Believing in God When Our Rationality Fails Us

One of causes and symptoms of spiritually discouragement in our inner lives is when we start to equate our questions and doubts in life for unbelief. This is a false equation! As Christians we are not able to fully see eternal things perfectly. The truth is we see our future through a fog. We can see the road signs that lead us forward, but we must accept the fact that our rational minds are limited. We are finite. We can’t know everything. We will never know all the answers of life. If we did have all the answers, we would be God. The Bible does not contain all the specific answers of life and eternity, but it does contain all the essential truths that we need to know about God, his salvation in Jesus Christ, and how we are to live in faith and trust.

As a result, as Christians we will always have questions and doubts about things, but this is quite different than biblical unbelief. Because all of our questions can never be answered, we can unfortunately start to wonder whether God even exists when we are spiritually weak. But in the end, the truth is we are not God. So we have to trust God with our questions and doubts, without spiraling down into unbelief. Again, simply because we have questions or doubts does not mean we are skeptics or unbelievers. Unbelief is the intentional rejection of the revealed truths of God and his love for us in Jesus Christ. We are finite believers in an infinite God who alone holds all the answers of life and eternity. And it is in him that we trust.

(1 Corinthians 12:12) For now we see only a blurry reflection of ourselves, as in a bronze mirror, but then (at the second coming of Christ), we will see God face to face. Now we now know in part, but then we will have full knowledge, for we will be fully known by God.

Insightful Quotes

Having the answers is not essential to living. What is essential is the sense of God’s presence during dark seasons of questioning—Ravi Zacharias.

Faith does not eliminate questions. But faith knows where to take them—Elisabeth Elliot.

The way of Jesus cannot be imposed or mapped—it requires an active participation in following Jesus as he leads us through sometimes strange and unfamiliar territory, in circumstances that become clear only in the hesitations and questionings, in the pauses and reflections where we engage in prayerful conversation with one another and with him—Eugene Peterson.

Jesus didn’t come to tell us the answers to the questions of life, he came to be the answer–—Timothy Keller.

I don’t fear the questions any more. I know that they are all part of the process of coming to union with God and refusing to make an idol of anything less-—Joan Chittister.

All Christian language about the future is a set of signposts pointing into a mist—-N.T. Wright.
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