A well defined system

Philip Yancey says, "During their times of testing, it appeared to both Job and Abraham that God was contradicting Himself. God surely would not act in such a way - yet clearly He is." He goes on to explain that, "the purest faith emerges from just such an ordeal. Even though I do not understand, I will trust God regardless." I agree with Mr. Yancey in this particular point (I have learned much from him, even though there are a few things I don't fully agree with him on). God wants our trust, not our knowledge and insight. These things have their place, but that place is to support a real relationship of trust and dependency on God, not to replace the relationship.

God wants us to be humble, because He loves us. He knows that humility is necessary in our relationship with Him, and so is necessary in our having any of those things He promises to us in the scripture: joy, peace, rest, and so on. As a loving father, He shepherds us into the fields of humility. If, however, we insist on going our own way, then by that same love He will resist us, so that maybe we will return to the fold and the healthy fields. He resists us so that we do not go down the path of ultimately hurting our own self and others. Well, God has been in the process of humbling me lately, and because I did not willingly yield, I have experienced that resisting hand. Along the way, He has been teaching me many things, and I'd like to share one of those here.
We really want our religion to be a well defined system. We humans in general are always trying to connect all the dots. What we really want is to take the mystery out, and the underlying motive is control, isn't it? We want to know exactly how God works and how this Christianity thing works so that we can remain in control of our own spiritual destiny. We hate surprises and unknowns. Otherwise, we face the prospect of having to trust God with things beyond our comprehension, and having to walk a bit in the dark. God is light, right? We should never have to walk in the dark. But we are tripping up here over our English language. Just because we use an English euphemism that happens to contain the word "dark" does not mean we are speaking about the same sort of darkness the Bible tells us to avoid. God is truth, and that is the nature of His light. To walk in darkness means that we try to hide what is true, or live in deception. But there is a way that we walk "in the dark" which actually exposes us to more light. Let's try saying it using different words, "But we sometimes must walk without full knowledge of everything, which actually exposes us to more light." The bad sort of darkness is deception or lie, the good sort of darkness is inability - in this case, inability to know (or see) everything. Think about it, who is capable of comprehending God? God, the infinite, is beyond the comprehension of anyone else beside Himself, because anyone else is finite. So, we are always walking about with an incomplete picture of who and what God is, and in whatever areas our picture is incomplete, we are "in the dark", so to speak. It is in these very areas that we have only trust, or faith, to rely on. And we hate that. So we try to find the dots surrounding those dark areas and draw lines between them... hopefully those lines will cover up those unknown things and we will finally have a well defined system of who and what God is. We must either fail miserably at this attempt, or succeed more miserably - because any "success" we think we have is only a self deception, which, as you'll recall, is our very definition of walking in the dark.
This is a big part of the story of Job, in a nutshell. He lived his life just fine with a certain understanding of who and what God is, as did all his friends. But then God did something He should not have done, something that didn't fit their system: He caused an "innocent" man to lose almost everything and suffer. Of course, Job's friends refused to question their well defined system, and so bent the circumstances to fit it. Their conclusion: God is doing this to judge Job for something. Job might have been willing to question his system, but in order to do so, he needed to know, "why, God!?!" Why? Why did you do this? God's answer? Well, He never told Job why. Instead He said something to the effect of, "All around you all the time I do things you cannot possibly comprehend, yet you accept them without question - but when I hurt you, suddenly you must know why. Humble yourself and trust me with this too." God fully intends for us to NOT be able to connect all the dots. How, then, can we know Him who is beyond our full knowing? Simple. God designed us to know Him not by the completeness of our knowledge and understanding, but by a relationship. It works the same way with our human relationships. Who here can fully understand their own self, let alone someone else? It seems every day I discover something new about those closest to me, yet, I "know" them. I know them through a relationship. It is possible for me to study and study all there is to know about my wife, yet if I don't have a relationship with her, I don't "know" her. Am I saying that I should not study her at all then? Of course not! Knowledge IS important, but only in the context and for the purpose of that intimate relationship. God never intended to reveal a complete system or picture of Himself in the scripture. He intends for us to remain dependent on Him in those areas He never spells out. He WANTS that, He did it on purpose. That is why men debate to this day things like God's sovereignty vs. man's free will. God revealed only enough to enable our relationship with Him, not enough for us to fully comprehend how these two things can coexist. It is when we lose sight of God's purpose for His revelation that we begin debating and fighting with each other.
The Bible can seem so sloppy to us control freaks. Why doesn't God just come out and tell us directly how faith works? Why doesn't He tell us how it is He can judge man for his choices, and yet remain sovereign over everything? Why doesn't He tell us where sin comes from? Didn't God create everything perfectly? Why doesn't He answer in one place the problem of pain? Why doesn't He tell us definitively if infants that die while still infants go to heaven? Because He didn't write the Bible to give us a complete system of knowledge. He wrote the Bible to facilitate a love relationship between God and man. Just like I do not fully know everything there is to know about my wife, and yet I "know" her intimately, so it is we can know God intimately without knowing everything there is to know about Him. He intends it this way, and at least one reason is so that we will remain dependent on Him. Knowledge can puff up much too easily. We start to rely on what we know rather than on God. Every now and then, God will do something He isn't supposed to do, at least according to our "system", in order to bring us back to dependence on Him instead of on our understanding of Him.
The amazing thing is, I knew all this before. I've even said these exact same things to others before... but God decided to show me a new area of distrust in my heart. He brought out fears and anxieties that I didn't even know lived within me. I wasn't aware of them because I had carefully constructed a system of who God is that made me safe from the things I was most afraid of. I'm not talking about a simple system of, "God is going to provide for me and won't let that happen." No, I knew better, and made my system more sophisticated. But, in the end, it provided me some level of safety from certain pains I wanted never to know. This then allowed me to create another false system: because I was not aware of these things within myself, I thought myself above them. Yes, I had created a false system of my own self. So, when God turned up the heat and these things began to creep out, my first reaction was just to deny them... "that's not me! I'm above that!" It is humbling for a man to admit that yes, he really does have this iniquity in his heart. It really is me. I deceived myself, and God brought it out to the light. James has been quite a help during this time. To paraphrase James 4:5-10,

