Bigger Than Our Minds

You can probably tell I’ve been thinking again… 🙂

As I’ve been watching people grapple with different ideas here in recent posts, I’ve been thinking about how we grapple with the Scriptures, particularly with those concepts that are more troublesome to us. There are many examples I could cite, but in light of the previous post, let’s talk more about the judgments of God expressed in the Old Testament. There’s no doubt that the very idea of God either killing people or telling people to kill other people really messes with our logic about a loving God. For that matter, the idea of a literal hell and eternal judgment does the same kind of thing. How could a God of love do that kind of thing? we reason to ourselves.

What’s really interesting to observe, though, is the different ways we find to reconcile these troubling ideas–and I think we all do it, to some extent. Some people conclude that this paradoxical God could not be real. Some attempt to re-interpret the Scriptures to soften the blow, leaning toward their own preferences. For example, a pacifist might try to interpret the Old Testament to say that God didn’t really bring judgment like that, but that’s just how the writers perceived it in that day. Someone who tends toward legalism and is hard on themselves and others would have no problem conceiving of a God of wrath, and even use that idea to justify or explain events occuring today–virtually ignoring all the passages that speak of God’s mercy, and how mercy triumphs over judgment. People who cannot reconcile a loving God with eternal judgment tend to minimize the existence of hell, while others deal with it by constructing a model of salvation that bases our entire eternal destiny on praying one prayer, one time, and desperately trying to get others to do the same before they get hit by a bus or something.

Who is right? Who is wrong?

We all are. 🙂 Both right–and wrong.

I think the one ingredient that we all miss in this thing is that we are being extremely presumptious, even arrogant, to believe that with our limited understanding we could figure out an infinite God, or the Book He inspired. As advanced as the human race is above the other creatures of the earth–our brains are just not that big. God is more than we can fathom, more than we can imagine, and certainly more than we can figure out. If we could figure Him out, we could control Him, and by definition He would not be God. If He is real, than He must be beyond us. And yet we keep going over and over this Book of His, somehow convincing ourselves that we can unlock all its mysteries. And while I truly believe the Bible is God’s revelation to man, I also recognize that as Scripture itself declares, “Now we see through a glass darkly.” It’s still more than we’re going to figure out in this life.

That doesn’t mean we don’t grapple with it, or that we can’t learn from it. It just means we should put our own opinions about it into a bigger perspective, and try a little harder not to make it say what we want it to say, or what we hope it would say. It also means that when there are contradictory ideas in Scripture–like a God of love coexisting with eternal judgment–we don’t just rationalize that the Bible is irrelevant or needs to be reinterpreted, but realize that such things are paradoxes to us because they are bigger than our minds.

I think it’s natural to grapple with troubling ideas about Scripture, and I also think there are times when we’ve gotten it wrong and need to correct our thinking about it. But it’s also okay when we don’t understand. The unanswered questions aren’t there because God is a myth, or because the Bible got it wrong; the unanswered questions are there because God is beyond us. And the whole issue of faith, I think, is that we have to daily make a choice whether we will trust God with the things we don’t understand about Him. Will we at least believe that He is good, that He is love, that He knows what He is doing? That He knows a thing or two more about how a universe should be run than we ever could? That He has our best interests at heart? Will we take Him at His word, even when we can’t “do the math” on it?

I started out my path of discipleship having more answers than questions; but as I go, I now find I have more questions than answers. But the beauty is, I embrace the questions more and more. Not that it is always easy, or that sometimes I’m angered by what doesn’t make sense; everyone goes through that, especially when it hits close to home. But there’s something about not being able to figure God out that brings me great comfort, that actually helps heal my compulsive need to be in control. The questions and contradictions don’t make me question whether there is a God, but confirm to me that there is one, and that He is bigger than my mind.

Wayward Son

Musician. Composer. Recovering perfectionist. Minister-in-transition. Lover of puns. Hijacker of rock song references. Questioner of the status quo. I'm not really a rebel. Just a sincere Christ-follower with a thirst for significance that gets me into trouble. My quest has taken me over the fence of institutional Christianity. Here are some of my random thoughts along the way. Read along, join in the conversation. Just be nice.
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