troof

There's a lot of intellectual thought about the church going around these days. When I say 'intellectual thought,' I don't mean to imply that past thinkers on theology have been unintelligent, I just mean that God seems to be interpreted more in a logical, philosophical, intellectual way by a lot of friends of mine. (I'm sure that's gone on in every generation, and it hasn't just started, but I'm just now seeing it more prevelantly) And I think that's great, to a degree.

One question I've had recently though is whether or not he's being made too much into this creation that's based on our own intellect. I mean, we don't get to create who he is. He is who he is. So where is the line drawn between, "open to interpretation," and "truth." There is a truth to who God is, so that inherently means that whatever that truth is, some of us are wrong about it. And I know that I won't ever fully understand WHO God is while I'm alive with my little tiny brain, so I don't want to come across as though I'm waiting for that eureka moment when AHA! That's it! I know!

God is a lot of things. He is love, unchanging, eternal, faithful, just, etc. But our definitions of some of these words don't always match up with how God "behaves," what with wars, holocausts, crappy/dysfunctional family lives, and on and on, because we are often unable to see the big picture. Or rather we're unwilling.

One of my biggest prayers has been that I would be open to God's truth, whether it lines up with what I've believed my entire life or not. Whatever it is, I want to believe it and be open to it. I want to be humble to the fact that God's truth can mean something that makes me nervous or sad or angry. My biggest concern is that I don't want God to become something to me that I've intellectualized into existing as I want him to be. I don't want to think that I've got it figured out at 24 and that people who are older than me don't have anything valuable to say about him. I do want to hear God's voice actively in my life, and I want what's important to him to be important to me.

And that, my friends, is the troof.

p.s.
in·tel·lec·tu·al·ize:
1 : to give rational form or content to
2 : to avoid conscious recognition of the emotional basis of (an act or feeling) by substituting a superficially plausible explanation

YOINK!