I was talking to a catholic friend yesterday about predestination and how man's responsibility for his own sin and therfore grace is understood. Or more rightly said, how understanding sin and grace properly actually makes us understand election. No, I don't think I did it very well. In fact, I know I need to get a few things straightened out still with it myself. But one thing that again stuck out at me was how absurd these 5 points seem when built on a completely man-centred foundation.
It's easy to declare that we don't agree with something because it's an infringement of our rights or of our freedom. We do live in an age where human rights are trumpeted from every high hill. Democracy is the word of the age. But what happens when our ideas of God, the Bible, of Jesus Christ for example, don't match up to our own standards of belief? Do we stomp and shout, claiming profusely that 'God is X and therefore wouldn't do that'. Or do we humbly listen and turn to the Word to seek the answer? I do the former a lot and I'm sure I'm not the only christian to have ever done or still to do it. Yet, when we as evangelical christians say 'I believe the Bible to be the Word of God and therefore sufficient in all things for my understanding of Him', are we, deep down, really convinced by what we declare? Are we so convinced and indeed so humbled and utterly in awe that the Lord would even want to communicate with us, that we desire to live according to what He says?
We are hopefully brought up to ask questions, to ask 'why?', 'where's your evidence?' Yet, when a truth is staring us in the face through the Word which begins to turn our whole heads around about our understanding of the gospel, we often don't like it. Or at least, I don't like it. We humans are used to creating our own theology, our own religions, statutes and laws. We like to box things in, tick points off and believe that we've understood it. We've been doing it since the Fall and we're not going to stop now.
I see this time and time again within myself, that there are just some things I cannot understand in the Bible. So called 'contradictions', which if we were measuring God in human terms then they may be, but of course, that really would be ridiculous. Some things, I just have to say 'Lord, I am stupid and I don't understand. I can't see how this works out using my tiny pea-sized amount of brain power! Yet, I read it in your Word and your Word is true.' Believe me, sometimes that's really hard to pray. It's even harder to explain to someone else.
By no means am I saying that we should not try to understand the Word. By all means we should study it, love it, cherish it! But sometimes there really are, even after months, years, even a lifetime of study, that we will just not be able to reconcile within our tiny minds. We do our best to understand because only through His Spirit living in us, by His grace, does He open our minds to understand the Scriptures (Luke 24:45)
He is creator of all knowledge and wisdom. I think I'd do well to just let Him be God.
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