Saved by Grace...Which is Not of Yourselves

I've been thinking about Ephesians 2:8-9 a lot lately. I think we're reading it wrong - and the equation presented there has consequently been misunderstood.

"But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ, and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the boundless riches of His grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them." - Ephesians 2:4-10 NASB

I think Paul is commenting on two separate things here - grace and faith, not equating the two, and the order of the language he uses is what ultimately confuses. In checking several versions of Ephesians 2:8, some of them use a comma as in "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith" and some use none, as in the NASB translation above. I think that comma is critical. If I were to re-write it, I think this is what Paul is saying:

For you are saved by grace and this is not of yourselves so that no one can boast; and faith is involved, but God does not save people on the basis of their works, it is His choice alone.

Does God 'Draw' People to Faith?

Here is a snippet of an email response I received from my pastor within the past two weeks - one that made me wrestle anew with whether God is the one who draws people to Himself. In my mind, the question boils down to, 'do we as individuals, play any role in coming to faith in the God of the Universe?' Anyway:

"Why is it that some do not believe today, even in the face of tremendous evidence that Christ has been raised? Jesus said that no one can come to him unless the Father draws them (John 6:44). You see while the door is narrow and thrown wide open to all who would believe, believing continues to be a matter of God's sovereign work in the world. [...] We must be drawn by the Father to the narrow door of Jesus. The children of God are not born of human decision, but born of God (John 1:13). This is truly good news, because it means that God is saving us, and we are in no way saving ourselves (John 5:21, NASB)."

I'm not quoting my pastor as a means of taking him down; by no means, I have the utmost respect and admiration for my pastor. I do disagree on some level, but I want to make sure I faithfully represent the opposing viewpoint and he articulates it well. Here are the verses he referenced:

John 6:44 reads, "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day."

What God Has Joined Together...

"Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." - Matthew 19:6 and Mark 10:9

This blog post started because I had this verse running through my head for several days. I sought the help of others in brainstorming the list below and I'm grateful for their counsel!

Everyone has heard this verse before - likely at a wedding. The context for the verse itself is marriage. The Pharisees are questioning Jesus about whether it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife and this is part of Jesus' response. With that being said, while the verse clearly applies to marriage, it seems possible that Jesus is stating a broader principle here. If you think about the context of what marriage is (an institution God himself created), and the way the metaphor is used throughout Scripture to describe the relationship between God and His People (covenant), it doesn't feel like a stretch to say that this verse can be applied to many things. By that I mean - there are many things that God has joined together, and my natural questions are a) what are those things and b) what have 'we' tried to separate?

Husband/Wife - no need to dig further here

Love/Obedience

Disobedience/Wrath

The Gospel/The Kingdom of God

Repentance/Forgiveness/Faith?

His People/Messiah Jesus

Thoughts on Milk and Solid Food

"Concerning him [Jesus] we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull and negligent. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the Oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil." (Hebrews 5:11-14, NASB)

I have read these verses many times, but they came around again this week in a Bible study I'm in. First, I want to look at what the passage says, both contextually and specifically and then talk about what can be learned.

I think it's good to start out by sharing what follows this in Hebrews 6 (Blessed Hope Translation):

"That is why, progressing beyond the elementary teachings about Messiah, we must move on to maturity, not having to go back and re-lay the foundation: Repentance from acts that lead to death and faith in God, instruction about baptisms and commissioning through the laying on of hands, and about the resurrection of the dead and the judgment of the coming age." (Hebrews 6:1-3)

The reason I start here is because the obvious question after reading Hebrews 5 is 'what are the oracles of God' or 'what is the milk'? The writer of Hebrews helps explain that in Chapter 6; the milk, or foundations of the faith - repentance, baptism, going/sending (Holy Spirit?), the coming judgement, and the hope of resurrection and eternal life. In other words, these are the basics - understanding these things is crucial to a well-grounded faith, and understanding of these things is key to helping one move towards maturity. The 'oracles' were commonly understood to be the words of God, or the law (Torah) and the promises of God (the Covenants, God's word spoken through the Prophets).

