Nancy,
Greetings! I most certainly encourage your participation. I think you are hitting it right on the nose when you say: how can we expect to understand fully the Creator of the Universe. If we assume that there is a God, then it's quite possible that we may never fully understand anything about Him or what He says or whether it is even appropriate to refer to Him in terms of gender (i.e., masculine). Humankind may thus be stuck at mere interpretations and always fall short of full understanding. But the Tower of Babel notwithstanding, I think we should continue to push the envelope of our limited understanding.
Is Jesus the Lord, a liar, or a lunatic? The answer is (currently?) beyond my understanding.
The Word of God may necessarily be absolute, but the interpretations by men of the Word are certainly not necessarily absolute.
That the question, "How can we truly know?" may be impossible to answer, should not, IMHO, hold us back in our quest for the answer. Perhaps that is the ultimate paradox of Faith. If you just have Faith, then realize that you may not have answered the question. As I have said before, I don't have the Faith that most of the others on this thread have, but I am still on the quest. Remember that whenever the Holy Grail was found (recorded only in legend), that it quickly becomes lost again. :-)
Greg |
