Step 7 - Though He Slay Me

Doubting Doubt

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The Process

Step 6 

The Pot and the Kettle

  At this time, I will bring to your attention that I have constructed this essay such that it is more an account of a process that I went through than it is a mere presentation of arguments in a case.  I might say that this essay is something of a journal.

  What do I mean?  Let me bring some things back for your recollection:

  In the section “Step 1 - The Dawn of a Process,” near the beginning of this essay, the very first sentence was, “How do I lay this all out?”  From there I went on to describe what prompted me to study the question of whether or not John the Baptist doubted.  The reader may have noticed that I spent more words on describing the steps that I followed than I did to describe the actual alternative proposal itself.

  Next, I recounted what instigated my study of Mark 3:20-21 regarding whether or not Mary doubted.  Before going on to that I repeated what I had said in my Preface, that this study was teaching me something more important than the subject I started with, and I said,

  … if it is to teach you this same message, perhaps I should continue to relate to you how my study progressed.

 

   After that I went to considerable length to answer the question, “What about Mary?”  Even that examination was done in a step-by-step manner.

  Throughout all of the process I tried to maintain certain principles for accomplishing an organized study:

-      I made a brief proposal for an explanation of how it might be possible that John the Baptist did not doubt.

-      I collected as much data as I could to propose an explanation of how it might be possible that Mary did not think that Jesus was out of His mind.

-      I applied that data to every facet of the selected passages of scripture that I could think of and examined each one from as many angles as I could.

-      I took every competing claim that either I was confronted with or anticipated that I could be confronted with and evaluated their merits.

-      I presented alternatives for explanations while maintaining identical readings of the scripture used by competing claims.

-      I avoided speculation as much as possible and I believe I was successful at keeping any speculation at all down to very insignificant levels.

  At the end of the examinations I used the passage from Luke 22:61 to suggest that a double-standard seemed to be influencing our perception.  I suggested that the source of that influence on our perception was explained by the Doctrine of Total Depravity.  I acknowledged that I too was subject to the effects described by the Doctrine of Total Depravity.

  That’s not all.  At various points I intentionally placed subtle emphasis on this question:  “Why?”  I intentionally made subtle references to a few occasions where I was asking myself, “Why?  Why did such and such person do this or that?  Why did so and so not do something?”

  I must say, if I didn’t learn anything else from doing this study, I hope I have learned the very significant hazard of neglecting to take into account the factor of missing information.  Missing information can make all the difference in the world.  It can make all the difference in the world as to whether or not John the Baptist doubted.  It can make all the difference in the world as to whether or not Mary thought Jesus was crazy.

  The fact that we so easily fail to take into account the missing information factor is an indication of something that should concern us all.  If we should fix the words of the Lord on our hands and our foreheads and write them on our doorframes and on our gates (as it says in Deut. 11:18-19), maybe we also need to include the words, “Don’t forget to consider missing information.”  If we knew what we don’t know who knows but that all of reality would change for us.

  And now we are really getting somewhere!

  “If we knew what we don’t know …”  Does that sound familiar?

Look:

- Neither you nor I really know why John the Baptist told his two disciples to go ask Jesus the question that they did, do we?  So why do we say that we do know … period?

- Neither you nor I really know why the Bible says that Jesus’ family said that He was out of His mind, do we?  So why do we say that we do know … period?

  I don’t really know why my Sunday School class teacher did not reply to my e-mail question, do I?

  I don’t really know why Darrell Bock didn’t answer me, do I?

  Now this is really, really important …

  Apart from the knowledge of the presence of sin in the world, I can’t explain a lot of things, and neither can you.

  I don’t know why Japan was hit by a tsunami.  I don’t know why Haiti and Afghanistan were hit by earthquakes.  I don’t know why there is terrible drought, famine and oppression in East Africa.  I don’t know why people are so often hurt by flood, fire, violence and abuse.

  I don’t know why my wife had to die of breast cancer.

 

  “What are you saying, Monty?  Are you saying that we can’t know anything in the Bible?