The broader context is a discussion of Jesus as the High Priest - or the Mother of All Priests (MOAP?). It is a thick discussion, as is most of Hebrews, outlining who Jesus is and how He fits into the broader narrative of Scripture.

One comment I find very interesting in Hebrews 5:12 is: "For though by this time you ought to be teachers..." Considering that the audience of Hebrews is likely Jewish believers, this statement is even more interesting to me. This motif is indirectly continued a few verses later when it says, "but solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained..." (v.14). To me the writer seems to allude here to a lack of practice and discipline which led to a need to revisit basics..."since you have become so dull and negligent" (v.11). This might seem like a stretch, but I feel that this statement is connected to Israel's unique calling from God, to be a 'light to the nations' (Isa 42:6, Isa 49:6, Acts 13:47). How can someone be a light if they do not understand even the basics...using the language of the text, how can someone teach what they do not themselves understand?

Admonition

I feel like there is an easy point of application here for the modern believer. How can you be an effective disciple of Jesus without regularly spending time in the Word, whether simply by reading or by serious study? Furthermore, how will you be able to explain your faith, or teach someone else if you yourself don't understand? I say these things rhetorically because I have very much been the person who didn't read up until a year ago or so. I loved studying (occasionally) and I loved finding something new, but I didn't read with any regularity and thus, I had only a shallow understanding. I would have been hard-pressed to give someone else much detail in terms of what I believed, outside of vague references to things that are mentioned in the Bible. By saying this, I don't mean to beat people with the stick of 'woulda, coulda, shoulda'. That's not it - but on the other hand - active faith involves responsibility. Our trajectory of growth isn't going to be perfect, but it should still resemble a trajectory of growth, right? If we have a consistent problem with mustering either the time or the commitment to sit and read and study Scripture, then it is possible that something might need to change to fix that problem.

Ultimately it comes down, again, to the calling of God. In this case, it is the calling Jesus gives to those who would follow him - a command to 'make fishers of men' and to go and 'make disciples of all nations'. Discipling others will require teaching them, about who God is, about what He has done, about what He is doing now and about what He will do in the future. If we don't understand the milk of our faith and some of the structure that supports it, how effective will we be at sharing it with others? For that matter, how effective will faith be in our lives when things get difficult or uncomfortable?

Encouragement

The encouragement here is that neither God, not the writer of Hebrews, will give up on us. He says, "ok, if we have to keep re-laying the foundation, then we will, so that you will grow up to maturity in faith" (AK paraphrase). I love this section at the end of Chapter 6:

"Yet we are confident in regard to you, dear friends, of the better course belonging to salvation, even though we speak like this. God is not, after all, unjust ; he will not forget your hard work and the love you have shown for the honor of his name in having served the saints and in continuing to serve them. Yet we earnestly desire each of you to keep on showing the very same goodwill and concern, aiming to retain full conviction about the reliability of our hope all the way to the finish, so that instead of being so dull and negligent, you may follow the example of those who inherit the promises through faith and patient endurance." (Hebrews 6:9-12, BHT, emphasis added)

 

Thoughts on Salvation (Part 2)

I was going to completely re-do my previous post on this topic and then I decided I wanted to write something new, and preserve the thought process. I'm not sure that my thoughts have changed all that much, but I feel like I am clearer on the topic of salvation now, than I was a few months ago.

One of the things I've been diving deeply into lately is the concept of 'The Kingdom of God'. The motivational verse for me was Matthew 4:23 (corollary verses in Luke 8:1, Mark 1:14) which reads, "Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and healing every disease and sickness among the people." Two things occurred to me as I read this recently - a) this is Jesus, preaching THE GOSPEL before he was crucified and b) the Gospel and the Kingdom of God are tied together. To flesh that out just a little more - the Gospel can't simply be, "Jesus died for our sins and that by believing in his sacrificial death, we can have Eternal Life with Him in heaven" (which is a Romans 10 verse taken out of context IMHO). If that was the extent of the Gospel, what was Jesus talking about before he died? For that matter, what was John the Baptist talking about, before Jesus was even officially on the scene, since he was also preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God (Matthew 3)? So that got me thinking about the question, "what is the Gospel", but it also seemed that the Good News was intimately tied to The Kingdom of God (interchangeable in Scripture with the Kingdom of Heaven). After all, news, no matter what kind of news it is, is always about something - that seems self-evident, right?

