Thursday, January 06, 2005

Answer This, Epilogue

I asked first what is "romantic love", and received a few responses (my wife asked last night, "should I be concerned that you're asking that question?" - "no, dearest [wink]"). My second question was what is "the gospel" - and again, I got a few responses. Thanks for the feedback; I really appreciate it. I don't have enough readers probably to make this a full-blown experiment, and I'm not going to read into the answers beyond what was written.

Those two questions were prompted by something in Searching For God Knows What by Donald Miller. In Chapter Ten (p. 151ff), he wonders on paper why we think we've got God all figured out - we can talk about the gospel and salvation in four bullets inside a slick pamphlet - but if we were asked to describe something like romantic love, we'd start with metaphors and stories and "it's like this" and "like that" and we'd share what we know while still conveying that we know we're not completely doing the subject justice. Basically, we have figured out infinite God, but we can't fully comprehend something as comparatively basic as aspects of love.

I think all of the answers were right on, as much as we can get our finite minds around infinite subjects. But it made me think: how often do I think I've got God figured out? And how often does He wreck those conceptions, and how often does that tick me off in life?

3 Comments:

Blogger Porkchop said...

Since God is love, in essence, we cannot describe one without the other.

We may understand aspects of God, but then again, we may be like the blind men feeling the elephant.

6/1/05 10:51 AM  
Blogger Rick said...

of course you're right - we can't "understand" love apart from God, not in any real way. but what he's getting at is that maybe we've missed the point by reducing the gospel to a set of ideas to be believed rather than focusing on the love & relationship that's the main focus of the thing.

how's that? :)

6/1/05 12:25 PM  
Blogger esuckq said...

Absolutely. Believing in ideas is far too easy, actually doing love is so much harder but that's exactly the point. I find it increadibly hard to put all my eggs in the one basket of an idea, to think that I understand all the ideas in the gospel properly and at the same time retain an open, honest and critical mind. Ideas can be refuted- even by other Christians- genuine love can't. I think it takes a lot more faith to believe in a God you don't fully understand and who you admit you cannot always defend with ideas or arguement. You are left vunerable, all that defends you is actually whether you do love. Tough stuff- but then it always was. Take Job. Is that how you'd expect God to behave, or how you would expect a righteous man to behave towards God?
I'd reccomend a book called Choice, Desire and the Will of God by David Runcorn. It's awesome- I've never seen the heart of the Christian Faith exposed so honestly, bravely and inspireingly.
Right, one rant later and I'm spent... Goodnight.

6/1/05 8:54 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home