You Just Won’t Know

Are there limits? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Today, we wrap up Ecclesiastes 8:

When I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done on earth, how neither day nor night do one’s eyes see sleep, 17 then I saw all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out.

As I write this, I have been going through a book by Jerry Coyne, an atheist scientist, called Why Evolution Is True. Now I am open to evolution being true as it makes no difference to me, but if anything Coyne’s bad argumentation has made me more skeptical. Not only that, but a common refrain is “Why would a creator do things this way?” Whatever the notion is, it is somehow always more probable on evolution than on creationism. I always wonder where Coyne has access to the mind of God to know what He would or would not do. Such statements are not scientific but philosophical.

That being said, I’m not going to go after just atheists here. I’ve seen the same thing happen in other churches. I have seen it in Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox. Someone will get up and talk about events in the life of the church and they will say what God did. I am sitting there wondering “How do you know God did it?” He could have, but it looks like we are often way too quick to say that God has done something and those are really dangerous words to say.

The problem also is that it is said so casually. I remember a woman at the Post Office talking about a problem and then just saying, “And then God told me.” In Old Testament times, you would have been stoned if you said that and what followed turned out not to be true. I doubt we are treating that term with the same reverence today.

This passage reminds us that there are things that we will never know and we should not presume to know. Whatever topic we are studying, we will never fully explore the depths of that topic. There will always be unanswered questions, and that’s okay. There are whole websites dedicated to TV shows, movies, comic books, video games, etc., that are the works that we make and there are still questions about them. How much more the questions about the world that God made and about God Himself and His angels?

Yet that’s a good thing. Imagine if we could have access to all knowledge. How bored we would be! Ephesians 2 also tells us that God throughout the ages will be showing His great love for us. It is so immense that it will take an eternity to learn it, and we will never stop the journey.

Enjoy learning now. It will never end.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

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