What I set out to try and understand is what a 1st century Jew would have thought the Kingdom of God is. When John the Baptist and Jesus started going around preaching about the good news of the kingdom of God, no one was saying, "Kingdom of God? What's that? We've never heard of that before!". They all knew and so I wanted to know what their understanding was. I have so far read two books, along with innumerable articles - "The Gospel and the Kingdom" (1955) by George Eldon Ladd (the 'already/not yet' guy) and "The Kingdom of God in History" (1988) by Benedict T. Viviano, a New Testament scholar at the University of Freibourg. Ladd's book, to me, was lacking any real examination of the Old Testament. Though he does cite some old testament passages, and some inter-testamental material - his work seems more like an attempt at bringing together very different views that were held by predecessors in theology. It was Viviano's work which I was really impressed with and he did dive into the OT and into the inter-testamental literature that is available. His definition of 'The Kingdom of God' is the best one I have found so far. He says, "To attempt to define the undefinable, we could say that the Kingdom of God is a future apocalyptic divine gift not built by human beings directly but given as a response to hopeful prayer, longing and hastening struggle. It is the final act of God in visiting and redeeming his people, a comprehensive term for the blessings of salvation, that is, all the blessing secured by that act of God." In the Lord's prayer recorded in Matthew 6, Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done" - Viviano points out, what is the necessity of praying 'thy Kingdom come' if it is in some way already here? Even up to the very point at which Jesus departs this Earth, he is affirming that The Kingdom is future. Acts 1:3, "...appearing to them [his disciples] over a period of forty days and speaking of the thing concerning the Kingdom of God." Interestingly, the Disciples' recorded question after all that teaching is, "Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the Kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6) Jesus doesn't correct their understanding of the content he has been teaching them - he addresses the time aspect of their question and says, "It is not for you to know the times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority..." (Acts 1:7).

I think it is precisely that focus on the timing of the Kingdom which really colors ones view on whether the Kingdom is in any part 'now', or if it is altogether future. From reading Ladd's book, and some commentaries written by other modern theologians, it is clear what the modern consensus is...but the question everyone needs to ask themselves is, "what is actually true?" Does an interpretation of Scripture, outside of its historical context, mean anything? I'm starting to believe it does not. If one thinks of the Bible as a historical document, not in the sense that it is literal history (though it certainly is at times), but that its contents were directed at a certain people in a certain time and place in history -- or that it was produced by people, under the divine leadership of the Holy Spirit, who had a certain worldview and who had a specific set of things they 'knew' about their faith, then any interpretation of Scripture that does not take a serious effort at examining that context is faulty at best, if not outright wrong. I will not sit here and claim that Ladd didn't 'do his homework' so to speak, in that contextual regard, but I will say, I think he did what a lot of people in modern theological thought have done, and that is relying on the work of others to inform the baselines of the arguments they make. It is my personal opinion that he didn't go back far enough, he didn't take into account that a Hebrew belief system and Hebrew scriptures were essentially translated into a Greco-Roman worldview...and worldview makes a huge difference. There is much more to be said on this specific topic, but that is for another post (or book?) - if you are curious now, read Viviano's book because he dives DEEP into this particular topic.

The bottom-line is that the Apostles had a totally future view of The Kingdom. They would know the Kingdom was here when Jesus was sitting on the throne of David, in Jerusalem, with a fully restored Israel, having been completely vindicated in the eyes of their oppressors and enemies; all of which are Covenant promises. In fact, their view would have included their own involvement in that scene because Jesus says to the Twelve in Matthew 19:28, "Jesus said to them [the Twelve disciples], "Truly I tell you, in the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on His glorious throne, you who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." Put another way, there was no spiritualized or individualized element to the Kingdom of God. It was a literal Kingdom - it's elements were understood as physical, political, and social. If there was an individualized element to it, it was more that it gave an individual's life meaning and purpose, not that there was some element of the Kingdom that was realized within an individual.

