Himself, in order to come even remotely close to comprehending it, you would need to compare that difference with a particularly large distance. In this case, the distance between the earth and the heavens.
No, not the distance between the earth and the clouds. That’s not the heavens He’s referring to. Think farther. And not even the distance between the earth and the most distant star you can see on a clear dark night. That’s still not far enough.
Instead, to accurately understand the difference between the way He thinks and the way you think, God the Expert Himself says that you would need to measure the distance between where you stand right now – and the absolute end of the universe.
According to its definition, the Hebrew word for “heavens,” shamayim, includes not just the clouds and the planets and the stars, but the whole universe, from stem to stern, stretching all the way to where God Himself dwells in His Heaven.
Because it is, without question, the most foreign of any thought that has ever even attempted to cross your mind, it is impossible to appreciate the grandness of the scope with which Isaiah declares the mind of God concerning the difference in the way that He thinks.
In an object lesson so big that only a measurement of all existing matter and space could provide an adequate point of comparison, God juxtaposes the way He thinks with the way you think, and formally announces His astonishing conclusion:
My thoughts are not your thoughts. None of them. Not one of them. Not at any time. Never. There is no overlap between the way you think and the way I think. You don’t miss thinking like Me by just a little, here and there, now and again. You miss it everywhere. Every time. By precisely an entire universe.
If you had asked Isaiah the question, “How does God think?” his unblinking answer would have been, “The way you don’t think.” Or, he might have said, “If God’s thinking it... you’re not.” Or, “If you’re thinking it... God’s not.”
It simply couldn’t be more plain. And it plainly couldn’t be more simple:
My thoughts, declares God, are not your thoughts. Not even close.
That means that, if God doesn’t tell you His thoughts, you cannot know them. And no amount of effort on your part will ever allow you to figure them out. Neither will you ever randomly or accidentally stumble across them.
You cannot and will not, on your own, ever rise to His level of thinking. And because He doesn’t think like anybody else you know, forget about asking them. Your friends can’t tell you what He’s thinking either.
Your thoughts contain no premises from which any of God’s conclusions would ever logically follow. And because of that, when He does tell you something, if it doesn’t surprise you and astonish you and cause you to exclaim, “No way that can possibly be true!” – then you either misunderstood what He said – or it wasn’t Him Who said it.
For it to be otherwise, He would have to think like you, and you like Him. And He doesn’t. And you don’t. Not by an entire universe.
Admittedly, that’s not only a hard concept to grasp, but an even harder one to believe. Because that’s nothing at all like what you’ve ever been told. In fact, all your life you’ve been instructed to believe exactly the opposite: that if you listen to the voice inside of you, if you plumb the depths of your own dreams and desires, if you will only stay true to your own vision, then in the end, it will have been God’s voice you were hearing and obeying.
Nothing – and I mean nothing in the entire universe – could be further from the truth.
God’s thoughts are, by His very own definition, “not-your-thoughts.”
And your thoughts are, by that very same definition, “not-His-thoughts.”
Between His thoughts and your thoughts lies a vast and unbridgeable gulf of absolute and mutual exclusion.
And here’s the real mind-bender for your consideration:
The very thought that says, My thoughts are not your thoughts – is not your thought. It’s His thought. You didn’t think of that. He did.
And because it’s His thought and not your thought, it’s not just that you wouldn’t be thinking it right now – you actually couldn’t be thinking it right now – or ever for that matter – if He hadn’t just now told you.
And as you think the thought, “His thoughts are not my thoughts,” in what has to be the strangest and most astonishing irony of all, you will actually be thinking, finally, for certain, perhaps for the very first time ever in your entire life, the very thought that God Himself is thinking.
And that’s why, until you’ve thought that particular thought – or some equivalent form of that particular thought – everything else you think you know about God is guaranteed to be wrong. By precisely an entire universe.
At least, that’s the way God tells it. You, of course, may disagree.
Apparently, most people do.