Mystery

Early in my journey I wanted, no needed answers. I would read and study a wide variety of topics from numerous authors to find answers. It was a unquenchable thirst to be right, to have answers, and to be able to win any debate that might come my way.

Lately, I’ve grown more
comfortable with mystery.

For example, the Trinity is a huge
mystery. I’ve heard great speak-
ers try to explain it by comparing it
to an egg, to water, and a whole
variety of illustrations.

The kicker for me was when a prominent author and speaker compared it to a pretzel. What??? The Triune God reduced to a Auntie Ann’s pretzel at the mall.

A few years later, I was reading St. Augustine...and was surprised when one of the most influential theologians in A.D. history didn’t even attempt to explain it, but said it was so...it’s a mystery bigger than us...that’s it.

That moment in my journey was so freeing. I didn’t have to completely understand everything about who God is and why He does what he does. He is bigger than me (us). His thoughts are beyond ours.

The arrogance that I displayed in thinking that I could read the “part” of the story that he revealed and from that make an complete and accurate statement about who He is and what He is thinking.

I’M NOT SAYING that we cannot know anything and we are doomed to just bouncing around the waves of culture hoping to catch a glimpse of God through our experiences. I AM SAYING that God has clearly revealed SOME things, and not clearly revealed other things.

I have to accept mystery. When we reduce the gospel to a bridge and the Trinity to a pretzel, then you’ve reduced God down to something that I can understand...if I can understand it all...if it isn’t beyond me to grasp God’s greatness...then He is too small.

Again...I can know what God has plainly revealed. However, I personally think it great arrogance to even begin to fathom the entirety of God’s thinking and the vastness of who He is.

In our world, I (we) so desperately desire to reduce everything to something that we can control. It’s that part of us that wants to be a little god. However, the beauty of God and his pursuit of us (for me) is that he is mysterious. He is bigger than my intellect and all of the worlds intellect put together.

So much of our Christianity is defining who God is. Is He Calvinist? Is he Armenian? Is he coming back when our charts say he will? Or is he beyond us and we are just getting the glimpses of his revelation that he thinks we might be able to handle.