Beyond rational
My thinking has veered in an odd direction due to some life trials that made no sense. If we are to trust God even when life takes on an absurdist air, when try as we might we cannot make sense of what is happening, we should ask what that says about our rationality and the role of intellect. There are times when our understanding fails us and only faith avails us anything. Finding that out has changed the way in which I approach ecumenism, and everything else.
I was dropped into a series of circumstances that were on an objective level unreasonable, by which I mean they made no sense to me and would make no sense to anyone. I was tempted by the falsehood I have already described in these pages as the "bad daddy argument," in which we ask something like "where is God when things are so messed up?" One may even cry out, "Oh God, how could you?" Then the tempter invites us to conclude that God is not really there, or if he is, not on our side after all.
I am, I suppose, an intellectual. I will own up to it, anyway, if accused of it. A great deal of my life has involved reason and reasoning--as an amateur student of the faith and as a professional software developer--and I have become accustomed to trust that things will make sense once you work out the ifs, the thens, and the ands and ors.
So a series of trials that made no sense really stretched my faith where it hurt, for I was not accustomed to think of God as acting, in my life at least, in ways that went beyond my rational grasp. I suppose it is in some sense good news that he is sometimes incomprehensible, for it means God is bigger than I can think or conceive. It would be a sorry thing indeed if he were less than my mind could frame. I think that makes it a happy thing that he is more than I can encompass.
Notice that it would be a bad sign if God were exactly of a size to be encompassed by human rationality, and no bigger, for that would rather suggest that we had made him up.
Trials in which an intellectual finds his intellect of no use are salubrious in the end, though thoroughly distressing at the time. They test belief where belief has a clear breaking point. Will I trust God where I can see or imagine no rhyme nor reason, amid sorrows I never expected and pain like I did not know existed? I am now happy with my decision to do so, but it was not an easy path getting to that point. When one is accustomed to thinking things through it is deeply frustrating when it doesn't work. For a while, I was bitter as Naomi/Mara, petulant as Jonah and as clueless as Job's comforters.
So then, God's ways and thoughts are higher than ours. It ought not to surprise us, since he tells us so. I am now seeing in this a principle that we should always apply when arguing with each other about God's ways, in other words about theology, particularly when we conclusively and rationally condemn one another. There is always a chance that our reasoning, no matter how clever it is, is off target in some way and in consequence, we are still in the dark where God's purpose is concerned. It leaves open the possibility that both sides in a theological dispute are mistaken.
I was dropped into a series of circumstances that were on an objective level unreasonable, by which I mean they made no sense to me and would make no sense to anyone. I was tempted by the falsehood I have already described in these pages as the "bad daddy argument," in which we ask something like "where is God when things are so messed up?" One may even cry out, "Oh God, how could you?" Then the tempter invites us to conclude that God is not really there, or if he is, not on our side after all.
I am, I suppose, an intellectual. I will own up to it, anyway, if accused of it. A great deal of my life has involved reason and reasoning--as an amateur student of the faith and as a professional software developer--and I have become accustomed to trust that things will make sense once you work out the ifs, the thens, and the ands and ors.
So a series of trials that made no sense really stretched my faith where it hurt, for I was not accustomed to think of God as acting, in my life at least, in ways that went beyond my rational grasp. I suppose it is in some sense good news that he is sometimes incomprehensible, for it means God is bigger than I can think or conceive. It would be a sorry thing indeed if he were less than my mind could frame. I think that makes it a happy thing that he is more than I can encompass.
Notice that it would be a bad sign if God were exactly of a size to be encompassed by human rationality, and no bigger, for that would rather suggest that we had made him up.
Trials in which an intellectual finds his intellect of no use are salubrious in the end, though thoroughly distressing at the time. They test belief where belief has a clear breaking point. Will I trust God where I can see or imagine no rhyme nor reason, amid sorrows I never expected and pain like I did not know existed? I am now happy with my decision to do so, but it was not an easy path getting to that point. When one is accustomed to thinking things through it is deeply frustrating when it doesn't work. For a while, I was bitter as Naomi/Mara, petulant as Jonah and as clueless as Job's comforters.
So then, God's ways and thoughts are higher than ours. It ought not to surprise us, since he tells us so. I am now seeing in this a principle that we should always apply when arguing with each other about God's ways, in other words about theology, particularly when we conclusively and rationally condemn one another. There is always a chance that our reasoning, no matter how clever it is, is off target in some way and in consequence, we are still in the dark where God's purpose is concerned. It leaves open the possibility that both sides in a theological dispute are mistaken.
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