  No!  I’m saying that this is exactly what the Bible is telling us; it’s exactly what God wants us to know.  And I’m saying that we have to figure in what the whole Bible is telling us, and not just jump to strained conclusions based on tidbits.  The whole Bible has been saying this to us.  Incidentally, I might even argue that God intentionally put certain difficult episodes in His Word expressly to prompt us to “seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him” (Acts 17:27) so that we would come to know Him better and better.

  Think of it this way:  What does the Bible tell us?  The Bible tells us about God, His nature and character.  The Bible tells us about man and his condition.  The Bible tells us about man’s alienation from his Creator.  The Bible tells us about sin, its origin and effects on creation.  And there’s nothing that the Bible tells us more about than the Lord Jesus Christ.

  There is a concept in Christian philosophy that says that you cannot separate Jesus from the things of Jesus.  For example, you cannot say, “I believe in Jesus but I do not think that John the Baptist was a divinely appointed prophet.”  If you say you believe in Jesus you can’t say that because Jesus believed it (Matt. 11:11, Luke 7:28).

  If you take what the Bible says about Jesus, you have to take all that goes with Him. – who He was, what He believed and the things He said.  And Jesus said,

  … it is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. (Acts 1:7 NIV)

 

  What does this make us think of?

  Missing information!

  If we only knew what we don’t know – my, how different everything would be!  And this is exactly what the Bible is telling us.

  That’s the most amazing thing about the Book of Job.  What is Job’s most burning question?  “Why?!”  What are Zophar, Bildad and Eliphaz trying to explain to Job?  “Why!”  What answer does God give Job?  None!  Instead, God gives Job the most amazing illustration of how it is that neither Job, nor Zophar, Bildad, Eliphaz, you or I or anyone else are ever going to know why God …

  Why God what?

  What is thy servant, that thou shouldest look upon such a dead dog as I am? (2 Sam. 9:8 KJV)

 

  That’s what.  Why does God love us?  Why did Jesus die for me?  Why?  Because For God so loved the world …  But I don’t know why.

  But I still haven’t arrived at the most important thing for us to learn from this study.

  We cannot answer the question ‘Why?’ about a lot of things.  Not only that, we cannot answer the question ‘Why’ about the most important thing – God’s love for us.  And that is the most important thing.

  Remember, I asked the reader, a few paragraphs earlier, to consider that we have to figure in what the whole Bible is telling us.  Why? (That was a trick question!)  Look at what the Bible has been trying to tell us ever since the very beginning.  Look at Genesis 2:16, 17 –

  ¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; ¹⁷ but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” (NIV)

 

  The Bible doesn’t specifically tell us ‘why,’ but we learn why by reading the whole Bible.  It is when we don’t know the whys of our situations that counts most of all.  It is when we don’t know ‘why’ that we have nothing left to lean on than the Rock of Ages.  This is faith.  This is the caliber of faith that surpasses everything.  This is the kind of faith that says, “Even when things look the worst, even when it seems ‘Everything is against me!’ (Gen. 42:36) and we look to God and cry ‘Why?!’ …

 

 ‘Yet will I trust.’ (Job 13:15).”

 

  This is the kind of faith that can’t be explained apart from a saving knowledge of God.  This is the only thing God ever asked of us from the very beginning – “Just trust Me.”

  Go ahead – try and answer why John the Baptist sent messengers to ask Jesus if He was the one they had expected.  Go ahead and try to answer why in the world the Bible said that Jesus’ family said “He is out of His mind.”  Go ahead and try.  And I say it to myself as much as to anyone else, that I hope that we won’t be overly confident in our answers to these things.

  Because, in the end, those are not the important things.  At the end of the day we will just find that

 God has so designed us such that there will be those times when we just don’t know.

  And you know what I find amazing?  I mean really, really amazing?  That’s exactly the answer that my pastor gave to me in just those few, short words, and there’s not one bit of speculation about it.  I’ll bet he didn’t even know it.

  Those were the words of my (former) pastor all the way back when this first started.  And it took me all this to say what he said in one short little sentence!