We live in an incredible and unprecedented time. People call this the information age. And for good reason. We have more information and knowledge of our fingertips and at any other time in history. We are breaking barriers left and right.
But this type of culture sets us up for some hard truths. We’ve become accustomed to having all the facts, knowing everything about everything. But this is actually a falsity because no one knows everything about everything. That is, except God.
We only like mystery in our novels. So it’s hard for us to grasp God and his nature completely. And that drives us crazy. The infinite God can only make so much of himself knowable to finite creatures. But that won’t stop us from complaining about what we don’t know.
We want to know God fully so that we can worship fully. We catch a glimpse of who he is and what he can do, so we’re sure that he deserves our worship. But how does the finite creature worship its infinite Creator?
Sometimes I feel like I’m a tiny grasshopper in a giant yard. If God wanted to, he could step on me and squish me flat. He’s not that kind of God, but he does have that ability. This paradox between the infinite and finite, the temporal and eternal, and the Creator and creation isn’t lost on us.
Some people give up on knowing God. They are not satisfied with the tiny breadcrumbs we get. The funny thing is that those tiny breadcrumbs are all we can handle. If God truly showed up in all of his glory, we would not have a choice but to worship him.
But he’s not looking for mindless automatons to worship him. He’s looking for people who choose him and choose the love and worship him. That is the original reason for giving us free will in the first place.
The knowability of God creates a relationship of mystery. His Word reveals many things about him but it also makes clear that we are unable to know him completely. We can’t wrap our minds around all of God’s attributes and all that he is.
Paul helps us to see this paradox. The Holy Spirit knows the depths of God’s mind and the thoughts of human beings (1 Corinthians 2:6-16). The Holy Spirit is like a middleman, an interpreter or interceder between God and humanity.
We don’t know everything, and we were never meant to. Some people believe we will know everything when we get to heaven, but that is one of God’s attributes. Paul even quotes from Isaiah about not having full revelation of what God can do in 1 Corinthians 2:9.
We are very curious creatures. But everything that we already can learn about God will take us a lifetime to discern. We can’t even see his entire plan for the universe and time. It’s easy to see God’s work in the past rather than in the present.
We need to get comfortable with not knowing everything about God. There is no subject on this planet or in our minds that we know everything about. There is always mystery. There’s not another person on this planet we know completely.
Do we really want to know everything about God? Would he be infinite and be God if we could know everything about him? The fact that we can’t know God completely shows he is greater than us.
This is what makes answering questions about faith hard sometimes. There are things I never will understand. So it’s hard to try to answer a question about it that can’t be answered. Yet, there are so many questions that are answerable.
Part of faith is seeing what we can see of God, and trusting Him for the rest we can’t see. That is why God only provides evidence and doesn’t just force us to worship Him. We must trust for a bit of who He is.
The mystery that we face should not shut us off to a deeper relationship with God, a more worshipful attitude, or make us feel like the journey is not worth it to begin to know God. In fact, mystery should make us more apt to worship God, to trust in Him, and to bring our enigmas to Him!
It brings me great comfort to know that God, who knows all things, is my best friend. I don’t want information overload. I know God will show me what I need to know when I need to know it.
When I feel like I’m all alone and have nowhere to turn, God teaches me the knowledge that He never leaves or forsakes me. When I have a financial need or any other need, God teaches me that He is my Provider.
I often begin worship by speaking what I know about God. Worship him for who he is and what he’s done in my life. I worship him for what he’s done throughout history. I express how awesome and wondrous he is.
But worship works both ways. We can move from what we know about God to what we don’t know about him. How amazing he is that there are parts of him we don’t yet know. He is doing things in the world we’re not even aware of yet. He is working behind the scenes in our lives.
If you think what he did in the past was amazing, just imagine what he can do in your future! God’s infinite being reminds me of what I have learned from my education. The more I learn the more I realize how much I don’t know.
The mysteries of God are the same way. The more he reveals to me the more questions I have. I like to know that somebody in the universe has all the answers, and he’s my best friend. I can worship God because he is beyond me.
He surprises me and he’s doing things I can’t comprehend. I can worship out of my intelligence and out of my ignorance. I can revere God for what I know He is and can do, and I can revere Him because He can do more than I ask or imagine.
He’s the kind of God we can believe in because he makes great strides to come to our level. But he is also completely unfathomable, gloriously greater than me. For both the knowledge we have of him and what we don’t know, we can ballot his feet and enjoying a friend who sticks closer than a brother but is wholly other.
How do you feel about the mystery of God, his infinite person and how much we can know of him? Leave a comment and tell me what you think about the divine mystery of our God.
