Confessions of an Ignoramus...Continued from page 2

But what about those tough questions like: Why did an all-powerful God allow evil in the world?  Why does God allow babies to die?  Why does God allow war?  Honestly, I don’t know.  I’m an ignoramus. 

God has given us truth in the Scriptures that helps us with some broad answers, but the deep essence of why is beyond finite human understanding.  That leads us to ask . . .

2. What Can We Know?

While all is not known, some things are “revealed.”  The word means “to uncover.”  A full view of reality is not naturally available to us, but God has graciously pulled back the veil to let us peer in at part of it.  These things are ours.  God has given them to us.

We do well, however, to remember Mark Twain’s oft quoted statement: “It’s not the things in the Bible that I don’t understand that bother me, it’s the things that I do understand that bother me.”  Indeed, this has some profound implications. 

It means that what we do know has been given to us.  We didn’t scratch and claw our way into it.  Human ingenuity didn’t wrestle the answer away from mystery.  It also intimates that someone else set the agenda for what we know.  Since what we do know has been given to us, we should humble ourselves before the One who alone knows all things and has graciously given us this thimble-full of knowledge about reality.

A philosopher might say, “If I cannot possess all knowledge then I cannot know if I possess any knowledge!”¹ One day I might discover something in the realm of what I do not yet know that will prove what I think I already know is inaccurate.

Only one of two things can keep me from despair.  One, I must know all facts.  But anyone who claims such a thing proves he’s an ignoramus, because he doesn’t even know he doesn’t know everything!  Second, I must know someone who does know all the facts.  This is precisely the case with God and His Word.  God knows . . . and He is good, loving, benevolent, wise, just, gracious and committed to my ultimate good!  As Wayne Grudem points out, in such a case we can be more certain of the facts that Scripture presents than the so-called “facts” gained from other sources.

So what are the “things revealed”?  God through Moses was reaffirming the revealed will of God.  God has revealed the requirements for walking with Him.  God does not show us all the future holds, but He has shown us what’s necessary to walk with Him through that future.  We have a Bible full of promises.  We can know that God will keep them and conduct Himself accordingly.  The Israelites didn’t know how God would give them the Promised Land nor how He would enable them to defeat the peoples of the land, they just knew He would and that, as they took one step of obedience, He’d reveal the next step.