ponderings

(Written December 1, 2011 in my journal)

G was telling me how he's struggling with the ideas of "free will" vs the "total sovereignty of God" - and also struggling with how the more extreme views on sovereignty can reconcile with what he now knows of You, from his relationship with You...  And how "open theism" almost offers a solution ... on the surface ... but not where it leads to.  (And he admits he'd no longer be acceptable as a "Baptist" minister!)

Boy oh boy.  Do I ever understand his questionings/ponderings.  I don't know the answers...  But I do know You are amazing, beyond our comprehension ... and as G said, You haven't told us everything.  Just what we need to walk in faith with You, I think.  I suspect that if we knew everything, in our fallen human state, we'd immediately turn to total intellectual "knowing" and completely desert YOU.  We do that too much, as it is, even with our little knowledge :-(

Speaking of intellectual knowing ... I think that when people create an interpretation based on one scripture, and then build a doctrinal system around it, they spend the rest of their time trying to cram other scriptures into that systems, instead of seeing how the different scriptures complement each other - or how they show short-comings in the proposed system.

"Systematic theology" - I guess its value depends primarily on whether one ultimately seeks for the truth of the theology (and is willing to dump it if it turns out to be wrong) - or if one ultimately seeks to "prove" the proposed system.  ??

Why is "discovering the truth" - as a clearly explainable system - so important to us?  ... to me? Yikes!