{"id":14983,"date":"2013-06-16T08:11:44","date_gmt":"2013-06-16T12:11:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=14983"},"modified":"2013-06-16T08:11:44","modified_gmt":"2013-06-16T12:11:44","slug":"christianity-means-not-knowing-all-the-answers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/06\/christianity-means-not-knowing-all-the-answers.html","title":{"rendered":"Christianity Means Not Knowing All The Answers"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.redletterchristians.org\/christianity-means-not-knowing-all-the-answers\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">Kathy Vestal wrote an interesting post with this title at Red Letter Christians.<\/a> Here is a taste:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>[W]e forget our place before God.  We twist our religion to be about knowledge.  We contrive and memorize \u201cfacts\u201d about God, dividing ourselves from those who understand differently, making God into our image rather than us in God\u2019s, because our image is all we are humanly capable of understanding.  What if we devote our whole life to trying to understand God?  Our knowledge will still be but an infinitesimal dot on the infinite picture of who God really is. We are part of creation, not designed for that kind of comprehension.<\/p>\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both;text-align: right\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2013\/06\/wpid-Photo-Jun-15-2013-1004-PM.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2013\/06\/wpid-Photo-Jun-15-2013-1004-PM.jpg\" class=\"alignright\" width=\"170\" height=\"135\" alt=\"\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p>We can gain from listening with discernment to others\u2019 attempts to describe and explain God.  We can gain much from reading the writings of Christians through the ages.  We have a priceless gift of testimony in the Bible.  And the more broadly we read, from the broadest scope of human cultures, from the broadest scope of history, the broader insight we can gain into this God we worship and how this God interacts with humanity.  Still we are capable of only one grain of knowledge on a never ending sandy beach.  And it seems to me the more I \u201clearn,\u201d rather than gaining more answers, I gain more questions, questions that lead me to seek God more deeply, questions that seem to say that the answers are not inside the human brain or capturable by human language.  Perhaps to live truly Christian is to live comfortably and humbly amidst the questions?<\/p>\n<p>Could it be perhaps that our spiritual response is not meant to be that we know everything about God, since by design, we cannot?  Perhaps if we can see our place in creation, our spiritual reaction is more one of awe and worship, amazement and wonder.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.redletterchristians.org\/christianity-means-not-knowing-all-the-answers\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">Click through<\/a> to read the rest <\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kathy Vestal wrote an interesting post with this title at Red Letter Christians. Here is a taste: [W]e forget our place before God. We twist our religion to be about knowledge. We contrive and memorize \u201cfacts\u201d about God, dividing ourselves from those who understand differently, making God into our image rather than us in God\u2019s, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[131,163,101],"tags":[1846,4005,4869,6258,7841,12508],"class_list":["post-14983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity-religion","category-progressive-christianity-religion","category-theology","tag-christianity-religion","tag-god","tag-humility","tag-knowledge","tag-mysticism","tag-theology"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Christianity Means Not Knowing All The Answers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Kathy Vestal wrote an interesting post with this title at Red Letter Christians. 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