Determined to Believe?

Kierkegaard said we are the “synthesis of the infinite and finite.” [1] So while we are confined to space-time, our awareness soars beyond it to something we are aware of but cannot reach. Like the electron. Once thought as a particle that moved in space, 20th century discoveries showed it was much stranger. An electron sometimes seems a particle and at other times a wave. It’s there, until someone looked, then it wasn’t. However, we try, we cannot reach it, pinpoint exactly where it is, or if it is a localised entity at all. Sitting in the book-smelling seminar room at ANU, I realised science had led me to the same place Christianity had left me 10 years before—with uncertainty. Not content to consciously approve a double-standard, I was encouraged to investigate God once more.

God.

God is beyond our understanding and reach, like infinity. For God is perfect and we are not. Jesus says “…your heavenly Father is perfect” [Mat 5:48], and the Psalmists declare God’s perfection repeatedly [eg: Ps 18:30, 19:7, 50:2]. To be perfect, according to the dictionary, is to be “complete and correct in every way,” “entirely without fault or defect,” “exactly right,” “flawless.” As Christians, we are taught God is perfectly loving, perfectly knowing, perfectly just, and perfectly powerful. So though God is beyond us, we gain some comprehension of him by taking these qualities we recognise and magnifying them without limit to perfection. But it’s not full comprehension.

I repeat that to myself daily—it’s not full comprehension.

So often we assent to the beyondness of God but forget this beyondness necessarily applies to our theology as well. While the encoding of Christian belief in creeds and doctrines is vital for clarifying and unifying the faith, it’s never a complete rendering of reality. Do we think we are God? To assume what we know is the same as all that is? For we try to contain God in our theological systems like shadows in boxes. And at risk of alienating many.

 …