As we’ve seen, we can learn about God from nature and from studying what he has revealed about himself in the Bible. If we put these pieces together, we can gain a considerable understanding of who God is and who we are in relationship to him.
But let’s face it: there’s a lot more we’d like to know.
Why does God allow Satan to have as much influence as he does?
Why does God heal some people and not others?
Why doesn’t God let everyone live to at least adulthood?
Why is God allowing so much time before Jesus returns?
These are just a few of the questions I’d personally like answers to. I’ve often wished the Bible were written more like a “Frequently Asked Questions” (FAQ) section on a website—a resource where we could ask any and all questions and receive answers that satisfy our every curiosity. In my humble opinion, a comprehensive life FAQ would have been an excellent choice for structuring God’s Word. Apparently, however, there must be a good reason why God didn’t give us such a thing, because if that would have been best for us, he would have done so. Still, on a day-to-day basis, it can be frustrating that so many answers are out of our reach. We can’t help but wonder why God didn’t reveal more.
We’ll close part 3 by looking at why—despite all God chose to reveal about himself in nature and in the Bible—there’s still so much we just don’t know.
The Bible Tells Us What We Need to Know
When a book has a blank page, we conclude one of two things: (1) there was a printing error, or (2) the author intended to leave the page blank. Because seeing a blank page can lead to reader confusion, publishers sometimes print the words “This page intentionally left blank.” The answers God hasn’t given us are, in a sense, like blank pages in the Bible. But God is perfect, so we don’t have to wonder if our incomplete knowledge is a “printing error” on God’s part. When we’re faced with uncertain or missing answers, we can be confident that those pages were intentionally left blank.
While this may seem obvious (of course a perfect God didn’t mess up!), we often don’t consider the implication: God must have given us all the written revelation we need. If we truly needed more, that would imply God erred in some way. A perfect God cannot err. We may want more, but we do not need more.
But what exactly is the need that the Bible meets? The answer lies in 2 Timothy 3:15–17:
From infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
In other words, the Bible teaches us what we need to know for salvation (“make you wise for salvation”) and for how to live godly lives (“equipped for every good work”). This doesn’t mean our spiritual lives can’t benefit from other resources but rather that we don’t need any additional written revelation from God himself.
Many of us would still reply, “Great! We have what we need! But why can’t we have more of what we want?” I’m sure God has many reasons for not satisfying more of our intellectual curiosity, but two are especially important: (1) we’re not capable of knowing all we want to know, and (2) it wouldn’t be good for us to know all we want to know.
Let’s explore these two points.
We’re Not Capable of Knowing All We Want to Know
Time for a reality check. We all know that God is God and we are not. But we can’t even begin to understand the great chasm of perspective that exists between God and humankind.
Take my question about why God heals some and not others. In my own little mind, I think God could have provided some kind of evaluation matrix in the Bible to explain how he decides whom to heal. In reality, of course, it’s just not that simple. There’s no way God could explain his thoughts to us. To know why God didn’t heal any given individual, we would have to have God’s full perspective—a comprehensive knowledge of the past, the present, and the future, as well as a complete understanding of how all possible life spans for a person would impact all other people’s lives and ultimately the course of history.
Those are too many wheels for our wheelhouse.
Without the actual mind of God, there are many things we can’t possibly begin to understand. But beyond that, it wouldn’t be good for us to know all we want to know.
It Wouldn’t Be Good for Us to Know All We Want to Know
I’m going to be honest with you. I do not like this point. On a prideful level, it annoys me. Can’t I decide for myself whether something’s important for me to know? Don’t lump me in with everyone else! Just put all the detail in the Bible and let individuals sort out what they care about! In other words, I accept this point as well as children accept the point that they can’t eat candy all day because parents know what’s best, and parents know candy isn’t good for them.
I still want my candy.
That said, I’ll try to be a bit more spiritually mature for the moment and flush out this important point: not having all the answers we’d like teaches us to depend on and grow in our relationship with God.
For one thing, our lack of answers allows us to depend humbly on God rather than depend pridefully on ourselves. We were created in God’s image, but we weren’t created to be God. Not knowing everything—and knowing that God does—should remind us that we must “trust in the LORD with all [our] heart and lean not on [our] own understanding” (Prov. 3:5).
In addition, our lack of answers requires us to seek God through prayer. If we knew everything (or even just a lot more than we do), we would have little need to talk to God. But it’s through prayer that we experience a living, breathing relationship with our Creator, the very relationship for which we were made.
Finally, when we internalize that God has given us all we need to know, we thirst for his Word. Instead of focusing on what God hasn’t said, we focus on understanding everything he has said. These are the words the Creator of the universe chose for us to have! That makes them so very special, so very precious, and so very important to understand. If we fully appreciate this idea, it will forever change our view of the Bible and what it means that it’s God’s Word.
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