Hello

I spent years studying at Seminary.  Those years of study showed me that expert scholars disagree with each other about the meaning of many passages in our Bibles.  So, if these experts don’t agree with each other, how do we know what the truth is?  The answer is simple.  We don’t know what the truth is.  We don’t know what the truth is about many things, and that’s OK.  That’s fine.  We cannot know everything, and we do not need to know everything.   Our loving Father, alone, knows everything and we can trust him.

So, is there a problem here?  Yes.  There is a problem.  The problem is, partly, that our loving Father gave his human children inquiring minds.  We love to think about things, speculate about things, make up theories about things and discuss things.  This is good.  But, inevitably, discussion involves some disagreement, and disagreement can lead to division.  The question we need to ask ourselves is whether the topic we are disagreeing about is important.  I reckon that, since the early days of the church, many of the things that Christians have disagreed about, sometimes violently, have not been important.  The discussions have often been about how God makes his decisions – something we cannot know or understand because our loving Father doesn’t make decisions according to rules that we humans can define or even comprehend.  (If you want Biblical confirmation of that last statement, try Job Chapters 38-41, Isaiah 40:12-28, and Jesus’ parable about the workers in the vineyard Matthew 20:1-16).

I believe the devil uses this human tendency (loving to discuss and speculate) to cause divisions among members of Jesus’ community.  We get tied up in discussion of unimportant topics.  We have important work to do, but the devil gets us wasting our time talking and arguing about things that are not important.

Here is a quick test which can help us to tell whether a topic under discussion is important or not.  Imagine that an angel appeared, sent by God, and told us the absolute truth about that topic – whatever the topic might be.  How much difference will knowing this truth make to the way we live our lives today and tomorrow?  If the answer is “none at all”, or even “not very much”, then the topic is probably not worth spending a lot of time on – and it certainly isn’t worth getting upset or angry about.

Another test is whether there is disagreement among Christians about the topic.  If it is an issue that devout, sincere, godly Christians disagree about, especially if they have disagreed about it for centuries, then it is an issue that God has decided not to clarify, and therefore it probably isn’t important.

Let’s face it.  None of us knows everything. We can’t know everything. The important thing is we don’t need to know everything, and we certainly don’t need to pretend that we know everything.  Let’s just admit that there are, and always will be, a lot of things that we don’t know, and let’s accept that we probably don’t need to know them.

So, I’m a Don’t-Knowist.  Putting it simply, being a Don’t-Knowist means I’m pleased to admit that I don’t know the answers to many, perhaps most, of the questions that we Christians get into arguments about.  I may have an opinion, but I could be wrong, so the truth is that I don’t know.  This is good because I don’t have to pretend that I do know things.  I don’t have to take sides on issues.  I don’t have to defend unimportant things that I don’t understand or I’m not sure about.

Let’s get on with the important things – Obeying the commands of Jesus – Loving God and Loving Others.

 

May our loving Father bless us, strengthen us, and keep us focused on his important things.

Jesus is Lord.

Peter O

 

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What did Jesus say about unity? (And why aren’t we taking any notice?)”

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