All I Know is What I Know

All I Know is What I Know

Has anyone ever asked you questions like, “Why did God choose water baptism?” or “Wouldn’t you like to know more about the origin of Satan?” or “What exactly were the Urim and the Thummim? (Exodus 28:30)?” or, “What if God created alternate realities?”

We are often challenged with questions about matters on which the Bible gives little or no revelation.  People often ask us hypothetical questions and present scenarios of which the Bible says nothing, and then expect us to have some logical answer to the question.  There are some things about creation and whatever was going on before creation that the Bible says nothing about.  There are many things about the nature of God and what is going on in the mind of God for which we have no doctrine or revelation, but skeptics often demand an answer to those kinds of questions.

If one is not careful, the believer can allow one unanswered question to hinder his or own faith.  A single matter of uncertainty or ambiguity in scripture can be enough for one to discard the Bible altogether; if no one gives me a good enough answer to this nagging question, then the Book as a whole is subject to rejection.

The idea is that, if you don’t have all the answers, then the answers you do have are insufficient.  But when is this principle ever applied?  When one works for a company, they may ask their manager or boss questions about their pay, questions about why a particular assignment is necessary, why a company policy has changed, but there are times when no answers are provided.  Sometimes, an employee doesn’t get a reasonable answer, or even questions company policy and methods, but just because they don’t get all the answers, they don’t up and quit.  Lower level employees are almost always in the dark about what is going on in the upper levels of corporate operations, but they know enough to keep doing their job and expect compensation.

We would rather not admit it, but we never know everything about anything we involve ourselves in.  A person doesn’t know 100% about the mechanisms and physics that allow a plane to fly, but they know enough to get on the plane.  A person doesn’t know everything about someone they choose to marry, but at some point, they do get married.  There is mystery in every decision we make, every path we choose, but we take the knowledge we have and proceed anyways.

Deuteronomy 29:29 says, “The secret things belong to God, but those things that are revealed belong to us and our children forever, that we may do the works of this law.”  The Bible plainly teaches there are some things that we will not know, that we don’t need to know.  But the things that have been revealed are revealed for a purpose: that we should know exactly how we and our generations might best please God.  I Corinthians 2 teaches that God has not left us completely in the dark, and that He has revealed things we need to know by His Spirit (I Corinthians 2:10). 

When it comes to God’s plan of salvation and His will for mankind, all we know is what has been revealed.  If we are not satisfied with that, we are in danger of endlessly searching, “always learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth.” (II Timothy 3:7) Many have thrown their lives away in such an endless search for answers to every question, even when, “what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.” (Romans 1:19)

Questions about death and the afterlife abound.  But there is a great deal of mystery there as well.  Let us put our trust in God who has given us an abundance of proof, a text that perfectly guides us in all matters of life and death, which teaches us, “it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” (I John 3:2)

Jeremy Koontz