There is a mistaken view that, in our spiritual journey, becoming less and less certain equals more and more spiritual maturity. We could call this the more progressive Christian view.
This comes as a contrast to the opposite orientation that thinks more certainty equals more maturity. We could call this the more fundamentalist Christian view.
Sometimes we need both
- Sometimes we do need to be less certain about what we believe.
- Sometime we need to be more certain about what we believe.
Spiritual maturity is balancing both movements.
Not prioritizing one over the other.
This could be call the ancient Christian view.
Or what I like calling the embodied faith view.
My Certainty – A Demonstration of Love
For me, I’m becoming more and more certain of the demonstration of God’s love in the Son’s life, death, and resurrection (Rom. 5:8), applied to us in the pouring of that love into our hearts by the Spirit (Rom. 5:6).
And I’m certain this particular work of the Triune Father, Son, and Spirit — culminating in and through the humanity of Jesus, the crucified and raised Messiah, who is LORD — is not better redescribed in the impersonal language of “force”, “energy”, or “source” of love.
And I’m certain that I can’t know anything about this love or imitate it outside this concrete, lived, and embodied display of love of Father, Son, and Spirit.
To become less certain about these — even if I can’t fully explain the incarnation or the Trinity, in knowing the love that surpasses knowledge (Eph. 3:19) — would be to become less certain about love, making it a vacuous abstraction.
Posts in “Unsystematic Thought’s on God’s Demonstration of Love” Series:
- From Abstraction to Demonstration of Love (#1)
- While We Were Still Weak (#2)
- God Proves to Us (#3)
- On God’s Unique Kind of Love (#4)
- While We Were Still Warring (#5)
- Enemy Love as Forgiveness (#6)
Disrupt the social media algorithms!!!
Sign up for my newsletter and receive the FREE Does God Really Like Me? ebook.