And do you suppose God doesn't care? The proverb has it that "he's a fiercely jealous lover." And what he gives in love is far better than anything else you'll find. It's common knowledge that "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble."
Be humble then before God. but resist the devil and you'll find he'll run away from you. Come close to God and he will come close to you. Realize that you have sinned and get your hands clean again. Realize that you have been disloyal and get your hearts made true once more. As you come close to God you should be deeply sorry, you should be grieved, you should even be in tears. Your laughter will have to become mourning, your high spirits will have to become heartfelt dejection. You will have to feel very small in the sight of God before he will set you on your feet once more.

It's easy for us to stand on our boxes, look around, and see how hard others are making their lives due to their shortcomings. "Oh, man, why does he believe that way? Can't he see how he's hurting himself?" "Dude, let me point out this area of pride in your life here..."
Before you go down that path, realize just how infected you are with pride. This is not an issue of you having battled your way up the hill, and now from your vantage you are able to reach down and pull up your brethren. No, my friend, if you feel this way, then you are doomed. We are all battling side by side, shoulder to shoulder. Pride is a relentless enemy, and will never stop until we are given new bodies. Until then, turn to God in utter dependence, not to your carefully crafted system. Too many Christians have fallen into the error of thinking that the Bible has revealed a complete system, and so we have the ability to know everything. They have to believe this, because they fear if the Bible isn't complete, then it becomes too easy for people to make up their own stuff in those incomplete parts... they fear that error will come flooding into the church. Indeed it is true that these ambiguities are places where error likes to leak in. But error will always be present in the church for the simple reason that error is born and lives in the hearts of men, not in doctrine. It can affect our doctrine, but changing the doctrine rarely affects the error. If you make a complete system and close it off so that no doctrinal error can get in, then the error in your heart and mine will simply go subterranean and become all the more difficult to find. We will walk around saying the right things while continuing to live a lie. Jesus made it clear, when He told us that the wheat and the tares will coexist, that the job of separating them does not fall into our hands. I'm not saying we shouldn't fight error - we must all fight against error... and we must start by fighting the error in our own hearts. We will understand then where to build, and where not to build, the defenses in the church. And if you think there is no error left in your heart, then you have fallen into the worst error yet.
You have to be willing for things to be out of your control, for things to be unfair, for you to not fully understand, for the next step to be unclear, for there to be mysteries in the Bible for which you can never seem to find the complete answer, for God to be beyond your comprehension, yet also intimately knowable with a knowledge that passes understanding. It is in these places that you will lean the most on your precious father and shepherd, and that is exactly by His design. Once you've started with the relationship, you'll want to learn all the more, but for all the right reasons.

"If knowing answers to life's questions is absolutely necessary to you, then forget the journey. You will never make it, for this is a journey of unknowables - of unanswered questions, enigmas, incomprehensibles, and most of all, things unfair." - Madame Jeanne Guyon