What We Know, and What We don’t Yet Know
by Peter Brokaar
When I was in school my physics teacher explained that scientific knowledge can be compared to the surface of a balloon. The bigger the balloon gets the more surface outside the balloon it touches. So the more we understand about science the more questions get raised about the things we don’t yet understand in science. Ironically the more we know the more we realise that there are things we don’t yet know! And how much this is true for our understanding of God and His ways!
The more we discover about God the more we realise how incredibly big He really is. He’s forever bigger than our growing, yet limited understanding of Him! We’re finite, God is infinite. He will always be bigger than our knowledge, our understanding, our experience or even our imagination of Him!
Being human we tend to put God in a box of our own understanding. The more we know about Him, and the more we’ve experienced Him, the bigger the box gets. But we must remember that God is always bigger than the biggest box we can come up with!
Some people seem to have answers to everything, whereas others seem to constantly question everything. As Christians we’re called to be people with both questions and answers. If we pretend to have all the answers we’ve truly deluded ourselves. However, it’s just as unhelpful to go to the opposite extreme and be forever questioning the basics of our faith.
The Bible calls us to ‘hold fast to the faith we profess’. God even tells us we should boldly proclaim God’s answers to a searching world! This has become an increasingly unpopular thing to do in a world where it’s OK to have questions, but not OK to proclaim absolute answers.
God forbid that we should ever become people who always have the right answer for everything, people who ‘have it all figured out’, people who can put God in our pocket. At the same time may He give us grace to place our feet on the terra firma of His word and His revelation to us in our personal lives.
I find it really exciting to know and understand more and more about the Lord, and to have the courage to build my life on that revelation of His nature. At the same time I think it’s fantastic that the more I know about Him and His ways with mankind, the more I learn God is so much bigger and better than I can ever comprehend. This will continue until the day I finally get to meet Him face to face!
Until we cross that final river, may we forever be people who have an increasing base of both questions as well as answers.
Peter Brokaar is Director of Ellel Ministries Scotland and has been there together with his wife Liz since 2005. They have 3 kids, all born in Scotland! In his free time he likes reading, cooking, running and surfing. Being at Ellel Scotland has given him the privilege of getting to know God deeper and sharing that joy with many others.
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