by Steven Berringer
an article originally published by Always Ready Ministries
A Sunday School teacher was observing the young children in her class as they drew pictures. She saw one little boy’s picture and asked him what it was. “I’m drawing a picture of God,” he said. “But no one knows what God looks like,” the teacher responded. “Well,” the boy replied, “people will now!”
This or that? Mine or yours? Go or stay? We love firm answers and clear information—definitive ideas that give us a solid foundation and offer clear direction. From them we derive security. We know where we stand. This approach is right with regard to a great many matters, but with some ideas a straightforward black or white, right or wrong mind-set brings us to disappointment, frustration, and answers that seem strangely out-of-place.
Because we feel comfortable in “Either-ors-ville” rather than “Both-ands-boro” and want to land on “solid ground,” we tend to see a great many issues as 100 percent one way or 100 percent the other. Without thinking an issue completely through, we may throw balance out the window when we need to give it serious consideration.
Don’t misunderstand. Absolute truth exists, and so do right and wrong. A person can have a right standing with God only through Christ. God’s commands reflect His own holy character as well as the right way to live, and failing to respond accordingly brings adverse consequences. In referring to the need for balance, I’m not speaking of matters that are clear-cut and firm.
Some truths are more complicated than others. When we oversimplify a complicated issue, we may see those who disagree with us as totally wrong when they may have an insight we need to consider. Let’s not “burn anyone at the stake” for disagreeing with us over an issue where truth exists on a continuum. In some cases, truth may even exist in each of two answers that appear to be diametrically opposed to each other. The discipline of theology offers many such examples.
Here is a case in point: Can divine sovereignty and human freedom coexist? The one who says yes isn’t necessarily crazy or wrong. Yet we create camps such as Calvinists and Arminians, and we label people around us—even our friends—according to which camp they “live in.” This thinking even influences how we relate to people. Believing we are right, we refuse to read anything from the “other side.” Sometimes we even entertain the idea that “those people” must be heretics.
Be careful! After you’ve arrived in “Either-ors-ville” and dug in your heels, along comes some young idealistic thinker to challenge your perspective. He or she climbs up onto the platform in the public square and asks, “Maybe its both?”
Again, hear me clearly. People do not create truth; they discover it. God is so big, however, that when we explore Him and His ways, we find a good many sets of antitheses—two opposing, or apparently contradictory, ideas or concepts—sitting apart from each other yet equally true. This should not surprise us. God is infinite. Some realities about Him, His nature, and His ways will challenge and confound us.
How can two apparently opposite ideas both be true? Perhaps an illustration will help. Imagine, as best you can, the hand of God holding one end of a net and the “hand” of human free will holding the other end. The world as we know it rests on the net, upheld by the tension in the middle. No, we’re not equal to God, but He has created us in His image. If an infinite God created people, the world, and reality itself; is it so crazy to believe that ideas we initially thought of as contradictory actually might be building blocks He has placed in the same wall?
If there really is an infinite God who created people, the world, and reality itself; is it so crazy to believe that ideas we initially thought of as contradictory actually might be building blocks He has placed in the same wall?
When considering theology—not ethics—keep this question in mind. Fewer hills are worth dying on than we tend to believe. We serve a God bigger than reality itself, an omnipotent and loving Creator who, in a surprising number of areas, brings together concepts that at first glance appear incompatible. In these areas, diversity, but not animosity, can and even should exist in the perspectives held by God’s people. And in all things, love.
This isn’t chaos, but balance—and it gives us a much clearer picture of God, His relationship to His creation, and His relationships with members of the human family.
Don’t die on just any hill.
November 3, 2018
Access other articles published by Always Ready Ministries here.
Copyright © 2018 by Always Ready Ministries. All rights reserved.