I’m just one guy. One human being among 8.03 billion (and growing daily).
I take up six feet of vertical space in a universe over 92 billion light years in diameter.
I’ve lived through just forty-five years of history on a planet that is 4.543 billion years old.
I speak only one language fluently in a world with at least 7,168 cataloged languages.
Put simply, the world outside my brain is virtually incomprehensible in size, scale, age, and complexity by my finite, limited mind.
The reality of the limited nature of our knowledge can be overwhelming, especially if you believe that our eternal existence depends on what you know or don’t know about God. This can create a tremendous amount of fear around the question, what if I’m wrong?
What if I didn’t understand enough about God? What if I didn’t get the memo about a particularly important point of theological truth? What if that one religious group – the one among many that I’ve been urged to ignore – was actually onto something that I’d missed?
These kinds of questions can drive you into some pretty unhealthy places, spiritually and emotionally. That’s why I was so glad to come across one of my favorite quotes. It’s from Peter Enns in his book, Curveball: When Your Faith Takes Turns You Never Saw Coming (or How I Stumbled and Tripped My Way to Finding a Bigger God):
I have come to think, as have so many others in the course of history, that the goal of Christian faith is the experience of God, not the comprehension of God.
THAT is good news! Because, in all honesty, I cannot even begin to comprehend the physical universe, much less so the God I believe created it all.
It isn’t about getting all the facts and details right. We who are Christians don’t follow Jesus so that we can know about God. We follow Jesus because we believe that, through him, we know God.
It’s not about comprehending God.
It’s about experiencing God.
It isn’t about being right in all the fine points of our theology. It’s about discovering a relationship with God. And Jesus, as God, is the Way through which Christians come to experience God in a moment-by-moment relationship.
If you finished reading this post and still feel like you just don’t get it, welcome home. This is what it means to walk humble.
Photo by Josh Gordon on Unsplash.
- Hardcover Book
- Enns, Peter (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 240 Pages - 02/07/2023 (Publication Date) - HarperOne (Publisher)
