Curiosity

Sheer Grace

Last week we discussed the limitations of our knowledge and the sheer grace of God who listens to us and answers our prayers. It really is amazing to fathom the kind of love and compassion which motivates the LORD to condescend to us for our good. We know that He has glorious eternal purposes in all the things that He is accomplishing in the universe but He chose to bless us in the course of those pursuits. Certainly we could imagine that God could have done things differently but the gifts and blessings as well as the trials and hardships that we are experiencing are for His glory but also our good.

Got Questions?

Because we are naturally inclined to want to learn, it causes us to be curious creatures. We therefore begin to formulate questions that need to be answered. In fact the whole discipline of scientific enquiry is really just about asking questions and seeking redundant answers. 

The biggest questions are those that pertain to the purpose and point of our lives and existence. These questions are about the metaphysical realities of ontology. Questions like “Who am I?”, “Where did we come from?”, and “‘where are we going?”. 

The point of these questions is greater than the relative answer for the individual because these philosophical realities extend out to everyone else. One of the problems that we have living in a time period infected with so much postmodern thinking is that many are accepting the premise that many different and even contradictory truth claims can be valid at the same time and in the same way.

Got Truth?

However, for most of us we want to know about the things that are affecting our lives. As we move away from the theoretical and back to the practical our concerns about politics, economics, and even religion are about what we need to think, believe, and do. It is at this point that we need to realize the centrality of having an epistemological standard. Epistemology is simply the study of how we know things. What I mean is that we need a source from which to get the truth and from which we can measure all other truth claims. 

Many people want to make this epistemological standard one’s own reasoning capabilities or one’s own experience or one’s own preferences. However these are all subjective standards, and as such, they cannot provide a sure and steady point for real knowledge. If we are going to have the ability to actually know anything then there must of necessity exist an external objective source of truth.

The Source

The necessary source is of course God and the epistemological standard is His revelation found in the 66 books comprising the canon of the Old and New Testaments. Just to be clear I am arguing that all true knowledge is dependent on the existence of God and His own revelation. Without Him no knowledge is even possible. 

The things that we call scientific facts belong to God who made the universe where those things are true. The things that we identify as inalienable rights belong to God who is the one with authority to grant those rights. The things that we know by nature to be universal moral truths belong to God who establishes justice as the display of His own righteousness.

God has given us a standard for truth, knowledge, and wisdom in His Word. The Bible is the standard for what we can know to be true, because it has been given to us by God to reveal truth to us (Deuteronomy 29:29). God gave us the Bible to bless us, direct us, correct us, instruct us, warn us, and even as the means to save us, through the preaching of the biblical gospel about Jesus Christ and the application of this truth to our hearts by the Holy Spirit (2 Timothy 3:14-17).

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