<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Toward the end of Paul\u2019s famous chapter on love in 1 Corinthians 13, he comments that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. (1 Corinthians 13:9-12)”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul explains that our understanding and knowledge of God is incomplete. We only see a dim reflection in a mirror, or, as the old King James put it, we see through \u201ca glass darkly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is why we call our webcast that we do each Saturday afternoon at 4 PM \u201cA Mirror Darkly\u201d with the secondary title \u201cunbridled inquiry.\u201d We have to accept a very hard truth: we don\u2019t have the answers to everything, and we will never know everything. Our understanding of God and his purposes is very limited; it can never be anything but. All we can really do is ask a lot of questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Socrates was told that he was the wisest of men because he admitted that he \u201cknew nothing.\u201d It may seem paradoxical, but you are fully educated only when you can agree with Socrates. The reason is quite simple: the more you learn, the more you become aware of all that there is to learn, the more you realize that you can barely learn anything at all, compared to the vast amount of information that is available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every two days humanity creates as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization until 2003. There is no way to absorb all of that. We cannot assimilate more than a tiny fraction of what human beings know and do in the brief span of a single human life. How then can we imagine we can understand God or give but a very fuzzy outline of who he is, what he wants, and what he does?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Solomon said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!\u201d (1 Kings 8:27)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And our heads are much smaller than Solomon\u2019s temple. We really are able only to \u201csee through a mirror darkly.\u201d We will always have more questions than we have answers. Let\u2019s not be afraid to ask questions. And let\u2019s not be afraid to acknowledge, \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
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