Reaching the Limits of the Infinite

Last night, among other things, I got started on what I call my wikipedia journeys (wikijourneys?). For those of you who don't know this word I just made up, a wikijourney is where you have a question about something and so you look it up on wikipedia only to find more interesting and related links of opposing views and so you continue to [Open Link in a New Tab] until you have like 15 wikipedia pages that you have to read. The journey ends when you've come in full circle, having read every opposing angle, top to bottom, left to right about that certain subject (unless you ended up clicking a link to a different subject, the you have some more journeys to finish).

I, being a nerd, tend to go on wikijourneys of theology within Christianity or that of cults. I've never been one to take any kind of teaching without a grain of salt and some doubt, and I always feel that to have a full understanding of any subject, one must at least give the respect to others to hear from their perspective their opinion on certain issues rather than being satisfied with someone else's critique. In this day and age of post-modernism and relativism, this can be a dangerous thing. One can easily get lost within the words of man and good arguments and end up exchanging the absolute truth for the relative.

In what I know about the theology I hold from reading from authors like Grudem, Sproul, and Piper, I feel pretty confident about what I believe about God, Christ, and the gospel as a Reformed Presbyterian Christian, even if I haven't made up my mind on other issues like baptism for infants, church government, etc. But just because their teachings resound a certain chord in my heart and create for me a construct of understanding the infinite that changes my way of thinking and life doesn't mean that they have everything perfectly right. There are other legitimate theologies that do not constitute heresy that bring its adherents close to the living God.

The Lord says in Isaiah 55:9, "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." How then can we, as sinful and finite creatures, seek to understand God? Even our ability to understand and comprehend is a gift from God. Only in heaven will we fully know, but not even at once because the finite can never comprehend the infinite in its totality. We will go from eternity to eternity understanding and finding more to know about our God and his attributes. It's not as if time comes to a still and we'll just know everything. (But what I've just explained is in the end still one view, haha).

The trouble I see with approaching ultimate reality or the absolute truth is that we'll always hit a limit. Logic and rationality has its limits. Feelings and experiences have their limits. And most times, if not all, these limits are irreconcilable with one another. Something has always got to give, even if you try to think as balanced as you can. If you want to hold the sovereignty of God higher, you have to budge on the free will of man. If you want to put full weight on the glory of God's love, you slack on the glory of God's justice and holiness. But somehow in God all these things that seem like repelling forces come together and bring even greater glory to him. Trying to fit mercy and justice, sovereignty and free will, and so on and so on in a finite man would cause some kind of explosion no? But within the infinite God, it's all good!

Then in the end, it must not be knowing about God through theology, but knowing God in an intimate and personal relationship. There have been so many points in my life where I've had to put the theology book down and pick up a simple devotional, or even better, go straight to the living Word because even with all the knowledge that was going in my head, nothing was changing in my heart. And I agree with some random author who wrote somewhere, "A person who knows ten times more theology than the average person should have ten times more love, mercy, discipline, joy, goodness, patience, etc than the average person." So many times I come to the end of my wikijourney utterly confused and shaken on what I thought was my firm grasp on who God is. Yet that foundation is not re-solidified by reading more arguments or man-created theology but by coming to the living God, knowing him, and being known by him. And this "know" or "knowing" that the Bible speaks of is not the kind of know I would use after reading someone's facebook profile. It's not a list of facts and data that constitutes the totality of a person's identity. Mark Choe asked me about a certain passage in Genesis 4:1, "Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain." Obviously, Adam knowing Eve's favorite color, fruit of brand-name animal skin clothing was not the reason Cain was conceived. Knowing in this sense is something quite more intimate and within the context of human relationships, it's referring to the most intimate pinnacle of human relationship, namely sex. So to know God and to be known by God is to know and to be known in that intimate manner that goes beyond facts and data, into the realm of experience.

But of course, right belief leads and produces right action and experience and feelings that are not grounded on solid facts and data are in the end fleeting and valueless. I remember at my graduation some guy took the mic and gave a few sentences of congratulations saying that now that we've finished we need to focus on the purpose of life which is happiness. And I sat there thinking, "But happiness in what?" It was foolishness to stop there, as much as that phrase contains truth. People can be happy in themselves, in hurting other people, hurting themselves. Thus the feeling of happiness not grounded in what will make one most happy according to what is most good is one that will eventually wither and fade like grass. So I'm in no way advocating a complete abandonment of things like theology for a completely experiential relationship with God.

We HAVE to know theology. And there are some theologies that are more correct than others. (And then there are some theologies that are just dead wrong.) I read in Piper's blog about the importance of knowing what one believes. (I can't find the link right now) But he basically said that too often people are content with facing the challenges of a high university educated world with a second-graders Sunday school education about God. God loves you and he died for you. Of course that's true! But why does God love you? At what cost does he love you? Why did he have to die for you? What does his death mean for the believer? For the non-believer? Why me? Of course a full understanding of God and his ways is unattainable, but one cannot understand God's "un-understandable-ness" (haha) and his infinite-ness without having tried to understand him to the best of our abilities. Being satisfied with just saying God cannot be understood and living life is just plain foolishness. We will end up living according to our own standards and values and not that of God.

But to those others who may know a little more theology than the average person, how can one dare to ever say he or she has it all down? Even after I go to seminary and study about God for my entire life I know I can never say such a thing. And where am I right now? I'm 22 almost 23, what do I really know? I'm sure any man who has known God for decades longer than I could look at my pitiful thoughts about God and laugh at how wrong I am. And imagine what God thinks. "For the foolishness of God is wiser than men..." says 1 Corinthians 1:25.

A lot of people say I'm knowledgeable and this and that, but I would gladly give up all the knowledge of man just to know and be known by God in the way the Bible talks about. So many times I look around me and see brothers and sisters who may not know as much systematic theology, but know the joys and intimacy of personal prayer, the quiet and gentle rest of devotionals, the God-hunger increasing value of fasting, and the pleasures of the eternal, much much more than I do.

Sometimes, you just have those days where you come to the limits of the infinite and can only be in wonder and awe...

1 Corinthians 8:2-3
If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.