A God-Centered God versus Man-Centered Men

I often get a challenge, both from atheists and from cults, "Why did God do X?" The thing about that challenge is its irrationality. Given belief in God, why would a believer expect - or be expected - to be able to explain the actions of God?

Except in the cases where Scripture gives god's explanation, the most we can say is that He chose to act for the sake of His own glory: "So that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory" (Ephesians 1:12; see also verses 6 and 14, and I Corinthians 10:31). This shows us why the unbeliever does not understand that answer. the man-centered mentality believes that it is exists for its own glory. In fact, even many professing Christians share that mentality. Such Christians are worse, though, because they also imagine that God exists for their glory. Their worldview is the reverse of their profession.

However, God does not sympathize with the man-centered mentality: "For My own sake, for My own sake, I do it, for how should My name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another" (Isaiah 48:11; see also 42:8). We see here God's god-centered attitude, quite contrary to the expectations of sinful men. that is why he feels no compulsion to explain Himself to mere creatures: "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law" (Deuteronomy 29:29).

As the great Southern Presbyterian theologian James Henley Thornwell said: "His works are so many mirrors in which He reflects so much of His own image  as they are able to behold. There they may read what he is by contemplating what he does. They cannot approach His awful throne: the light would be intolerable to created eyes. But they can behold Him veiled and shadowed in His works. They cannot fathom His glorious essence, but they can learn His character from what He hath wrought before them and around them. It is this manifestation of His character and perfections, which in themselves are infinitely glorious, that the Scriptures mean when they speak of God's working all things with a reference to His glory" (from "The Gospel, God's Power and Wisdom").