Tuesday, July 19, 2011

What's God's plan for mankind?

I think that because we are finite, with finite minds we will always be "little children." There will always be something new to learn about God. Though we should "Dare to know" as Kant encourages in his writings, we will never fully comprehend the mysteries of God. We can study the Bible for years and learn something new each day for the rest of our lives. Remember that Jesus told his disciples that they would be unable to enter the kingdom of heaven unless they were willing to become like the little children. Children realize that they do not know everything and therefore life is a grand adventure a quest to know more and explore the very reaches to the "known". We should as Paul says "study to show thyself approved" we should know the basics of the faith, but that understanding will always change and develop. We will know rationally today that "God is love" but tomorrow our understanding of that love should become richer and deeper. God is infinite, we are finite, thus we will always have a project, something new to learn. Though we seek to be wise and educated concerning the Lord, we will always be humbled by how much we do not know and how vast he is. With God as our "project" we will continually find ourselves as "little children" wide-eyed and mystified standing before a God uncontainable, immeasurable, supremely good, supremely powerful, and "altogether lovely". Many people claim that it is boring to believe in God, but what could be more extraordinary than to love a Being so huge and powerful that our hearts and heads would burst if they were even to try to contain even a portion of who he is. I love the image in the last book in C.S. Lewis' Narnia series where Aslan, the God figure in the novels reminds the children that death can be more properly called “the beginning of the real story” all that happens in “this world” is only “the cover and the title page” death is only the beginning of “Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before” (The Last Battle 184). Though this passage is in reference to the afterlife, I think this is a good description of life as God intends it to be. Each day is the turning of a new page which ushers us into a deeper and greater understanding of God. Life therefore is to be a continual unfolding, a continual learning process in which we remain "little children" excited to learn something new about our great and glorious God each day.

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