Stuff We’re Not Supposed to Know

Uh, oh. I’ve been thinking again. 🙂

I’ve been working my way through The Reason for God by Timothy Keller, which has an interesting take on explaining and validating the Christian faith to intellectual skeptics–a particular group the author comes into contact with often. This has got me thinking, not just about what the book says, but about the issue of faith and intellect in general.

There is a misconception that faith and intellect don’t really get along–which feeds the misconception that you must have a lower I.Q. in order to be a Christian, or subscribe to any other spiritual belief, for that matter. While some thinking people do have trouble believing in God, many others have no problem with it. So I don’t think the issue is that faith and intellect don’t get along as much as it is that faith and reason don’t always get along.

I say this because in order to reason something out fully, you have to have a full grasp of the facts–and faith is largely about the stuff we don’t know.

In our culture, we like to have an explanation for everything; we love to figure things out; we love knowledge. In this age of reason, humans tend to reject anything that they cannot explain, touch, feel, or see. We want things to be proven to us before we believe them.

But here are some things to consider:

1. We cannot prove conclusively that God exists–any more than we can conclusively prove that He does not exist.
We can find many clues of God’s existence (the Bible indicates that He has put His mark on all creation, and I personally see strong evidence of His interaction in my own life), but there’s not one thing we have right now that will conclusively prove to all mankind that He exists. There are those, like the outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins, who will use this fact to say adamantly that not only does God not exist, but that anyone who thinks He does must be an idiot. But I don’t think proving God’s existence is really the point. Why? Because God could prove Himself at any given moment. So I think it’s on purpose that we cannot conclusively prove His existence. Because that’s what faith is about.

There are things that God asks us to believe about Himself, and the world, and the way He set it up, that we have to take on faith, without a full explanation. There is evidence to support the claims He makes, enough to set us on the right track. But there are other things in Scripture we have a hard time explaining, but He wants us to take His word for it. He wants us trust Him with the stuff we don’t know. That’s what faith is.

In fact…from what I understand about faith, it actually requires an apparent contradiction. When everything looks the way my reason says it should, I don’t need faith. It’s when I don’t understand, or can’t explain, or when it doesn’t make sense (read: I can’t reason it out) that my faith kicks in. I have to take God’s word for it. And just because someone has faith when they can’t explain something, that doesn’t make them less smart.

2. Everyone has faith in something–even the skeptics.
This is simply because we cannot explain everything! Dawkins himself, while blatantly denying God’s existence, has a strong faith in the unproven theory of evolution. Intellectuals who think of Christians as idiots for their faith somehow have no problem taking it on faith that nature won the lottery, that all the intricate organization we see around us in the universe all happened by a freak accident. That is a form of faith. So even those who struggle with believing in God still have some sort of faith active in their life.

I feel I have an answer for the intellectual skeptics–and this is just my opinion. I believe there really is an explanation for everything in the universe. I believe there is a reason for it all; I just realize that as finite human beings, we don’t have all the information. We don’t have all the data, nor do we have the capacity to process it all if we could attain to omniscience. Only God (assuming He exists) knows it all. And here’s the thing that might irritate the intellectual skeptic: I think there is some stuff in the universe that we’re not supposed to know, that we are not equipped to know or understand.

For example…I think about the Garden of Eden, and the one tree Adam and Eve were told not to eat from: the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Why would God not want them to eat of that tree? Isn’t it important to know the difference between good and evil? Was it God’s intent to keep them in ignorance? I don’t believe that was the issue; I believe God would have taught them everything they needed to know. I believe the issue was that eating of that tree was man’s attempt to attain the knowledge for himself, knowledge he was not ready for, without God’s participation in it. It was an act of distrust, and that’s what made it sin. And man has paid a dear price for that knowledge over the centuries.

I think the King David had some sense of understanding of this when he wrote things like, “Such knowlege is too wonderful for me; it is too high; I cannot attain to it.” (Ps. 139:6) and “O Lord, my heart is not proud, nor my eyes haughty; nor do I involve myself in great matters, or in things too difficult for me.” (Ps. 131:1)

If the creature is not greater than the creator, and if God truly is our Creator…it makes sense that there would be certain elements of creation we would not be able to grasp. For me, if I could figure Him out, He wouldn’t be God anymore. So I embrace the mystery, and trust Him on the things I don’t understand, and trust Him with the stuff I’m not supposed to know. Skeptics might think that’s stupid of me. But that’s not a lack of intellect; in fact, it’s sheer wisdom not to tangle with stuff you’re not ready for. One day, I believe He will make Himself known to all, and one day, He’ll show me all that I didn’t know. I think one day it will all make sense. In the meantime, I’m content to trust Him with the unknowns. Because faith kicks in where my reason fails.