It is not given to us. . .

The skepticism that too many approach the Scriptures and the orthodox Christian faith seems to arise more than anything from our want or perhaps our need to have things make sense to us.  Yes, in part, this is also driven by ideology and certainly affected by the ideology of the times in which truth is personal and temporary and defined by the judgment and declaration of the individual but it is more than this.  Perhaps other ages also had their problems and were also affected by the want to have God make sense to us and to understand Him but it is the driving force in so much today.

The truth is that many things that make perfect sense to us are also wrong.  Error is often the most reasonable of alternatives as we confront and attempt to make sense of the things before us and in us.  This is no less true for the things of God.  Reasoned religion is suspect because it not only has its source in us but is left to us to decide its truth or relevance.  Religion that is revealed to us is not given to us to understand or comprehend but to believe.  Could it be that the problem of our age (and perhaps those before us) is just that -- the problem of faith?

Ours is an age in which we question the most basic of the things that have been accepted and lauded by those before us -- from gender to desire to marriage to family to truth itself.  We want to know why about everything and reject the answers that conflict with our presuppositions.  While some would say that is exactly what is wrong with orthodox and Biblical Christianity, it is the other way around.  We begin as catholic Christians first with God's revelation and not with the Church's judgment over that revelation.  Of course, the Church proclaims and defends and even unpacks this revelation for the time but she is not given to know the mind of God except where God has disclosed His mind and she is not given to go past what God has said to bind the consciences of men.  Christianity is a religion of revelation in which reason must be the servant of the Word of God.

Who can know the mind of God or comprehend His ways?  God who makes all things perfect and then allows the freedom to reject His order and Himself...  God who posits a plan through the ages that unfolds painstakingly slow over the millenia until it ends with the Son of God in human flesh and blood...  God who saves not the worthy or those who might become worthy if they had the chance but sinners and enemies who must be granted even the Spirit to know and give amen to this grace... God who acts through means such as the Word passed down through the ages speaking with the voice of people or water that is the womb of new birth and everlasting life or absolution that erases what God cannot forget by the power of Christ's blood or bread and wine that taste of eternity in the flesh of Christ for the life of the world and His blood that cleanses us from sin... God who saves at every age and stage of life and gives to each the same but complete blessing of redemption and everlasting life...  God who is come to not to judge those who deserve only judgment but to save through His mercy...  God who raises the dead with bodies that seem like but not exactly like the bodies that are planted in the grave...  God who acts in time but is not subject to it and for whom every day is the present...  God who heals and relieves and even extends the lives of some but not others, who calls the death the enemy and yet allows a merciful death when suffering is great, and who blesses all but not equally with the gifts and graces of this mortal life...  I could go on and on.  The point is this.  It is not given to us to understand God but to believe in Him.

Faith is what we struggle with and it is faith that we lack.  We want a reasonable God who reasons with us but we have a God whose greatest mystery and blessing is His grace and mercy.  He is incomprehensible not simply because He is God and we are not.  It is rather because He acts like no one and nothing else on earth.  He refuses to be put in a box, to be predictable (except for His mercy), or to be controlled and yet this is surely behind our want and desire to understand Him and comprehend Him.  We have nothing to judge Him with except His own Word, His mighty acts of old by which He delivered His people, and His promises of the future that belongs to us precisely because He declares it to be so.  This was the mark of Abraham, of Moses, of Elijah, of John the Forerunner, and of the blessed apostles -- not their personal righteousness but faith credited to them as righteousness.  Let it so among us.  It is not given to us to understand God but to believe in Him and to walk in His ways.