Can we have faith in God if we want to know everything?

I was just beginning to write about – no kidding – in the beginning. I’m getting stuff from both a Jewish and Christian point of view. And then it hit me. Can we have faith in God if we want to know everything? Can we reach a point where our need to know everything brings us to a point where faith means little to nothing?

It’s not like we’ll actually know everything. Although, we might feel like we do.

Some really smart people, Steven Hawking comes to mind, set out to “know” God, and end up deciding there is no God.

I think that’s more a failure on their part to realize what “knowing” God is about.

Ultimately, we can end up like the guy in the drawing.

Old. Books and computers all over. A cup of coffee, untouched. Tired.

And so focused on the books, that he doesn’t see God. Forget about knowing God. He knows little to nothing of God’s creation. That includes God’s most important creation. People. Including, if he took the time to look in the mirror, the guy this tired old man would see.

But he can’t. He’s too busy trying to find God to even appreciate what God has done.

Even the knowledge he has managed to gain is of no value. He doesn’t use it. He doesn’t share it. It’ll die with him.

And he probably still won’t know God. Even when it’s too late.

If we want to know everything

It was easy to write that intro. It was hard to write that intro too.

You see, it could’ve been me. It was me, for a time. It’s not anymore. Thank God.

There’s a problem with wanting to know everything. We can’t.

When I was in college, I was totally convinced that my brain was full. I learned everything I could. There just wasn’t any more room.

Then, I remembered that thing about how each side of the brain controls the other side of the body. I figured, since I was right-handed, I was underutilizing the left side of my brain. So I learned to write left-handed.

It worked! There was more room in my brain. I was learning again. So I started doing other things with my left hand as well. Of course, it’s more likely that I started learning again because somewhere in learning to write left-handed I got some much needed rest. But hey – college kids do weird things.

Seriously though, after doing more stuff left-handed there was so much more I could learn. I haven’t had another instance of my brain being full since then. Sorry – just kidding. The right side of my brain can’t be that much bigger. It must be something else.

After college, I went on to a totally different work path that used pretty much nothing of my education/degrees I spent all that time and effort on. I learned so much about computers. Started with punch cards, which most of you probably never heard of, and am still learning, including how to do this site.

In between, I spend more than ten years in charge of all IT infrastructure for a University. Thousands of computers. Several mainframes, especially early on. Hundreds and hundreds of wireless access points. Designed security for all that. Never stopped learning. Never got tired of learning.

Now? Now I’m into God. More than ever. At first, wanting to know everything. And, not surprisingly, knowing a lot.

But, did I know God?

There’s a difference between knowing about someone/something and actually knowing someone.

I can say that for sure. I know that.

Because God kind of did something I asked Him to do. Hit me over the head with a 2 by 4. You know – a piece of lumber, 2″ by 4″ by several feet? I was into woodworking too. That was my reference point. I wasn’t getting something I knew God was trying to tell me. I wanted to know what it was. So I told Him my head was too thick, and He’d just have to hit me with a (metaphorical) 2×4 to get through my skull.

He did. Several times. A couple surgeries to repair “getting older”. Another surgery for a staph infection from one of the previous surgeries, probably. Yet another surgery to remove cancer. But it wasn’t entirely successful, so there’s the radiation treatment that just ended. Who knows what’s coming? I may find out in a couple months from now (it’s currently June 2023) when I get the initial results from the radiation.

I’d say the moral there is to be careful what you ask for.

But you’d probably misunderstand. I’m glad I asked. It’s not all the studying that got me to know God. It’s all those medical problems. Plus five really special and awesome four-legged kids (aka dogs), two of whom also had severe medical problems (cancer and kidney failure).

If it wasn’t for those things, and my wife who told me I needed application for my knowledge “of God” to really know God and to be able to teach other people to know God.

So yeah – I do know what I’m talking about here.

If you want to know, God, sure – study, learn, all that stuff.

But then, like Peter, ask God to call you out of the boat and go walk on water into the storms. ‘Cause that’s where we get to know God. In the storms. Where we have no choice but to rely on Him.

You see, He’s here all the time.

But we aren’t We’re too busy with our own stuff.

And for some of us, many of us maybe, even when our thing is to know God, all we do is learn stuff about Him.

But we don’t know Him. We’re the old guy in the drawing.

But what we really should be is Peter, out in the water.

The point of – Can we have faith in God if we want to know everything?

Ok. So what’s the point? Why ask, can we have faith in God if we want to know everything?

Because, after all this, I don’t think we can. There’s a reason the Bible talks about faith. There’s a reason faith is required.

And yes, I do mean faith. Not “belief”, because most of us don’t even know what the word meant when the Hebrew/Greek words we read as “believe” back in the day when Jesus and His Apostles used them.

You see, here’s what faith is, according to the Bible.

There’s a section the NIV titles, “By Faith”. It was written, not for us today, but for Jews in the early days of the new church we now call Christianity. I bring it up because it is about faith, but also because it was written for Jews. Pretty much everything in the New Testament was written by Jews.

Here it is, with some thoughts about it.

By Faith

Heb 11:1 Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. 2 This is what the ancients were commended for.

This is one of the key verses on faith. What we “hope” for and we “do not see”.

But that hope is more certain than hope is generally considered today. Even don’t see is stronger, because (a) we can see more now than they could with advanced technology and (b) the “leap” of faith between what we can see and what we hope/believe exists is smaller than before.

Oddly, this doesn’t seem to lead to increased faith. It’s like the more we see, the more we think we know, and the less we need faith, and then we reach a point where we think we don’t need God either.

Heb 11:3 By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

Creation, the topic of this verse, is what got me to write this piece.

I was on the very first verse, In the beginning God created …, and realized I needed an intro with this kind of stuff in it. I also realized the topic was too important to be “buried” in a piece on Gen 1:1. It needed to stand alone, so it could be referenced in other places as well. And so, there it is.

I’ll add a link to In the beginning God said … when it’s done.

The remainder of the passage contains many examples from the Old Testament.

The point is that faith used to be a way of life. At least, it was for those who followed God.

Sure, they weren’t 100% successful. That’s well documented in the Bible. as well as the successes.

But these days, I often wonder, do we walk by faith? Even sadder, I often feel that we do walk by faith, but by faith in ourselves, or other people, or other ideas. But not by faith in God.

Conclusion – Can we have faith in God if we want to know everything?

Ultimately, I get the feeling that, for too many people, because we want to know everything, and believe we can know everything, that there’s no way we can have faith in God.

We seem to have come to believe the lie from the serpent in Genesis.

The Fall of Man

Ge 3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

Ge 3:2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ”

Ge 3:4 “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Ge 3:6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

…

But now, even though we read the outcome, we also believe we can change that outcome. We don’t just think we have become like God. We think we’re greater than God. That somehow, God’s going to change to affirm, and even accept, what we have become.

Even though the end has already been written, we think we can change it.

In the Old Testament, God often said things like I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people.

In the New Testament at the end of the section about the seven woes, Jesus said:

Seven Woes

23:1-7 pp — Mk 12:38, 39; Lk 20:45, 46
23:37-39 pp — Lk 13:34, 35

…

Mt 23:37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. 38 Look, your house is left to you desolate. 39 For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’’”

All we have to do is turn back to God. But it’s like we prefer the lie.

It’s hard to return. It means we have to admit we don’t know everything. That we can’t learn everything. And that we do need help.

And yet, it’s the only way to know God. Because it’s the only way to have faith.

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