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In the Gospels, Christ uses the name of God revealed to Moses as his own.
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In John chapter 8, Christ tells the Jews,
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Before Abraham was, I am.
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This is the most explicit and clear claim of divinity that Christ makes in the Gospels,
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even more so than when he says, the Father and I are one.
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But how are we to understand this name?
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I am is after all something we say all the time.
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So what makes this the proper name of God?
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Well when we say it, we follow it up with other things or other things are at least implied
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You either respond, I am to someone who asks you if you are doing such and such an activity
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or are such and such a person.
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You say, I am a man or a woman or a doctor or an athlete or sick or happy or whatever,
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always with the qualifier that narrows the meaning of the verb to be.
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If you walk up to someone and say out of the blue and with no context, I am, they will
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wait for you to finish the thought with some additional information.
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But for God to reveal, I am, as his proper name, a name that tells us something unique
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about God, merits our contemplation and meditation.
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To miss the profundity of this statement can lead to all kinds of real world errors.
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For example, the primary mistake that nearly all ancient pagans and modern day atheists
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and skeptics make is misunderstanding this name.
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Of course, they don't realize that they're making any mistake about God's name, but they are.
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It gives rise to the laughably misguided argument that our satellites and telescopes haven't
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picked up any evidence of God floating around up there.
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Because to them, the God that we believe in is just supposed to be the most powerful being,
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the highest in a hierarchy of beings.
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There are rocks than plants than animals than us, then God at the top, all on a continuum.
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Even you might think this sounds about right.
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But to avoid this mistake is one of the reasons God revealed his name, I am, because God
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is not a powerful being.
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God is not something in the universe that is more powerful than everything else.
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There is no qualifier on his being.
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He is not this particular being or powerful being or a merciful being.
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He is the grounding of all reality.
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The only reason anything exists is by some kind of participation in his being.
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He is not in the universe as one being among others.
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He is outside of the created order, transcending all space and time.
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He is the source of the being of the universe.
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This is why I am is the best way for us to conceive of God, given our limited capabilities.
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First of all, it shows us why there can be only one God.
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God, the source of all being, cannot share that role with another, as it would be impossible
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to introduce any distinction which would differentiate the theoretical other God or
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This would require some qualification on being, which is precisely what the name of God,
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It also helps us understand that God is not in competition with His creation, and He
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is not in competition with our wills.
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If He were just the greatest being within creation, then God's action would in pinch on
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He would crowd me out, so to speak.
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But since God is the source of my very being and the being of everything that exists,
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there is no competition.
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On the contrary, God is the one who gives me and everything else the power to act in
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the first place, and in our case to do so freely.
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And He didn't just create things in the beginning of their existence and then let them
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go on their own like a wind up toy, He is at every moment willing our existence.
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Were God to cease willing His creation, everything would cease to exist.
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I don't mean everything would die, it would collapse into absolute nothingness, non-existence.
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So far from being a competitor and a limit to our freedom, God is willing us at every
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moment, giving us the power to act freely, and is present in every one of our acts, every
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one of our breaths and heartbeats as the here and now source of them all.
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This also shows us how all encompassing God's providences were God to be simply the most
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powerful being within the universe, then the objection that God is too busy to hear
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all our prayers or to care about any one of us would be valid.
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But since God is, in the words of St. Augustine, more intimate to us than we are to ourselves,
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God sees and hears and cares for each of us as if we were the only part of His creation.
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There is no prayer He doesn't hear, and He knows them before we even utter them.
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He is not bound by the material and temporal limitations of His creation.
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He transcends all of it, and at the same time is deeply within all of it.
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This also helps us see how silly the common atheist objection is, which says that the universe
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is big, therefore God doesn't exist and you aren't important.
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Aside from being a total non-sequeter, we can see that it is based on the idea that
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God would have to be somehow within the universe running the show.
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But since it's so big, it's just not feasible for Him to manage.
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And it assumes that God, if He existed, would have all that vast space to worry about
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and manage, so He can't take the time to care about some small spec which we inhabit
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when He has to fly about and check on other galaxies.
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Size has literally nothing to do with the question of God's existence or our importance.
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So while I am seems like a mysterious name, which of course it is, we can also see that
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it tells us so much about God and His relationship to all of us.