Today was a great day. I spent almost the entire day with God or with friends. The highlight of my day was in the afternoon when I met up with my soul sister Catherine to celebrate her birthday over lunch. We talked and shared for nearly 3 and a half hours straight… It’s really wonderful to spend time with someone who has a kindred spirit to yours. There are a lot of things that it’s hard to tell others because you know they just will not understand, or they will perceive in the wrong way, and it’s a lot of work to explain until they can get it right. Having a soul sibling who automatically understands and has the same basic worldview and approach to life is wonderful… for both of us, I think. I always feel strengthened, encouraged and refreshed whenever Cath and I have one of these long talks. We had lunch in the Megabites Cafe at the Science Canteen, and just chatted for hours… about hopes and dreams, fears and worries, life and love, work and ministry. (And that’s not a flowery exaggeration. We literally talked about each of those subjects. That’s what a conversation between two Idealist personalities are like.)
I’m also currently attending an Inductive Bible Study Leader’s Training Course on the Gospel of John, so I spent the morning preparing for it, then met up with my potential cell intern Li Ping for prayer in the evening, and had a rousing study and discussion session at night. And I think I’ve gained a new insight into some of my difficulties. One of the problems I’ve been facing for some time is that I end up with a lot of unanswered questions whenever I study the Bible. I read a passage in John, for example, and I wonder a lot about the concepts that appear in the text, which a lot of Christians around me seem to take for granted, or never really think deeply about, but which I can sense hold deeper mysteries than just a surface reading of the text. What is John’s understanding of “eternal life”, for example? Is it just “continued existence for the rest of eternity” (i.e. everlasting life), as many seem to believe? Or is there a deeper meaning to this life that we do not yet understand? Is “life eternal” merely our current life, as we understand it, extended to eternity? Or does it mean an entirely different concept of what the word “life” means altogether? And if so, what is the nature of this new type of life?
The problem I have, is that I can sense enough to ask the question, but I do not know where or how to find the answer.
And the insight I received today, is that my trouble comes from relying on my physical, rational mind to try and “figure out the answer.” The danger of a great gift of intellect is that you may try to understand and solve all problems through it, rather than really focusing on what is right. What I should be doing is asking the Holy Spirit to illuminate and teach me, through insight and revelation, what the meaning of this text is. If we try to study the Word of God alone without Spirit-led revelation, all we get are questions that lead to many answers, all of which we are unsure of, because we are depending on the fallible human mind to reason out a solution. I’m not against the use of reason… in fact, I’m all for reasoning with the Scriptures. But at some point, human reason and human understanding reaches a limit. In order to truly comprehend a spiritual Mystery, the only recourse is to depend on the Spirit to lead and reveal. And that is what I need to change about the way I do Bible study. Less rational argument about why this hypothesis or that hypothesis is more probable, and more seeking the Spirit’s revelation of the meaning of the Scriptures.
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