If you have had a serious conversation with me recently, you will know that I like to completely understand something. However, comprehensive understanding can be luxury. It is something I want desperately, but it doesn't necessarily mean I will get it. My brain demands logical progression and connections. Some things in life, however, do not always make sense.
I have a love-hate relationship with much of my theology. It all makes sense if you accept every premise along the way. As I dig deeper into the justification of these premises, it becomes harder to explain logically. Working backward, eventually everything comes down to a step of faith. Everything in this world cannot be explained by logic and formulas.
Allow me a brief caveat to say, I know for sure that God has perfect knowledge. Despite my questions, I can be confident in the fact God is righteous, just, and loving. Although I might not understand everything, I am confident that God has it under control.
One of my favorite authors, G. K. Chesterton, has some interesting things to say about reason, logic, and insanity.
"Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad, but chess players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. "
"Poetry is sane because because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite….To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits."
The second chapter of Chesterton's Orthodoxy, "The Maniac," is one of my all time favorites. His discussion of reason and insanity challenged me to consider how I think.
Sitting in Sunday School when I was little, I voraciously absorbed every Bible story imaginable. I learned about the heroes of the Bible, from Noah to Ehud, Elijah's beard to Onesimus and Philemon. I easily accepted them as true, and I still do. As I developed a better understanding of physics and an ability to visualize events, some of these Biblical events do not make quite as much sense.
As confusing and unbelievable as some of these stories seem, I am now filled with a much greater sense of awe – awe for the one who created the earth and awe at the incredible miracles He has performed. I am still in the process of accepting the fact that I will never understand everything. I embrace both the difficulties and the opportunity it offers to pursue knowing God better.
