1. When you come to the point that you believe you, at last, understand God, you must know that the ‘god’ you think you understand, is a construction of your imagination. The word ‘god’ already implies a being that is above and beyond total comprehension. This does not mean that we must stop trying to study the Bible. We must keep reading and studying the Scriptures to continue to understand the things that God reveals about Himself better, and to grow towards a deeper relationship with God.
2. We can understand some things about God, because he allows us to understand it about Himself. Those things He reveals to us are in his Word. But there are things that God doesn’t reveal to anyone. In Deuteronomy 29:29 we read:“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” He can reveal himself also in other ways, but if those revelations contradict the revelation of God in Scripture, we must discard it. For many people, this is very difficult to accept – because, if we feel we have had some very special revelation of God, it gives us a sense of spiritual importance and superiority. It also brings us into a position where people cannot easily disagree with us about nearly anything.
3. Sooner or later all of us want to understand God better so that we can understand the “Why” questions of life: “Why did my child die? Why is there pain and suffering in the world? Why are there wars and natural disasters?” These are valid questions. At best, we can only give very limited answers to those questions. If God does not come to his own defence and explain satisfactorily – we often allow ourselves the right to reject Him or prefer not to believe in God. This line of action does not solve the problem, it simply intensifies the problem because then we have no option but to choose our own sets of values to live by. The problem is that, from person to person, these sets of values will necessarily contradict one another, causing conflict, and then much more chaos and pain are created in the world.
