Accepting the Mystery

We had just finished an intense theology class, where our most excellent professor had outlined a systematic presentation of Calvin’s teachings. (My seminary had teachers on both ends of the predestination question.) As several of us from the previous class filed into the next on Pauline Epistles, one of my classmates called over to me. “Hey Julie: do you believe in predestination?”

I shot him a big grin. “Yes,” I assured him. “It’s in the Bible.” The class burst into laughter.

Anyone who has read Ephesians or Romans knows God has predestined believers. But what does that mean? The more I have studied on the subject, the surer I have become that I will probably never get the whole thing figured out… there are so many verses and ideas that seem to be in conflict. If you quote a verse from one side of the debate I can give you another that seems to oppose your point. Maybe God purposefully hasn’t given us all the answers. Maybe we need to accept the divergence as part of the mystery of God and his ways.

I hope I’m not offending anyone here. But I always get a little uncomfortable when people spout a theology that puts God in a well-defined box tied up with a bow. He’s so much bigger than what we can understand. Reducing him to human terms and understanding does neither of us a favor.

God is not reluctant to describe himself in terms of mystery. Some things about him and his ways are clearly revealed in Scripture, others merely hinted at. Moses reminded the people in Deuteronomy: “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law.” God reiterated this idea through the prophet Isaiah: “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

There are things I would take a bullet for: God’s provision of salvation through the substitutionary sacrifice of his Son, salvation through grace alone, etc. But the secondary doctrines need to remain just that: secondary. Too many churches have self-destructed over such matters. We give Satan a foothold when they become our reason for being. It quickly becomes more about being right than any original motivation.

I learned a lot in seminary. But one of the most important lessons I learned was in my professors’ example in how they treated each other. They understood that their colleagues’ beliefs were a result of intensive study and thoughtful interpretation. While sometimes they did not agree, they left it to the Holy Spirit to continue to work it out in each of them. Paul did the same for the Philippians: “Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you; however, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained.”

Some day we will get it all. But for now, we see as through a glass. Rather than stress about what we can’t figure out, we can rest in the greatness and mystery of God, and not expect to get it all right. God is at work to reveal himself to us. Don’t be too quick to explain him.