Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it. (Psalm 139:6 ESV)
Learning and Faith
Dr. Nicholas Wolterstorff might be the smartest man I know. He was the father of a kindergarten elementary school classmate of mine. Dinner at the Wolterstorffs was an amazing thing. The family would eat chicken, carrots, and mashed potatoes like any other family.
But the conversation was out of this world.
I remember discussions about time, time travel, quantum theory and mechanics, the dangers of democracy, the benefits of manned space-flight, the best methods to raise healthy turnips, and how high to pull one’s socks.
That man knew something about everything. And my young brain absorbed it alongside the potatoes.
But Dr. Wolterstorff’s great brain was a dull tic-tac-toe board compared to God’s knowledge.
And so God helps us. He gives us the gift of faith until our brains grow big enough to comprehend everything He knows.
Rather than opposing concepts, faith and reason go hand in hand. The true things God grants us to know by faith now, we will know by reason and experience later. The true things that we have experienced, or deduced, no longer need faith for us to know.
Later on in Psalm 139, the Psalmist reminds us why we yearn for both faith and reason. We want to know God’s thoughts. He writes, “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.” (Psalm 139:16, 17 ESV)
Take the Faith God grants us.