Monday, April 12, 2010

U B U

U B U!

You be you!

And let God be God!

Yesterday, we kicked off our Difficult questions series. I think that it went well! Next week and the following week will be even better. And juicier!

4 of the 6 questions that we wrestled with yesterday, seemed at the core, to have the same root issue. Namely: trying to figure God out.
  1. If God knows everything, is there really free will?
  2. If people worship the only way they were taught, what happens to them when they die?
  3. If someone dies having never heard the message of Jesus, what happens to them?
  4. What is the Trinity? How's that possible?
While we tried to answer these questions from several angles, they all seem to come back to the same place....

You will never figure God out! Let God be God. And you be you.

It seems that our insatiable desire to figure out how God thinks and makes decisions-- to figure out his make up-- and his decision making approach does a fantastic job of getting our focus off ourselves. Which is dangerous on several levels.

How about:
  1. Making right and godly choices whether God knows ahead of time what you will do or not!
  2. Go tell people about Jesus and live like He's changed you, so that they meet Him too-- before it's too late.
  3. Go live Matthew 28:18-20 NOW so that you take people to heaven with you. Waiting until God's curious moment of decision leaves you no time to do anything about it. Act now!
  4. Accept and sit with the mystery of the Trinity--- a mystery that centuries of believers have yet to figure out. I tend to doubt you'll be the one to crack the mystery.
You be you! You've got your hands full with that. And let God be God. But keep asking questions! It's in asking questions that we find answers.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

When I was in grad school I attended a Bible study with several math majors. One evening we were getting stuck pondering, and one guy offered this perspective: "it's tough being finite." We all laughed with relief--we didn't have to figure it out after all.

Noah said...

That's good, Karen! I like it. The last thing that I want to do is shut people's questions down. On the other hand, I think there is great freedom when we understand that we will never understand.