Sun. Church Trip 1

Woke up this morning and took a quick shower. While shaving I slit my thumb with my razor (hurt like the Dickens!) but I managed to prepare for Church without doing further damage. Our ride to Church consisted of a debate over the Davidic Covenant as found in II Samuel 7:12 and so forth. The debate spun around two seminary students, myself, and a girl who, quite admirably, held her own. One student was saying that unless the passage were allegorized it could probably not come to mean a reflection of Christ, as that of Hebrews 1:5 means. It is, they suggested, a metaphor, but of limited nature. No conclusions were seriously drawn on these questions before we turned our topics over to the interpretation John Piper gave to I (or II) Thessalonians 2:12. Apparently Piper holds either a post-tribulational or post-millenial view on this text, and in his general doctrine. In their argument, I sat out for this argument, I was impressed by their humility. These two, grown men, knowledgeable men, were throwing verses around here and there, mentioning things, referencing others and while I sat in silent admiration I realized something. They were insecure. Not in a negative sense of the word as if it were a bad thing. No, quite the opposite. They seriously did not know the answer to their own questions. They searched for the answers but ended up saying that both views seemed possible according to their different perceptions of the issue itself. In other words, they showed humility by not knowing all the answers. And then they showed greater humility in how they treated each other throughout the argument. But the greatest humility was left in leaving their answerless questions, not in each other's hands for the other to explain and exegete. No, but rather leaving their answerless questions in God's hands for Him to sort out and deal with. Maybe He'll respond their questions now, soon, later, or even never. But they trusted Him and not their own brilliance, of which they have a lot, and the reason for that is that they leave it up to Him, they trust Him and not themselves or their arguments. That's a lesson I need to learn unless I want to actually become a noisy but useless cymbal. Puffed up with so much knowledge that I demand answers and that, perhaps it's worse, I claim to have them. I don't have the answers. It breaks my heart sometimes to not have the answers because some of the questions hurt. But I know that there is one answer that will always comfort my heart - humility before the presence of a God who does have the answers.