Skip to main content

What do I know?

A follow up to yesterday’s post about Seeing Gray. How do I use good judgment and discernment in knowing what I believe?

Context: I know my context. We 21st century Western, American, Evangelical, and Conservatives have been cursed with the baggage of the rationalist-spirit of the enlightenment. “I think therefore I am.” Faith in man’s ability “to know” is our battle cry. Reason, rationalism, certainty, science “will save us” it was declared. But it hasn’t. Nor will it. Faith is a process, not an end. Know thy context. Know thy self.  Faith seeks understanding.

Humility: I know this: I am certain of very little. Actually, not much is certain, except death and taxes. I learn to accept that I will never fully understand anything. Because we cannot fully understand, we cannot fully know, however that does not negate discerning and judging what is best based upon a contextual understanding, a community understanding, and understanding Christ. Faith is always humble, and never certain. These are humbling terms. One saint living hundreds of years ago said something like, “I believe that I may understand.” It takes humility to admit inability, short-sight, finiteness.

Community: In coming to believe that the God of Christianity is the “only wise” God, I seek truth in a community of faith that has passed down the belief that Jesus is the fullest revelation of God, the very god-man. Is that community trustworthy? Discernment and judgment will respond: Not always because people are people, but the yes, the faithful witness of faithful believers is a trustworthy community built on the foundation of a faithful God.

Christ: Jesus is the testimony of God, or as the scriptures say, God’s exact likeness. He is all God and all man. He is the joining of God and man in perfect union. Jesus declared the Old Testament scriptures to be a faithful witness to God’s action in the world. Jesus declared that he was the way, the life, and the truth. Jesus declared that he will return and rule and reign and judge. If you want to know truth…Get to know Jesus Christ.

I’m sure there are other ‘factors’ in equation. I would add experience, love, and reason.  I am relatively simple minded. What would you add?

Popular posts from this blog

go with your gut

I was sitting in a coffee shop on Sunday, and a young lady sat next to me on the sofa. The place was packed and that was the only other seat open. She asked if she could sit and I smiled and nodded. I continued my business, trying to give the impression that it was no big deal that this cute girl just sat next to me. It wasn't a big deal, after all it happens every day. Right... Though it appeared to be the case, that was not the case. For about an hour or so I could not focus on what I was doing. I was constantly thinking about what I will say in order to strike up a conversation, find out her "status", and make a decision whether to ask her out or not. So I sat nervously thinking about what to say. It wasn't that hard, because she was feverishly grading what appeared to be homework, as if she was a teacher. So at a natural transition in my business I asked, "Are you a teacher?" That was that. She was kind and responded as if not to be bothered by my questi
Read more

what is it?

God, Is it proper to approach you first with a heavy heart? Or rather should I come confessing your goodness and love and holiness even if I don't feel like it? When I come with such a desperate heaviness it is hard to confess with my lips what I know to be true of you in my heart. I have read about your every-day-new-mercy, but I have also read your servant David and have seen how you accepted his groanings when he lay on the floor in despair over the heaviness in his soul. From where my heaviness arises I cannot with full confidence say, though I know my sin and its subsequent guilt are ever-present before my eyes. Though I rest in your forgiveness I tremble when I think of my hearts willful disobedience to what is righteous, to what pertains to wholeness. I know my heart and its vileness and evil, I know what hides in the shadows from the eyes of my friends. But here is my despair: that I yearn yet I do not know what for. There is a strange and dark cloud alive over me with a mi
Read more

A trip to The Shack

Andi, the lady who owns the Dunn Brothers coffee shop I daily frequent during the work week, asked me one day a while back if I had ever read The Shack . I hadn’t. She raved over it. My friend Austin consistently slammed, among other things, its cavalier Trinitarian theology, even to the point of alleging heresy. Fact is, I’d heard all the buzz, and had no intentions of reading it. Andi told me it was rock solid and would change my life. Austin told me it is like chaff to the wind. I trust Austin ’s theological astuteness (he’s a fellow Th.M. guy) more than I trust Andi’s. Austin and I think in similar Christian historical and theological paradigms.  Any way, Andi brought it up again a few weeks ago. So as not to raise any issue, I told Andi I would “think about it,” knowing full well I probably wouldn’t. I had visions of John Eldridge’s ridiculous Wild at Heart running through my head. They’re books meant to make you feel good, but in the end they’re bottomless canteens. Th
Read more