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Cullender Contentment.

In mathematics there is the concept of infinity. Familiarity with the word and its symbol (∞) gives the illusion that we understand what infinity is - but we don’t. Infinity inside our finite brains would fill our memory banks and make us crash! Worse still, mathematicians say that there are a variety of infinities, all of different sizes. There may even be an infinity of infinities. Weird or what?

Obviously the infinite and eternal nature of God is also something we can’t get our minds around. These examples - mathematical infinity and the unlimited nature of God - are things beyond the edge of our cullender. They are known in philosophy as ‘limit problems’. They are at or beyond the limit of our understanding. Sometimes we are big enough to ask the questions but not big enough to answer them!

So what are the holes in our Christian cullender? They are often labelled ‘mysteries’ - which they are. For example,

• how could Jesus have been both all man and all God at the same time?
• how can we both be chosen by God in Jesus before time began and yet have free will to accept the gospel or not?
• how can it be God’s wish that no-one should die but that all should turn to him and choose life when he already knows what each person will choose?

These are not so much limit problems as paradoxes, that is, they are opposing things which our minds cannot reconcile. To exist happily with both limit problems and paradoxes, for which there are no logical answers, we need faith. Some people may snort in disgust at this point but actually everyone has faith of a kind. If we define faith as ‘believing what we can’t prove’, then we have faith the chair won’t collapse under us when we sit down. It might do, but we don’t usually test it first, we just sit. If we don’t bother to think out all this stuff, then we have faith it’s ok to just muddle through life!

Those who believe in science and dismiss the spiritual world avoid the need for a religious faith - but they still only have a faith, even if they don’t realise it. They have blind faith in science, despite scientific limit problems and ‘holes in the cullender’. By closing their eyes to spiritual things they get half a world view to live by. The humanist and materialist have faith that they have arrived at the right conclusion - but they can’t prove their beliefs any more than a Buddhist can prove nirvana exists. The nature of our Christian faith will depends on our attitude to what God has revealed to mankind, on our view of spirituality and our attitude to the Bible.

There are lots of statements about faith in the Bible. God looks for faith in us. Even in pre-Jesus times it was written ‘the righteous shall live (have eternal life) through faith’ [Hab 2v4]. St Paul quotes this several times to early Christians and argues that ‘Abraham was counted righteous because of his faith’. Jesus, during his earthly ministry, said things like: ‘Have faith in God and have faith in me…’ [John 14v1] and ‘Whoever believes (has faith) in me, even though they die, will live.’ [John 11v25].

An old children’s song about God puts it well. He’s got the whole cullender in his hands!

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