Strep throat and the Super Bowl has kept me away from the blog for a couple of weeks, but it's good to be back....
I need to open this blog post with a very important
statement:
Christians aren’t perfect.
Ok, I realize that it’s not the most earth shaking
declaration ever made. As obvious as this thought is, it is critically
important, not only for Christians to remember, but for Christians to own in
the presence of others. We are not perfect in our understanding or in our
behavior, in our orthodoxy or orthopraxy. We don’t have it all figured out.
There is a ton we don’t know, and the stuff we do know is connected to our
growth, and may change or develop over time. For instance, we may know at age 7
that certain foods make us feel poorly. It may not be until our teen years that
we discover a gluten intolerance or allergy of some sort to explain the
sickness. It might be even later still that we realize that we are allergic to
lemons and not all citrus fruits. In much the same way, people who attempt to
relate to and follow God are in process, and we should be ok with that. After all, our faith is
not built on the amount of knowledge or facts about God that we possess. It’s based
on a relationship with God, a relationship that He initiated and sustains. To posit either explicitly or implicitly that
you have to have a perfect understanding of all things scientific,
philosophical, literary, and theological in order to relate to God is terrifying
and simply untrue. The story of the Bible is a story of a God who is bigger
than our ignorance, bigger than our rebelliousness, and bigger than our immoral
thoughts and practices. (And yes, we all
have all three of those). The journey away from our ignorance, fear, and hatred
is one that God wants to take with us, not one that He demands we take for
Him.
So, if you don’t have it all figured out, welcome! You are
in good company, and you are loved by the God who alone knows and understands
it all.
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