Berlin Cathedral
Why is the church nowadays so weak? People suggest that it is due to lack of servants, money, people, programs, etc. I personally believe that there are so very few groups that really study the Word of God. I can no longer ask whether a body believers practice “bible study” because people will jump all over me and say that their churches have them. When I mean “bible study”, I point to a group that is completely open to the bible to what it has to say without any cultural influence or self-imposed biases. I know that this is impossible, but there are so many groups that don’t even see or manage this problem. Whenever there is a teaching that is foreign or counter culture, such as predestination, woman’s roles, head covering, assurance versus certainty, groups all over will jump at the idea and stomp out these doctrines, not knowing that they are not foreign, but biblical.
People stomp out these doctrines because they run “slightly” counter or foreign to the general teaching of the modern church. What they are in fact doing is stomping out God’s Words. What we cannot reconcile or explain doesn’t challenge our faith but deepen it. If we can all figure out God and put Him in each of our neat pocket book, is that the God who has created this world that is so complex and seemingly paradoxical at times? Is that the “God” I want to follow? Isn’t the doctrine of repentance (knowing that we cannot do things on our own and that we cannot figure things out on our own) the very thing that brought us all to Christ in the first place? So isn’t it paradoxical that having followed Him for a period of time that we now must have everything in the bible figured out or to make 100% sense lest we would not accept it?
That is the very point that I cannot handle in our current church today. Nobody is challenging; nobody is reading the bible as it is. Nobody is asking the tough questions in fear of “stumping God” or in fear of people rejection (However, I ask, isn’t our very innate value worthy of rejection? Or is it now so foreign that we all think that we are now worthy?). Or should I venture that we are afraid of ruffling the “feathers of faith” and worried that it will confuse or make our faith “disorderly”? Well in fact, faith we call our own is for the sick and sinners. It never was meant to be so neat and orderly that we can no longer have seemingly contradictory or mutually exclusive ideas to stand simultaneously. Isn’t it faith through which we accepted Him? How can we explain the Trinity, where there are Three yet there is One? Yet, what about the doctrine of the Sovereignty of God and the Responsibility of Man? We all accept that He is sovereign, but does that mean we don’t do anything? If everything were to make sense in our minds, my first question is whether we are worshipping the right God or have we created an idol? Or have we made ourselves to be god?
Are we able to explain all the mysteries of the world and in the Bible? Of course not! Mutually exclusive ideas in the Bible are not to throw off our faith, but are there to make us realize that we are but dust. For without Him, we have no value and can do nothing. It is these very ideas that stretch my mind and allows our spirit to wander and get a very small but real glimpse of who I really am, and who He is. It allows me to meditate and realize that I am so very very small, and what it means for Him to say “I am, who I am”.
I am not claiming that everything needs to stand in illogical premise, but I am saying is that logic and intellect only goes so far. There are still gaps of knowledge that requires our faith. And faith, according to Hebrews, is our first and very ingredient that brought us to Him and how we can please Him.
walking...
