There are plenty of things I don’t understand in the Bible. Some are routine, “how did He do that?!” impossibilities that my brain can’t wrap around. Others are bits that I cringe away from, like God saying, “That people group? Wipe them out. All of them. Women and children, too.”
The point is, I don’t have to understand (or like) all of the Bible. It wasn’t written for my pleasure. It was written for my sanctification. And anyhow, that’s why they call it faith, right? I don’t need to know God’s methods or motives for His words or actions. I am convicted that He is, indeed, Holy. This world belongs to Him. He created me to serve Him and experience the joy of walking in His calling upon my life for His own glory.
That’s good enough for me.
Most days.
But every once in a while, something pops up and it forces me to grapple with deeper theological issues that lead me on rabbit trails into the murkier spaces of my faith. When that happens, I find myself locked in word studies, or comparing verses, or digging into commentaries. The funny thing is, I rarely find true comfort there. Oh, I might uncover some nuance of etymology, find out how ancient cultures saw thus and such situation. I might even hear how a great thinker interprets my conundrum. But I won’t hear God’s voice peace as I fill my head with knowledge. That is the exclusive jurisdiction of the Holy Spirit, who reminds me— every time— faith, faith.
This is where I make a confession that will surprise literally no one: When it comes to war and aggression and defense, I might as well be a Quaker. I have my own personal Peace Testimony, and it is summed up quite succinctly in Matthew 5:39, Luke 6:29, and Matthew 26:52. Am I uncomfortable with those verses in certain circumstances? Oh, yeah. I read the same news stories you do. I want justice for broken babies, I want to wipe out those who behead and crucify believers, I want to go to sleep knowing that in the morning, I won’t see paratroopers in by back field, a la Red Dawn. But like the majority of Americans, I have the luxury of being extremely grateful for my freedoms, thanking those who sacrifice to give them to me… and still resting quietly in my personal convictions, without too much intellectual dissonance.
And then… Civil Air Patrol. More to the point, CAP and my own 14 year-old son, Cadet Airman Schwarzen.
Suddenly, all of those safe assumptions and comfortable platitudes have to be examined. Suddenly, those easy, quotable verses are worth looking at beyond face value. Suddenly, I need to pursue the study, so that the peace of faith will come.
Because this is parenting: the ultimate tool of sanctification. Think you know what you believe? Think you have God figured out? Think you know where you’re going, what your life will look like in five years?
God says, “Open your hands. Parenting will take you to way stations of faith where you’d never stop. Parenting will bring you closer to Me. Parenting will force you to trust, force you to surrender.”
It’s a lesson I have learned a hundred times, and will learn a hundred times more. God does not leave us in our comfortable places, safe in our head knowledge of Him, content in what we think we know. He stretches us, pries open our fingers, and pulls us deeper than we ever thought we would swim in the ocean of faith.
“Faith does not eliminate questions. But faith knows where to take them.” -Elisabeth Elliot