Knowing and Faith
I don’t know nearly as much as anyone thinks, and that includes me. There was a note on one of my recent entries from Starstruck that seemed to indicate that she thought that I knew everything about the world and my faith.
NEWSFLASH!! I do not know everything. (I know this will come as a surprise.) If I ever sound like I do, I’ve either said something wrong, or I’ve been misunderstood. In this case, I think it’s probably some of both. Let me explain a couple of things, just briefly as a way of simplifying this some.
First, no one knows everything, obviously. In this world, there is nothing but uncertainty. How you deal with that uncertainty is telling. There are basically three schools in dealing with the issue. The first school would be those who acknowledge the extent of their own knowledge and have another solution (i.e. faith) to come up with some kind of peace about man’s finitude. The second school would be those who acknowledge their extent of their knowledge and use that boundary as the catalyst in deciding how they conduct their next endeavor, so as to increase the bubble of what people know. The third school are those who truly believe they know everything. Such people are rare, understandably, and can barely even be taken seriously for the ridiculousness of their claim. Roughly equated, there are those who know they are limited and are alright with that fact, and there are those who know they are limited and the fact goads them into trying to learn everything, as a method of confronting their finitude, and finally, there are those who know everything, and can never learn anything beyond what they already know, seeing how their knowledge is limitless. (Sarcasm intended.)
How have you, as an individual, chosen to acknowledge the fact that your knowledge is finite? I suggest to you that how you’ve answered the question may be the single most telling factor about the way the rest of your life is.
As for me, I’ve selected the first school, which I equate to faith. My peace and contentment with the world is not built on what I know or don’t know, in the largest sense. In terms of my own personal knowledge, I only know what my feeble little mind can get crammed in for recall later. How then do I find any peace? It’s simple really. I know the One who has the answers. I believe the universe was a created, and everything in it. Logically then, counting that Creator as a personal friend brings a great deal of comfort to me. Faith then, is the acknowledgement of knowing that you don’t know everything, but that knowledge in the context of knowing the One who does.
I think struggling with issues is an important part of what constitutes growth. On that vein, I want to address something else that Starstruck has said. An important question is how we view Christianity (or any value system) in light of our own personal growth. For me, my faith focused my growth, because it saved me the hassle of having to diagnose the problem before I came to a meaningful solution. The Bible already gave me a frame of reference from which to start my search for personal fulfillment and growth. Admittedly, I didn’t understand the fullness of the picture painted there, but the basics are simple enough: humanity by it’s very nature is fallen (by way of sin), and so that tendency to go back to the least common denominator is explained. The means of salvation from that fallenness is the faith in the God who made the original blueprint for fulfillment. In that context, fulfillment is then as simple as going back to the architect of the human race, to ask him for a blueprint to fix how my being has gone awry. My feeble attempts to `fix’ myself without consulting the engineer are then revealed, and a better, more permanent solution becomes obvious.
Most of the good Christians I know (I know lots of Christians I wouldn’t define as good Christians. It doesn’t make them bad people, but it doesn’t make them good Christians) are constantly struggling with their faith, and genuinely ask themselves every day a series of questions something to the effect of, “Do I really believe this? (The answer is yes,usually.) “Ok, so how do I know God better today than I did yesterday?” “What is required of me today, and how can I be both obedient to God and learn more about myself and the world in light of who God is?” It may appear that Christians `know’ what the world is all about, but really, that appearance is only coming from the security and peace that is a result of knowing God personally and believing that He has the answers-and that He will show us what we need to know, when we need to know it.
(continued, next entry)