Which brings us back around, taking the scenic route, to salvation. If the Kingdom is entirely future - then salvation, which is an aspect of the Kingdom (one is saved when one is IN the Kingdom) also becomes an entirely future hope.

"Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him." (Hebrews 9:27-28)

One can put their hope and trust (faith) in Jesus and His coming Kingdom now, in this life, but salvation is not a thing that we possess on this side of the great and terrible Day of the Lord (aka Judgement). This is a total tangent, but I recently heard a commentary that much of Western Christianity rails against the 'prosperity gospel', but that many of the people railing against that type of gospel preaching believe a very similar thing, but instead of possessing physical prosperity, it's possessing spiritual prosperity (I'm saved now, I can experience the joys of heaven now, etc). Anyway, when you read the words of Jesus and of the Apostles, the continual theme is perseverance and endurance in one's faith, until the End. In this way, the things motivating a Disciple of Jesus never change. Our own internal motivation-level might wax and wane, but the driver is always there - never very far from the mind of a Disciple who is regularly spending time in prayer and in reading Scripture. When our hope is entirely future - suffering is put into proper context. Someone smart I know once said, "Eschatology is the engine of discipleship." Focusing on where this is going gives us an accurate balance of God's goodness and God's wrath - it provides something to strive towards and gives the gift of the Holy Spirit some real significance. It creates urgency within the Disciple and, when treated with a sober mind, causes the Disciple to walk in humility.

I want to touch on the Holy Spirit in a little more detail - because I feel that the Holy Spirit was the thing Ladd was misinterpreting. When you view of The Kingdom of God as entirely future, the purpose of the Holy Spirit becomes so much more clear. The Holy Spirit is the power of God to help you do something you cannot do on your own...to help you take up your cross daily, and to deny yourself - to say 'no' to the flesh and yes to the one who gives Life. Also - in the life of a Disciple, the Holy Spirit is the one who comes to confirm the truth of the Gospel - it is the witness of the truth of the things to come. Rather than the Holy Spirit facilitating the growth of God's Kingdom now as Ladd suggested, it is the thing turning men's hearts, with Jesus, towards the End and the Renewal of all thing - towards the hope of Eternal glory - giving them the ability to be Disciples of Messiah Jesus, to walk and remain on the narrow path that leads to Life (Matthew 7).

I have this heightened sense of urgency lately in my own life. Most of the time, I don't want to work, I just want to read and write and pray. When I'm around people - I want to tell them about this. Partly, I am concerned about the faith of most people I know. I don't want to sound arrogant or judgmental, far from it - no one is as much of a sinner as me - but the reality is, the gift is free, sure, but it requires everything. I was reading in Deuteronomy this morning, Chapter 1, and it's the story of God saving the Israelites from Egypt and it gets to the section about the Israelites being on the cusp of the promised land (you know the story, the 12 spies, 10 were bad and 2 were good), and after the spies came back from scoping things out, the people didn't trust God. Then in verse 34 it reads, "When the Lord heard what you said, he was angry and solemnly swore; "No one from this evil generation shall see the good land I swore to give your ancestors, except Caleb son of Jephunneh. He will see it, and I will give him and his descendants the land he set his feet on, because he followed the Lord wholeheartedly." It was that last line that struck me - ...because he followed the Lord wholeheartedly. There is no such thing as a halfway disciple. What is a disciple? Jesus said many things - but two things that stick out to me are: Luke 9:23 "Then Jesus said to all of them, "If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." and also Acts 2:42 - immediately after Peter preaches the Good News, it says how the people who believed responded, "Those who embraced his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to the believers that day. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer." The Apostles' teaching would have been Scripture, basically - so two of the main things were Scripture and prayer. I would add fasting into that mix as well (Matthew 9:15). I have much work to do in my own life - but I don't feel as though I live under any illusion. I'm not walking around thinking I have secured anything. Hopefully, as the days go by, I am getting more and more serious about emulating the conduct, cares and concerns of Jesus. I know I have the Holy Spirit to help me persevere and endure, the Scriptures to guide me, and brothers and sisters to encourage me. That's all that I need to think about - the rest is just, as they say, details.

