The depths of God and his word are too deep – even the things he has revealed in his Word – for a finite mind to grasp all in full. And yet God has revealed himself in his Word, we can know what he intends for all men to know, we can grasp – any one of us – the essence of what he has chosen to reveal. We may never know everything, but we can all know what God wants all of us to know.

As regular readers will know, I not so long ago came off twitter. You can search this blog, if you’re bothered, to find out why. I much more recently decided to jack in Facebook too. I haven’t said specifically why and, frankly, don’t intend to either. But I am away from them both.

Particularly with twitter, much less facebook which I was on much less, I sometimes find myself wondering what I am not seeing or hearing. I don’t worry about that for long because, frankly, I remember what I was seeing when I was on it. FOMO being what it is, you wonder what you’re missing and then, when you find out (or just remember), wish you hadn’t bothered. Clickbait is built entirely on this principle and twitter is not far behind. What of significance on twitter won’t eventually make it to the usual news channels? What that isn’t significant do I really need to know?

But this led me to thinking about something else related. The bounds of what we can know. Or, rather, the bounds of what we should know. Is it the case that there are things that we are just not meant to know? Things that might, in actual fact, be deeply unhelpful and problematic for us to know? The Bible is unequivocal that the answer is yes. There are things we cannot know and there are things that are not good for us to know.

Job, in his reply to God, says:

I know that you can do anything
and no plan of yours can be thwarted.
You asked, “Who is this who conceals my counsel with ignorance?”
Surely I spoke about things I did not understand,
things too wondrous for me to know.

There are things we don’t know that are simply too big for us to comprehend.

Indeed, Moses – speaking to the children of Israel in Deuteronomy – makes clear, ‘The hidden things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and our children forever, so that we may follow all the words of this law.’ There are things that God purposes for his people to know, and things that are hidden from them and are not for them to know. King David, speaking of the knowledge of God and how he knows the innermost thoughts of mankind, says ‘This wondrous knowledge is beyond me. It is lofty; I am unable to reach it.’ Trying to get to the bottom of the knowledge of God is not possible for us.

Read More