Knowing In Part
Knowing that I was scheduled to write this week’s devotion, I was rightly concerned when Pastor Ben announced that the focal passage is thought to be the most challenging to interpret in all of Scripture. Ugh. “It would be my turn”, I thought 🙄. Yet by the end of the sermon, after winding through complex explanations of prophetic interpretations of eschatology, I thought, “of course it’s my turn”. This is precisely the kind of passage that unraveled me in 2010, just as Pastor Ben shared regarding a parallel journey of his own.
In 2009, after being a Christian for 20 years, I decided to complete the bucket list item of reading through the entire Bible in a year. I followed a reading plan and took notes dutifully, amassing quite a collection of questions. I love learning and research, and above all, crossing things off a list, so I decided to take another pass through the Bible to address (and of course, fully resolve) each of my questions. The prospect of eliminating these snares to my faith was exhilarating, and I decided to create a daily blog to chronicle my efforts. Written from an apologetics perspective, others could follow along and marvel at how, with a little diligence, we could explain all the mysteries of the Bible! I had Google, after all. How could it fail?
The name of the blog was “chronologicalbiblein2010”, so when Pastor Ben mentioned that he’d decided to preach through the Bible in 2010, I felt a kinship. He further stated that the exercise challenged him to rethink many of the “man-made theological systems” he’d been taught. I would say the same thing happened to me that year, except that it spiraled into a crisis of faith.
It turns out, that when you open your Bible every day looking for discrepancies and controversy, you end up feeding yourself a steady diet of doubt. I worried those doubts were a bad indicator and that people with real faith didn’t have questions. My inability to make sense of everything I read, became a stumbling block to absorbing anything I read. My struggle was not with God, but with Scripture. Was it really His infallible word? If so, why were there any irreconcilable differences within its pages?
I came to realize that if I were able to understand Scripture, prophecy, and theology to perfection, and to the exclusion of all doubt, then it wouldn’t be a supernatural book. We must concede that much of what God has done and will do, is beyond our reasoning. Certainly, end times prophecy falls into that category. Just as Pastor Ben suggested regarding complex passages of Scripture, I learned to focus on the big things of which I am certain. I know God is real. I know He is responsible for creation. I know Jesus is God. I know he died and rose again. If I am unshakeable on these foundational things, I can tolerate a lack of clarity on others.
Though I don’t want to be guilty of the spiritual laziness that characterizes an unexamined faith, I have learned to live in the tension of not knowing everything. I think the question posed at the end of the sermon gets to the heart of it, “Is your certainty greater than your uncertainty?” If it is, it’s OK not to know whether the 70 weeks of Daniel are literal or figurative. It’s worth consideration and study, but God’s plan will unfold whether we see it coming or not.
“As for prophecies, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away… For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known”
1 Cor. 8-10, 12
~ Melissa Gibbs has been a member of LIFE Fellowship for over 10 years, is the mother to four boys and widow of the late JD Gibbs.