As a means of closing - I pray regularly that God would keep my heart soft; that I would always be open to the Truth and not get stuck in theological camps or ideas just because I've decided that I need to make up my mind. Some people find it scary to let go the doctrine of eternal security and I can certainly understand that. But with that being said, I just don't see a backing for it in Scripture. Rather - I see a call to lifelong discipleship and how one lives their life as being the evidence of faith in God and a truly changed heart. I write these posts for myself and to distill my own thinking, but if you're reading this, chances are you probably know me, and if you want to talk this out - by all means, I would absolutely love that.

Commentary: Rhett and Link

I am an occasional reader of The Gospel Coalition website - I think some of the articles found there are thought-provoking or interesting and recently, I stumbled across one entitled, "Let's Deconstruct a Deconversion Story: The Case of Rhett and Link". The story tells of a pair of YouTube stars, Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal, who are former missionaries and Campus Crusade (Cru) staff members and now consider themselves former Christians as well. The TGC article portrays their decision as having a lot to do with the sexual ethic of the Bible and their problems with that, but I listened to both of their testimonies - each about an hour and forty-five minutes long - and I don't feel as though that is a fair portrayal, certainly not for Rhett, but likely not for Link either. That is part of their story, but the etiology of their deconversions is much more subtle.

From listening to both stories, it is clear that this all started with Rhett. He is the one who seems to have a more comprehensive understanding of Scripture and of apologetics; I suspect he started to have doubts on some of the scientific stuff and then started talking to Link about it and slowly convinced his childhood friend away from faith. If you listen to their stories, Rhett is clearly the one putting a lot of time and effort into the struggle and then when you hear Link's story - there are a lot of the same elements, but most of them are referring back to things his friend Rhett gave him or was telling him about. They pretty much acknowledge this straight out at the end of Link's testimony.

I very much identify with some of Rhett's doubt - as someone who has spent some time looking for scientific or archaeological verification of Scripture and desperately wanting my faith to have a strong rational component to it, I can identify the unsettling feeling he had when some of that stuff doesn't match up. But for me - rather than pushing me away, it caused me to ask different questions. Also - it reminded me of God's response to Job:

"Then the LORD spoke to Job out of the storm. He said: "Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you and you will answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone - while the morning stars sang together and the angels shouted for joy?" (Job 38:1-7)

We can look at the scientific data and the archaeological finds and all of these things in order to try and support a belief in a God of the universe, but ultimately, those pursuits eventually become a God in and of themselves - ultimately it is an attempt to make a God out of 'certainty'. It seems like they are missing the point and by that I mean, the point of God revealing himself through the Bible is not so that we can go and verify everything and come away with some certainty about it all...it's so that we can know Him and know where all of this is going. The bottom-line is that science is not "settled" any more now than it ever has been, particularly in the area of origins of the Universe. For every scientist that has become an atheist because of their work, you will find another scientist who came to belief in God as a result of their work. There are ardent Christian scientists in every field of science, genetics and evolution included. There never was such a thing as certainty and there never will be, in either direction - towards God or away from him.

As a kid, I was a big fan of the C.S. Lewis books in the series, "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe". Towards the end of the first book, Lucy and Edmund (her brother) have both found Narnia through the wardrobe and Lucy is trying to convince their older siblings of this place they have found. Lucy insists that it is real and Edmund is more mum about it and eventually, the older two go and tell the master of the house about this, seeking his advice on what to do. He says,

"Logic!" said the Professor half to himself. "Why don't they teach logic at these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn't tell lies and it is obvious that she is not mad. For the moment then and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth."

