Absolutes

I am a black & white, right & wrong kind of person by nature. I am immensely practical & don't have a lot of time for abstract ideas I can't bring down to real life application. It would make life so much more easy for me if living for God worked that way too, but it doesn't.

I absolutely believe in absolutes. If you start walking toward a brick wall, you can believe it's not there or close your eyes and pretend like it's not, but eventually you will crash into it head on if you don't change your course. The wall is absolute, and nothing you believe or think changes the existence of that wall.

As much as I believe in absolutes, I also believe that by & large we have absolutely no idea what they are. God is infinite & we are finite. God is all knowing & we only know what happens in our limited world. God spoke the universe into existence & we simply exist.

The day you come to a place where you believe you think you know what is right is the day you have stepped into unparalleled arrogance. There is no room in our faith journey for a place of arrival. We will spend the rest of our lives trying to get it right, only to step into eternity and learn how bad we missed it. There is zero possibility that our finite minds can comprehend the infinite nature of God.

The absolutes for me are simple. Jesus died for our sins, He died to restore relationship between us and the Father. That's absolute. You accept that sacrifice & your union with the Father is restored.

I don't have many absolutes beyond that. I have convictions, I have theology, but all of that is open & subject to change. In fact, I wonder how much truth we have rejected in the guise of being "grounded" and having "solid theology".

We see it in different denominations that build entire doctrines around certain Scriptures, while acting as if others have been ripped right out of their Bibles. I just wonder how much we've done that too, because we read the Bible through the lens of what we think we know. How much revelation & truth have we missed and rejected because we believe we know the truth?

I'm not saying we should be a flake & go chasing every wind of new doctrine like it is straight from heaven, because that's a sure fire way to end up in a ditch of error. I'm not saying you reject the whole counsel of Scripture because you find one out of context passage that you can build a theology around to support what you want the Bible to say.

I'm just saying that, as you study Scripture and as you read new things, to stay open to the possibility that what you thought you knew might not be the truth at all. Approach Scripture with an open mind & an open heart, and let the Holy Spirit  be your teacher.