God of Mystery & Truth

“Faith doesn’t equal certainty. Doubts do not equal lack of faith. Truth is found as you continually seek.” (Steven)

I agree 100% or as Hogan used to say ‘110%’.

I have been doing some reading about faith in the last while – namely about this idea of certainty in one’s faith. It is okay to be sure about your faith – but being too sure about questions of the ‘mystery of God’ is tantamount to lying/exaggeration (in my opinion). Usually that much certainty becomes a control mechanism for the one with ‘the inside scoop’.

God is a mystery and anyone thinking this is not so – needs to re-read the very 10 commandments they value as some cornerstone piee of Christendom. It’s very clear that God’s physical attributes are never to be made into an image and I am guessing the reason is – we’ll make God in our image with that much knowledge.

The other thing God is not actually known by a name either (something I learned from Rabbi Brad Hirschfield). It is true there are many names for God: YHWH, Adonai, Shaddai, Creator, Father, etc…but not one of them encapsulates the entirety of God (thus the many names). So we keep producing names about God’s character for what we know about Him. But the name of God is actually elusive.

So we know we serve a God without an image and without a name. Both things are important to keeping up the honesty of the God we claim to know.

This leaks into my aspect of truth – which is the same as Steve’s. Truth unravels itself over time – we learn bits and pieces as we go – but we never have the full picture because there is soooo much to know about certain ideas we would call ‘truth’.

For example, the take on non-violence is such a blurry debate it’s hard to know how to land on your 2 feet…yet we are fairly sure being a ‘peacemaker’ is something truthful/good/foundational to humanity’s survival. The key to figuring it all out is hearing all sides to the debate (and experiencing it) – then rendering your personal verdict. However, this will change over time and depends on new knowledge you are privy to.

Now we can say we are ‘peacemakers’ and advocate ‘non-violence’ – true – but the truth of what we are saying is revealed from present to future – it is not static and sealed…it is rather open to dialogue and undertakes it own conversion.

So faith, to me, is something alive and living – it’s still moving and being written. It’s like Abraham – in the sense that faith moves us from place to place and we do not ‘stay in one location all the time’ – no, our faith moves and grows and that’s where we find we are encountering God.

So as the Hebrews writer used it “By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going.” (11:8 )

***Comment taken from SCP’s ‘Stuff in My Head (3)’ Blog.