Neither Rhett nor Link seem to be willing to go as far as Atheism. Rhett refers to himself as a 'hopeful agnostic'. I think they are both open to the possibility that they are wrong - but it seems like they have come to the conclusion, for now, that Jesus is either a madman or a liar. Lying would go against Jesus' very nature (if he is who he says he is) so the only logical conclusion would be that he is a madman - afterall, there is no denying his actual existence and life - that he was a real person who lived on earth is a historical fact.

One thing that struck me about their stories is how big of an impact one person can have on another. As I mentioned above - Rhett has clearly been the one who has led his friend Link away from the Lord. Which makes me feel for Link - I think he understands the doubts and struggles of his friend Rhett, but since they did not come out of his own heart, he is following but isn't as convicted/convinced. Rather, he has justified his own feelings by identifying more strongly with his disagreement with the Biblical sexual ethic that is bothersome to him. Here are some of his comments:

"The specific issue of the LGBTQ issues; the church was a welcoming place and a loving place, but when you really got down to it, they [some of his friends] weren't accepted as couples and that really ate away at me. This was a long time coming - as we made meaningful connections with people here, I couldn't sit in the seat at church knowing that the couldn't get married there. I just felt like it was a betrayal of my friends and what I believed. And so I didn't go back."

"I'm just not ready to enter back into a specific system of belief even if it's different and the practical applications of that belief system are exactly in line with how I want to live my life. Maybe I'm still just too close or have been in it so long that I need more distance from it."

"...it's easiest for me to believe that when you die -- it's just like Dana Carvey said, my Wayne's World doppelganger -- that "when you die, it's just like the experience you had before you were born, do you remember that?" So I'm like, yeah, that's actually comforting and I find it easy to believe that for some reason, I'm not compelled to believe it, but it's just an easy place for my mind to rest."

"...everybody believes whatever they want to believe, like, your innermost desires, it could be something primal like survival and security, there are so many different things - but we have a way of finding what works for us and I think that's instinctive. To put it bluntly, you believe what you want to believe, you know, I find it easy to believe that. I find it easy to believe that because so many people have had so many earth shattering experiences that are in complete contradiction, that probably means that God's not personal." 

"I want to do the work to stay open and not dogmatic - and I know that it will take work, it takes an investment of time and priority to not just sit back and go with the flow. I'm not looking for the next thing to latch onto and believe and start to follow, but being open to how God may exist and may want to connect with me. The main thing is, I don't want to judge, I don't want to condemn - I want to be as loving as I can. [...] I do feel like over the past few years my capacity to love has grown - my capacity to love myself and others has expanded a lot more over the past few years. I take that as a good sign. I just don't think that if God exists, I just can't believe that me being open and sincere and as loving as possible and as honest as possible is disqualifying me from receiving God's love. I can't accept that."

These, my friends, are the comments of an James 1:6 man: "...because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do."

Reading between the lines of some of these comments, which echo some of the comments that Rhett makes in his testimony - I get a sense that "the God of open options" is that one that Rhett and Link have built for themselves. It looks different for each of them, and how they got there was different, but ultimately, the God of the Bible doesn't align with their own views on certain things and because they are unwilling to accept that, they had to create their own God, or abandon him altogether. There was actually an article on TGC about this not too long ago.

Anyway, that's enough from me on this. I find these types of discussions interesting because they get at the heart of mankind. John Calvin once said, "The mind is...a perpetual forge of idols". Jeremiah 17:9-10 says, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his way, according to the fruit of his deeds."
We all have our experiences, yes, but at the end of the day, there is actual, real truth. The question we must ask ourselves is, "Do I trust Him?" That question lies at the intersection of faith and knowledge. Again, hearkening back to the C.S. Lewis kids book series, Susan (Lucy's older sister) is asking one of her new friends in Narnia about Aslan, the great lion who rules over Narnia and she asks, "Is he quite safe?" And her friend responds, "Safe? Who said anything about safe? Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the king, I tell you."