Ok, so what’s the deal with my “knowing” something without “knowing” it?!
I am extremely exhausted by my worldview and am grieved to find that my list of “beliefs” often never find their way into it!
Scary, how I can “believe” God is sovereign and yet still live as if my life is in my hands; I “believe” I am saved by grace alone through faith, and still I try to earn my Heavenly Father’s favor; I say that materialism is false and that fairytales are reality, and yet I live as if life is dull and un-enchanted! How safe it is to “believe” hard, theological truths when they hold no effect or transformation, but what if I really believed? Would things be different?
I’ve heard Dr. Reynolds talk about the importance of a fully integrated worldview, and now I’m coming to see how I lack that. Sometimes I feel as though when faced with deception, I scarcely put up a fight. It’s as if I don’t even have to reject the truth in order to embrace the lie; all I need is to look at them separately and alternately in order to maintain them both without a compromise of conscience. That I unknowingly do this has me a little freaked out!
It seems much easier to study theology with one’s head than with one’s faith. Logic doesn’t require trust, true logic only asks for agreement; but how much harder it is to truly rely on what is to be exclusively believed.
Indeed, I know nothing; for even what I “know”, I don’t “know”!
4 comments:
And that is the only thing we do know!! :~)
I've been pondering the same thing...What does it mean to truly gain knowledge and understanding? Or how do I know when I have it? It seems to be this endless circle of the same pattern over and over again. And every time I come back to the beginning it is still the same. "If you came this way, Taking any route, starting from anywhere, At any time or at an season, It would always be the same: you would have to put off sense and notion." (the undeniable genius) ~T.S. Elliot.
What makes it even more frustrating is the fact that there is no middle ground. There is no place where I can sit and be satisfied with the fact that I "don't know". No where do I find mediocrity enough (at least for a long period of time) to satisfy. And yet...life goes on. This successive reality continues on successively without hesitation.
Thank the Lord for Hope, for Salvation...even if I am so desensitized by it all that does not remove from fact that I am still saved. Only one day may I learn to truly see it for what it is, and by doing so my life be changed.
Exactly! I suppose ignorance is only bliss if you are also ignorant of your ignorance; as long as you know about it, it's just dang uncomfortable!
You're right, mediocrity doesn't work; in fact, it's that very "middle ground" that has me running in circles for my life. I'm so afraid of settling into complacency. I think that Dr. Sanders said something about how we ought to "seek as those who will find, and find as those who will go on looking". It seems that, were the first removed, we would end up with postmodernism's "humility of knowledge", and if the latter were removed, we'd end up as arrogant as the atheists who have stopped looking for the truth. But somehow when the two are combined, there seems to be a healthy lack of self-importance.
Maybe that's just it: maybe part of the relief comes in being able to take oneself lightly (not in a shallow sense, but in the aforementioned sense of being unimportant). Maybe I just think too highly of my understanding. It seems that when the truth comes, it stings as it strips you of confidence, humbles you to the lowest state, and then offers you the mirth to laugh at your size.
Almost as if the only way to take the human condition seriously, is to laugh at it.
If I actually knew something, God knows I would trust in my knowledge; perhaps the only remedy is to not give me the chance.
Know what I mean?
Yup! I totally know what you mean. God help me the day that I begin to think that my SAT score tells me how much I "know"!! :~)
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