Clear Cut Accuracy and Certainty

Photo by Tim Foster on Unsplash

There is no place in the Bible where it says we are saved on the basis of our accuracy or certainty with regard to our theological stances.

That is not the meaning of faith.

Faith is not opinion, thought it moves us to opine in one direction or another.

Faith is not orthodoxy, though the orthodoxy of our teachings should flow through the filter of faith.

We are not tested on our facts or perceptions before gaining entrance into the Kingdom of God.

One is not suggesting that we set out with the goal to be wrong or wobbly in our convictions. It is the opposite. The perpetual love of truth, desire for truth, and seeking of truth must be done from a place of openness to truth and willingness to recant or rethink.

Sometimes, we are not doubting God, but our ideas about God when we seem to be wavering.

The trajectory of our lives is the indicator of faithfulness, moving toward that which is eternally true and real.

We seek God in each measured segment of time, in each manifestation of reality, and in each perplexing question.

This is true of our trust in Jesus as the Word of God. There is no Christology exam that determines the prestige of our address in the New Jerusalem. We determine to trust Jesus and follow Jesus wherever Jesus is and however Jesus reveals himself to us at different stages of our journey.

Thus, with the Bible.  As we determine that it contains a message from God that is true and reliable, we do so without the assumption that we fully understand it and with a commitment to study and know it better, employing every tool at our disposal to grasp the message of each narrative and essential teaching. We sort out the literary genre's, the canonical purpose for inclusion, the context, the voice of who is speaking, God or human, and we pray, think, pray, act.

But whether we are right or wrong  at  any given time is not the test of our seeking faith, in God, God's Son, or the Bible.

We teach the doctrine of grace and then, apply legalism to those who do not fully understand it or articulate it as we do.

None of this is to say that Christian faith is without a spine or skeletal structure. Structure exists, but even in creation, those humans born with variations of physiology are still human.  Something deeper defines their humanity.

Something deeper defines our spirituality..

Much of our systematic theology and rigid dogmatism, while helpful for finding common ground of understanding, seems to flow more from an engineer's slide rule than from an artist's brush.

We need all the tools, but we also need humility when we are tempted to categorize people and their faith based upon their accuracy and certainty.