Certainty, mystery and faith

On answered and unanswered questions

As I have said so often now, getting the biblical balance right is crucial. And this applies in so many areas. Here I want to speak about the need for biblical balance in terms of the believer embracing both certainty as well as mystery. That is, there are many things we can be quite sure about, but there are also many things that leave us wondering, that leave us with questions, that leave us with mystery.

Let me explain. We have an entire book (really, 66 books) which contains all that we need to know about God, why we are here, what our problem is, and how things can be sorted out. So who we are, why we exist and how to get right with God, is all spelled out clearly in Scripture.

There are many other things we might wonder about, which are not always clearly disclosed to us. As Francis Schaeffer used to say, we have true truth, but not exhaustive truth. God has given us all the vital information we need but He has not told us everything. Therefore in many areas, especially in terms of our own personal lives, we are left with countless questions:

• Why we didn’t get that job we so very much wanted.
• Why the person we liked so much never became our spouse.
• Why a loved one died early.
• Why a friend got cancer or
• Why our church let us down so greatly.

A million questions can arise, and we do not always get the answers we are looking for – at least in this life. Presumably, in the next life we will either get more clarity on some of these matters or the questions will disappear and thus cease to be important.

When it comes to suffering, hardships, trials and adversity, we can have so very many questions and most of them seem never to be answered – or at least answered to our liking. So all we can do is keep walking with God, even with so many unresolved questions.

Indeed, if we had all the answers, if we had all the solutions, we would be God. Or at the very least, we would have no need for faith, no need for trust, and so on. Thus having questions and concerns can be a good thing. It keeps us dependent on God. It makes us want to know him more. It helps build trust in our lives and it can improve our prayer life. The benefits are many.

Let me tease this out a bit further and include my own story as well. Some time ago on social media, a person had a post about how they had a huge improvement in their cancer situation. It seems they really are now doing quite well. The person said something like this: ‘It is a real miracle. It is such an answer to all your prayers.’

To which any Christian would rightly shout ‘Amen!’. God is a miracle-working God and He certainly does answer prayer. So this was terrific news indeed and I believe I pressed the ‘like’ button on that post. Always great to hear such reports. But….

Of course at the very same time that I was reading this I had some other thoughts going through my head as well. The truth is, other people – indeed, millions of other people – including myself, had a somewhat different outcome to a similar situation.

As some of you know, my wife had quite a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer. I and so many others of course, were praying for her. There were many hundreds of Christians all praying for her and perhaps even thousands. Friends, family, church members, even those who had never met her were praying and many of them were praying fervently.

Yet after a very tough 18-month battle, she lost out to that cancer. The cancer won. Of course, God always wins, and she is now in the arms of her loving Saviour and suffering no more. That is great news too and I look forward to one day catching up with her again. How therefore, do we reconcile these two cases? Can we reconcile them? Here we had one person with cancer getting a lot of prayer and seemingly winning out in the end – at least thus far. And another person, getting a lot of prayer but does not see those prayers answered as one would have liked.

So many questions arise here, together with the old questions we have concerning God, suffering and evil. Theodicy is the more technical term for all this and even the most theologically and philosophically literate believers will still have heaps of questions about these things. Not only do I have numerous articles on all this on my website, but entire libraries exist filled with learned volumes seeking to address these matters. So I have nothing new to add to add here, nor is it my intention to do so. Instead, just a few rather random thoughts can be offered:

The first is a pastoral consideration. As I mentioned above, this social media acquaintance posted about their good news in this regard, which was fully appropriate and acceptable. Obviously this person wanted to have others rejoice in this good news and I would want the same. As I noted, not everyone gets such a good outcome. Some get terrible news while others get devastating news and the faith of some believers will be sorely tested with such bad outcomes. Some will even abandon the faith.

I think at the very least therefore, as we share good news stories like these, perhaps we need to be a little bit aware of others and what they might be going through. Again, it was good and right and proper for this person to want to rejoice and others to rejoice as well. I am NOT saying we should never share good news or never praise God for great outcomes in this life. It is always good to give thanks. It is always good to see God’s good hand in our lives.

I recall two circumstances from a large church with an older Australian pastor (who I believe is still alive). At one church service, he opened things up for people to stand and briefly share their stories, and to offer thanks to God. One young girl got up to thank God for doing well in her high school graduation and for getting a place at a good university. I believe those were more or less the details of her testimony but this pastor cut her discussion short. I think he had in mind all those who did NOT do well in school or did NOT get the place in university they were hoping and praying for. This was quite some time ago, and I do not recall all the details, nor know fully what his intentions were at the time but he may well have been acting wisely and compassionately in that case. At least in my eyes that was what he was trying to do. He wanted to be sensitive to others in a similar position, yet who were experiencing quite different outcomes.

Every year at Christmas time he would make a point of asking all those in this very large church, to let him know if they were home alone for Christmas. If they had nowhere to go or were living all alone, he wanted to know so that he could share a Christmas meal with them. I forget exactly how that played out. If there were too many of such folks he would not have been able to fit them all in his home, so maybe he had a team of church folks to help him use the church kitchen and make a wonderful meal for all these lonely people. This too is where we have similar events but quite different outcomes. For most of these people, at this largely middle-class church, would have had a terrific Christmas meal and celebration at home with family and friends. The tree would be up, presents shared, great food enjoyed, and a neat time would be had by all. For others in the church at Christmas, it could be a terribly sad, lonely and depressing time. They are all alone with no one to look after them or care for them or share with them. So this pastor, at least made sure that none of them would be overlooked and miss out.

I hope these two examples make a bit of sense and help illustrate what I am trying to say here. I am trying to make a few points to show that in both examples there are good things. In many areas in the Christian life, we have a lot of clarity and certainty but many circumstances arise, which can be puzzling, unclear, and far too mysterious.

We need to trust God in the dark. We need to keep seeking Him, even when the questions pile up. In addition, we need to be sensitive to others as they continue on in their spiritual journey. Some of the things that we might be celebrating and rejoicing in at a particular moment, may be a cause of sadness and sorrow for others. Yes, we celebrate and thank God for all the good things in life, yet even in the not so good things, we need to give Him thanks, to trust Him and rely on Him. In other words, we need to learn to thank, praise, love and worship God, not just for all the good things we experience, but because of who He is.

A quote I so often use from Charles Spurgeon is once again worth running with here:

“God is too good to be unkind and He is too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His heart. When you are so weak that you cannot do much more than cry, you coin diamonds with both your eyes. The sweetest prayers God ever hears are the groans and sighs of those who have no hope in anything but his love.”

Bill Muehlenberg teaches ethics, apologetics and theology at several Melbourne Bible Colleges. His independent blog, Culture Watch, has over 5,000 articles commenting on the major cultural, social and political issues of the day.