The God given limits to wisdom and understanding, which we would do well to heed!

First, we often try vainly to capture wisdom with our language, theology, doctrine, and ideas, as if this wisdom will tell us all. As will be explored below, consistent with scripture, it is plainly false to assume that we can capture wisdom as a route to the be-all and end-all of truth-seeking and understanding. Any wisdom we do receive from God should only, at best, act as a signpost toward those deeper truths concerning the unfathomable depths of God’s love, purpose, and will. This God-given wisdom should therefore point us away from our own shallow insight, and help us to engage with our creator who is beyond our own understanding. For example, according to Proverbs 3:5-6, you must:

   Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your    ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.

 

And at the beginning of verse 7 it warns: ‘Do not be wise in your own eyes.’

            Secondly, our beliefs, experiences, and understandings of the world, repeatedly testify to God’s presence in our lives, but it is also important to acknowledge that he also often seems hidden from us. Some of this hidenness is because of who we are – for example, I know I am often too wrapped-up in myself and my own thoughts to see outside of me toward his many manifestations of love, joy, peace, beauty, and laughter (and see Genesis 15:5; John 12:24-25). But other aspects of his hidenness are the result of who God is and his indecipherable creation and purpose. For example, in The New Testament we are invited to experience God through Christ and the Holy Spirit, but we are also told of God’s incomprehensible divinity and essential ‘otherness’; where he deliberately disguises his glory making it impossible for us to see him fully in the world. Paul in 1 Timothy 6:15b-16) declares:

 

      God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings, and Lord of lords, who alone is                     immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. (My          emphasis).

 

Consequently, God’s plans and purposes are often unfathomable, where God seems to be playing a strange game of hide-and-seek! (And see Romans 11:33; Job 40-41). This game can be joyful and liberating, and part of how we grow in the love of God and Christ. Where our seeking after God helps us become spiritually more mature and stable as we receive his increasing blessings in our lives. As Jesus states in Mathew 7:7-8:

 

         Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened            to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks find.

 

However, on the flip-side, when we look too much for a meaning and purpose, we can often experience this game of hide-and-seek as bewildering and frustrating – as we are unsatisfied with God’s purpose being frequently illusive and indecipherable.

        Third, and following from the last point, scripture frequently points to ‘truths’ which are opaque, riddled with conflict and tension, and where the meaning God gives us in our lives and what we go through, is frequently hard or impossible to grasp, despite religious and philosophical pretensions to the contrary. However, we should also recognise that these pretensions are precisely what the Bible warns us against, let we end-up trusting our own understanding of God, rather than God himself (again see Proverbs 3:5-6). For example, the opening lines of Ecclesiastes 1:1-2, states without equivocation: ‘“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.’” This theme concerning the impossibility of explanation and meaning being delivered in our lives is relentlessly pursued throughout this Old Testament book. The modern (even postmodern) tone of its passages is staggering – given the age of the text – resonating with many contemporary views, including my own, that access to any meaning and explanation to life’s experiences is profoundly limited.

            Moreover, Ecclesiastes is not a one-off either, and so the vain hope of full meaning and explanation for our lives being found through religious and philosophical reflection is quashed in other parts of scripture too. In the book of Job, for example, God never told Job the reasons for his suffering, even though the reader is privy to the mysterious deal made between God and Satan at the beginning of the story, which sets the scene for Job’s awful testing. Instead, toward the end of the story, when Job confronts God with enraged questions of why he should suffer this way when he has done nothing wrong, God does not directly answer Job’s questions but proclaims his own authority as the Lord of all things and creator of the universe. Job’s response, at the end of the drama, is to submit to God’s authority and concede to God’s steadfast refusal to give answers, or any meaning and explanation for his suffering. Paradoxically, then, the answer for Job is that there is no answer, because God’s ways are beyond his understanding, which Job finally realises and accepts: ‘Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.’ (Job 42:3). This kind of lesson is extremely hard to learn, but potentially it facilitates a direct route to God’s peace and blessing – and especially when we are struggling with God, and our painful experiences.