There are a number of things I don’t understand about the natural world. Being a child of the Age of Science, this lack of comprehension used to drive me to come up with human explanations for everything. I felt that I could not rest my faith until all these imponderables were resolved and cataloged in my brain.

I’ve come to the point now where I believe it is presumptive to think that I should be able to have little more than a glimpse of God’s works and ways—His wondrous mysteries. I’m content to merely celebrate, study, and handle with reverent care the things He has created.

KEY SCRIPTURE:
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out! “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor?” “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?” For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever! Amen. (Romans 11:33-36)

I feel it is prideful for us to believe we will ever, on this side of Glory, have all mysteries revealed to us. It is the humble and patient Christian who is willing to wait and trust in God that He will provide us the answers—when and if He chooses. Mankind’s attempt to understand God’s works and ways in the universe will always produce mysteries. A mystery, after all, is nothing more than evidence that human knowledge is limited and human intelligence finite.

It seems logical for one who believes in an eternal God to also believe that the universe He created would contain some evidence of His eternality (Romans 1:20). It should not be surprising, then, to learn that mankind’s continual attempts to incorporate into our time and space explanations of the finite physical world all the mysteries of the micro-universe and the macro-universe are often futile (i.e. quantum physics and astrophysics).

SETI "Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence"

It is this fact that makes me hesitant to accept as fully correct even the explanations of Christians in the sciences who are committed to the authority of Scripture.

I don’t think anything in God’s world will ever fit perfectly into any human categories. And it must grieve God to see His children separate from one another because of disagreements over the interpretation of mysteries they were not intended to fully understand such as the age of the cosmos, the age of the earth, and the development of life on earth.

One of the many negative results of our scientific age is that it has trained the human mind to abhor leaving a mystery a mystery. We insist on understanding everything. The danger in this, however, is that when we gain a little understanding, we often claim that the mystery is solved—which is at best not true, and at worst keeps us from actually learning the truth.

Further, I’ve come to believe that in Christianity there is mystery, but no mysticism. As I understand it, mysticism describes mankind’s attempt to come to an understanding of deity indirectly through some sort of inner human intuition. Christianity describes God’s giving mankind essential information directly through person-to-person communication. People, however, are finite while God is infinite; therefore we will always have incomplete knowledge of Him and His works and ways. So there will always be mysteries; but such mysteries do not obscure the basic facts God has revealed and continues to reveal to us, nor do they excuse us from the responsibilities He has given us to care for the creation.

[Above: Wikipedia image of the Temple of the Rosy Cross in which the illustrator, Theophilus Schweighardt, seeks to picture divine mysteries. It "reminds the truth seekers that the Temple and its mystical brethren are ever near unto the wise man, who discovers them only by perceiving inwardly the mysteries of the spirit. The Temple is on wheels to signify that it can go to any place, and it is suspended from Heaven by a rope because it is moved by the Will of God. The rose is over one of it's windows and the cross is over the other." 1618]

The Apostle Paul’s understanding of the subject of mysteries should be our own: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out!” (Rom. 11:33). I have also read God’s rebuke of Job for thinking he could explain the way God deals with the earth and mankind, and I must parrot Job’s reply: “I am unworthy — how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth . . . I will say no more” (Job 40:4-5)

Hand-over-mouth is a gesture we ought to be more accustomed to.

[Wikipedia/Wikimedia images]