Colossians 2:2, The Mystery of God

Posted on Sunday, January 2, 2011 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God.

Theology is an endlessly fascinating topic for me. I can converse for hours about this belief and that belief, about how these beliefs evolved through the pages of the Bible, about the complexities of the Trinity, about what Jesus, the man, was really like. But if you want to talk about God, I hardly know how to begin.

Because, ultimately, if we are honest with ourselves, we realize we really know nothing. Nothing at all. We have stories that have been told us since we were children. We have age-old guesses about God and what he wants, Bible verses that struggle to describe him. But we’ve never seen him, and we’ve never uncovered an ounce of evidence to help describe him. If we are completely honest with ourselves, we cannot say with any certainty whether the religious beliefs we have been taught are true or false.

In the end, our head can prove nothing about God. Our only interface with the divine seems to be through the heart. The human race may run its course and pass from the earth before we understand God, or even understand the questions we should be asking.

Does this make “God” less real?

Picture yourself a new father. You sit in your hospital chair, cradling your baby daughter, and a wave of emotion washes over you. A feeling for which no words exist in the English language; somewhere in there hides love, peace, fear, responsibility, rightness. In a moment, life makes sense. In another moment, a bewildering array of questions flood your brain.

As heart and head war together, a tear slides down your cheek, and you wonder where it came from. It reaches your smile, and you wonder why you are smiling.

God? Have I found you?