The more I know, the less I know

If you have everything figured out, don’t bother to read any further. Just tell everyone who asks that you didn’t need to read this column. There are much better uses of your time.

If, on the other hand, you still sometimes wonder if you really do have much grasp on reality, welcome to humanity! Even Bishop N.T. Wright, one of the leading theologians of our time, tells his students that he is wrong one-third of the time; he just never knows which third it is!

I sometimes provoke discussion on controversial topics by starting with the claim that “You ought to agree with me on this, because I am right!” On many of these same topics, I know my own understanding has changed over the years, sometimes even reversed itself. I handle this by saying “I am just more right now than I used to be.’

Honestly, one really can’t help but think one is right; it is impossible to make a claim about what one believes and believe it to be wrong at the same time. Therefore, my claims to “rightness” are really not egotistical at all, but merely an admission that I am, in fact, thinking.

The more I grow as a Christian, though, the more I realize I have yet to learn. Sometimes when I learn new things they fit well with what I have already come to know. Sometimes, though, learning new things tears down matters and patterns of belief that I thought were settled.

For the foreseeable future, I will be preaching Sunday mornings on paradoxes of the Christian faith. There are many things we don’t, won’t, and can’t entirely figure out. This used to concern me. Now I am ok with it, but I cannot rest from trying.

If there is one thing I know for sure, it is that we need one another to get things figured out.