When I was a child my mother used to encourage my brothers and me with the wonderful saying, “Good, better, best, never let it rest, until your good is better, and your better best.” I believe my last meditation on our Christian faith started out well, but ended with a whimper. I must do better!
My dissatisfaction with last month’s meditation was with the way I ended it. In the end it left me with the rather hopeless feeling that we cannot know anything about God. But that is the philosophy of “agnosticism,” which is just as bad as my former “atheism"! And I know that is not what the apostle Paul meant when he wrote 1 Cor 8:2 “The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know.” Pastor Tom’s blog title, “The Little We Know,” gives the proper perspective. He writes, “We all know at least a little bit of truth don’t we? And we are responsible and accountable for the little bit of truth we know, aren’t we?” It’s all about humility and submission. Jesus said it this way, “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him" (John 14:21). We can know much about God because Jesus Christ has made Him known. I like to think of it in a rather folksy way: The Son is the "spitting image" of the Father, so if we know the Son we know the Father. The Holy Spirit is involved too, since Jesus goes on to say, "All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you (John 14:25-26). Yes, we do know a little bit of truth and we can continually learn more as we yield to the Holy Spirit and He continues His work of conforming us to the likeness of Jesus Christ.
With this introduction, my next meditation will get back to the issue of the reasonableness of our faith and the question of the limitations of scientific truth.
