Today’s musing is sketchy and incomplete. No clever songs or quotes.
Let me suggest 3 ways of looking at knowledge, life and faith.
- Secret
Secrets are things we don’t know.
Much is beyond our understanding – computer-science, astro-physics, covid vaccine, the global economy…..
We have fake news and conspiracy theories. Truth may be there but it is hidden from us.
Much in life we could understand but we choose not to or haven’t yet learnt. VE day celebrations remind me that my Second World War history is incomplete.
Some approach faith this way. If God exists then he can’t be known or understood. Religion has distorted or displaced truth. Faith is irrelevant, unimportant or a low priority.
- Secure
Security is what we know, understand and are confident in.
Some have a trade, skill or interest that they have practiced and researched. It is second nature to them.
Some have a secure identity in material possessions, family or values.
Some have unchanging political views –Brexit, immigration, NHS, ‘all Americans’…
Some have a security in knowing what they believe. To every question there is an answer. It is unchanging faith in their unchanging god, religion, denomination – or atheism
It is the unmoving place they have chosen to be, the house they live in.
- Searching
Searching is the quest from the known to the unknown.
Key issues in life – love, death, sickness, creation, eternity, meaning and purpose don’t have easy answers.
Coronavirus-world raises ‘why?’ questions about the nature of God, suffering, and answered prayers.
Searchers are humble yet honest. They doesn’t have all of the answers. Knowledge is incomplete. They have to live with discomfort, uncertainty, contradiction and paradox.
It is the picture of the journey, of the pilgrim sometimes tired and jaded, sometimes energetic and determined, but always moving.
Musing on the musing:
This musing started from Proverbs 25:2
‘It is the glory of God to conceal a matter;
to search out a matter is the glory of kings.’
This musing a ‘work in progress’.
Let me know what you think – about the analysis, how you relate to it, stories to illustrate…
I’ve worked backward to here but I realise that I have read more than I thought of your very edifying and thought provoking musings. Thank you, Malcolm.
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