These past few weeks I have been greatly humbled by the renewed realization of how little I know of God. Because of my depraved, sinful nature I can never know God the way I want to and this hurts and frustrates me. What is even more frustrating is how there are countless theologians, Biblical scholars, pastors, teachers, and preachers who unknowingly speak falsely of the God who they claim to know. I respect and admire their genuine desire to want to know God on a deeper level and share what they know about God; however, this must be done with great humility and perhaps even with a cautionary admission to the possibility of being wrong.
Although I don't intend this blog post to be about Rob Bell's controversial book Love Wins, the youtube video clip of Francis Chan humbly protesting the flaws in this book further echoed the incredible frustration that I have been feeling lately. Chan alludes to how most of us know much less about God than we would like to think we know. I think every one of us knows less Truth than we think we know because not all our personal beliefs are Truth since all our perspectives/world beliefs/personalities/denominations are in one way or another flawed because of our sinful nature. Obviously God is always revealing Himself to us in new ways everyday but there is a relative limit regarding how much we can learn about Him through studying Scripture without twisting, distorting, adding, or subtracting what we would like to believe or what we think we are being told. Obviously every man that has ever lived has distorted God's Word in some way because of our sinful nature (even before God's Word was written).
Romans 9:21 is taking on a new meaning for me (hopefully not so much a flawed meaning) when I think about what Chan said -we are simply pieces of clay. How ludicrous is it to think about one piece of clay explaining to another piece of clay what the potter is like! Isaiah 55:8 says: "for my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways." How sobering and very humbling these verses are in the face of how arrogantly and carelessly we view Scripture sometimes. How often do we draw conclusions that aren't true? What are we really saying when we say "I wouldn't believe in a God who would...."? Who would what? Do something you wouldn't do? Or think in a way that is different from the way you think? Maybe the Creator's sense of justice is more developed than yours? Maybe His love and His mercy are perfect and you are the one that is flawed?
As Chan remarks and I agree with him, there are some things that God has done that I would never have thought to do. Maybe this is why I have been feeling so frustrated lately -I have been reading through the Old Testament which is just so filled with so many stories where people die or are rather purposefully killed because of their sin. The incongruence of God's character in the OT compared with the NT used to really bother me. Obviously God is never changing -it is the way that He is portrayed in the OT and then in the NT that changes. God dealt with His people in more physical ways in the OT, whereas in the NT the judgement is more on the spiritual level.
In Exodus 32 the people sin and the priest tells them to strap swords to their sides and run back and forth and kill people even their own family -3,000 people died. Now I would have never thought to do this seemingly unmerciful act -yes the people sinned greatly by making a golden calf but to tell them to kill their own family -that is not the kind of punishment I would even have thought of. I am currently reading through 1 Chronicles and was shocked to read chapter 13 verse 9 where God strikes Uzzah dead because he reached out his hand to steady the ark because the oxen had stumbled. Yes it was a great sin to touch the ark but I would have done the same as Uzzah if I saw that the ark of God was about ready to crash upon the floor because the oxen carrying it stumbled. Yet God still killed Uzzah even though Uzzah only had good intentions -I would not have done this if I was God. And then we see good old, faithful Job, one of the most faithful guys and yet God took everything he owned away from him -we don't always understand God's ways. Perhaps one of those most puzzling things God has done was to send His one and only begotten, perfect, beloved Son to die for a people so undeserving of life and redemption. And then God takes the Devil, one of His created beings, and throws him into a lake of burning sulfur where he will be tormented day and night for ever and ever. Tormented for ever and ever? I don't think I would have ever done this...this just means that God knows something I don't know.
There are things I want desperately to be true and part of me thinks that things should have been a certain way but then I must remember that God's ways are not my ways and His thoughts are not my thoughts.
