Books by Ian Rogers
Books by Ian Rogers
In the ‘Cullender Conundrum’ I reasoned that science is like a ragged-edged cullender, full of holes. Each of us is like a beetle that can peer short-sightedly over the edge or that can peer down through a hole into the unknown. I think that Christianity (and probably all other belief systems) is the same.
Someone has said that if our righteousness and God’s were compared using a bar chart, then our righteousness would be the thickness of a sheet of paper and God’s would be a bar passing up through the ceiling. The same is true if we compared our knowledge - scientific or spiritual - to God’s. If God is omniscient (knows everything) then he knows every atom and molecule in the universe, where it is, where it’s going and where it has come from.
He knows every secret of quantum physics, of ecology, economics and sociology. He knows every thought before we think it and every word before we speak it. Our knowledge is paper thin and his is a column that passes through the ceiling and out of sight. And this is true of theology too. Top theologians may have knowledge equivalent to two thicknesses of paper and my spiritual knowledge may be equivalent to very thin tissue paper but neither of us knows very much. To change the analogy, in God’s eyes I can spiritually boil an egg while the theologian can cook a pizza but God is the master chef of every and all kinds of food.
Did you know that any number divided by infinity equals zero?
Ten, twenty or even a million divided by infinity equals zero. So, theoretically, everybody’s knowledge of an infinite God is zero!
Fortunately (or blessedly) we DO know something about God, not because we have worked it out but because he has revealed it to us. Wikipedia lists 13 attributes of the Biblical God, which made me feel small because, as a trainee local preacher, I only learned 5! These were that God is
Most of the other 8 out of thirteen properties are arguably contained in the key five. For example, God must be eternal if he is omnipresent, otherwise there would be a time when he wasn’t everywhere. God being all good, or all righteous, is contained within his being all holy. He could not be all holy and yet be either unfair or sinful.
I could go on but I expect you’ve got the point by now. As us beetles peer over the rim of our cullender, we have a firm foothold on God’s revealed truth, just as we have a firm foothold on discovered science. Copper sulphate will not be pink tomorrow instead of blue and God will not be vindictive tomorrow instead of loving. Thank God for that.
<< Next Archive Previous >>