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Understanding the Work of God

             As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things. (Ecclesiastes 11:5)

At the time this was written, how a body is formed in the womb was a mystery to at least 99% of the people in the world. In spite of advances in science and claims of knowledge, the percentage is probably still correct. Oh, we may cite such things as germinal stage, embryonic stage, and fetal stage, or claim that something doesn’t happen until week Q, but even much of that involves arbitrary distinctions and nearly “magical” handwaving.

This is the same problem with those scientific “experts” who so often issue dire warnings about the environment. Much of what we think we understand simply scratches the surface, yet they pronounce that all matters are clearly understood, and their list of actions is the only possible solution. But I have seen “scientific” solutions to ecological problems cause greater problems than they solved.

If this is true of our understanding of the universe, we should be cautious in our claims of knowledge of God. Curiously, the individuals who seem to receive great attention in their pronouncements about God tend to be atheists and “scientists.” Stephen Hawkings, a brilliant scientist, was also a good marketer. He knew that if he used the word “God” in the title of his books, they’d sell. Richard Dawkins, likewise, found it much more profitable to champion evolutionary biology than to study and teach it.  Now, astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson is taking the same profitable course.

          Christians are sometimes just as bad, claiming to know the mind of God when they don’t. They sometimes also claim to not know the mind of God about matters that God has made clear in Scripture. Jesus told His disciples plainly that even some of those who did great things in Jesus’ name may be strangers to Him (Matthew 7:21-23.)

          We can’t understand God fully and would be foolish to say that we do. However, we can understand Him in part because He has given us His Spirit, and we would be foolish to say we can’t.

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