Monday, February 02, 2015

I Don't Need All the Answers

Today, Sundries, over on Facebook, shared this:
Being faithful to the Bible very often means admitting that there is no clear answer.
I like this.
One of the things that won this one-time atheist over to faith in Christ was the Bible's clear-eyed realism about humanity and the limits of our capacity to fully understand life's deepest mysteries. In John 20:30-31, John says that there was much more that Jesus did that he didn't include in his book, but that what he did write was meant to lead us to faith in Christ and so that, having that faith, we might have with God through Him.

The Bible is not a book of science. It doesn't claim to answer all the questions of this life, only those about our relationship with God and the way to life with Him, not inconsequential questions. In fact, life's most important questions. 


But those who pit the Bible and science against each other understand neither. The Bible encourages us to unravel scientific mysteries (and others), but it gives no formulas to do so.

It tells us about the awesome, just, gracious God of the universe, enough for us to have faith, to know to repent and believe in Him, and to live in the assurance that He is with us in this imperfect world and will give us life as it was meant to be beyond the gates of death. The Bible tears the curtain between God and us, ushering us into a relationship with Him, into the blessed assurance that all who repent and believe in Christ have the free gift of life with God forever.

From the certainty of this relationship, God gives us the freedom to be all for which He made us.

I can't know everything about God or His purposes. If I could, either He wouldn't be God or I would be. And since I know that I am emphatically not God, I am enabled by the Holy Spirit to believe in the God to whom the Bible, the apostles, and all the saints of every time and place have given witness.

One day, the Bible assures, we will know perfectly, even as God has perfectly known us. For now, this imperfect person strives by God's grace to see through a glass darkly and remain content in the knowledge that the God of all creation took on human flesh, bore the burden of my sin on the cross, and then rose from the dead for me. (1 Corinthians 13)

It's overwhelming. It's staggering. But by the grace of God, I believe. And, while there are times when I definitely would like more of the answers, in the end, knowing what I do of the gracious God revealed in Jesus Christ is more than enough for me.


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