25 April 2023
All I really know for sure are my convictions. They are a moving target as I learn more and grow to trust them.
It cannot be quantified, but as a figure of speech I've said that half of your covenant obedience is written in your convictions. There are times when your best understanding of God's Word and your convictions will appear to disagree. Your duty to Christ is to live with that tension. The Word of God is not some objective statement of truth; it's a record of God at work in His people. There is very little in the Bible that is cut-n-dried. That's because the final edition of God's Word of revelation was a Person, not a body of knowledge and ideas.
God very specifically avoided literalism in revelation. He drew out of Ur a man who spoke a non-literal language, though it was less formal and ritualistic than most other languages in use at that time and place. Still, the whole basis for what became biblical Hebrew/Aramaic was indicative, not descriptive. That means it pointed the way to things you should contemplate and consider, but did not contain the answers in the words.
This is the setting God built in which He would reveal Himself. It was meant to convey the character of a Person, not a body of knowledge. It's not for your head, but your heart. It's not facts, but moral truth. The ancient Hebrew people would snicker at the notion of propositional truth. They would regard that as juvenile, a childlike obsession with concrete reasoning, when ultimate Truth was a matter of the relationship between persons.
The whole point of thinking and speaking is to draw us closer to our Maker.
Of course, you should realize that God is the ultimate Source of all things, and that by our very mortal human nature, the burden is upon us to reach out to Him. Justice calls for us to move, not Him. Yet, because of the hopelessness of our situation, He moved to reach out to us. But once that first contact is made, we must voluntarily submit every step of the way. Dragging along a fleshly nature that refuses all of this makes it a big job.
Thus, we are evermore learning more about God. And the more we learn, the more we understand ourselves. It's the nature of the process itself that makes us more readily hear from our convictions. Our convictions are the character of God written on our eternal natures. It is unique to each individual. We can debate with others what the Bible says to us, but the revelation God placed in our convictions are between us and Him alone. No human or human agency has any business telling us what our convictions should say.
It's all very personal. The question is not what you are or what you should do, but who you are in God's eyes. If there is one goal I can pin down for this blog, it is getting you acquainted with your own convictions. The only point in sharing mine is to provoke you to explore your own. I know from experience that trying to clarify what the Bible says to us will awaken parts of your convictions that you had not previously encountered. It's not a question of whether we agree, but whether your own convictions can use what I share. You become accountable to God for having an awareness of what He wants from you because you get to bounce my ideas off your own convictions.
The Radix Fidem way targets an understanding of the process, not the answers God gives you.
My convictions are not yours. The only reason you would want to continue reading this blog is that God uses this writing to draw you closer to Him. It's not meant to help everyone, only those few whom God has called to something that is close enough that you are comfortable with my blather. I will never ask you to embrace my ideas. I'll ask you to check your own convictions.
Yeah, this is leading somewhere, but I don't feel right going there until I've made it clear why I'm going.
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