The world isn’t the most happy-go-lucky place right now.

Terrorist attacks continue in India, Iran wants to nuke Israel, our national and world economies are in a downward spiral, there are many unknowns with a new President getting ready to take office, and there’s a renewed clash between traditional marriage and gay rights.

All this stuff makes me wonder at times why the world has to be so dang messed up.

A few months ago, I decided to read the Bible in a new way. I started at the beginning of the OT and NT, and I try to read a couple of chapters in each a few times a week. Right now I’m in Numbers and the Gospel of John. It’s actually been kind of cool because as you read both, the connections between the two become more evident. So much of what is said in the NT, references scripture in the Torah or the Prophets.

I thought getting into the word more would help me understand and remove my doubts; however, it’s confused me even more. God says a lot of things that just don’t make sense. I’m not a peace activist by any means, but I do question why God would actually tell Moses to “declare a holy war” against the Medianites in Numbers chapter 31. God commands the Israelites to kill all men, women who had tempted the Israelite men, and all male children. Basically, the goal was to completely destroy that nation.

Women and children? Wow.

There are so many spiritual and ethical questions that go along with war. God is good, God is just, and God is sovereign - I hear it all the time. I have to admit, I do wonder and doubt sometimes. It doesn’t mean my faith is lacking or that I don’t believe, it’s just that trying to figure out God seems like a dead-end road. Who can know the mind of God, right?

Maybe this nation was completely opposed to God? I know some of the people’s of that time were into all sorts of idolatry, sexual deviancy, child sacrifice, and many other detestable actions. They were also bent on destroying or working against God’s chosen people, and they were unrepentant about it. But just read the account of the Hebrews and you see all sorts of detestable sins, rebellion, and evil. Maybe repentance was the difference? I don’t know. I guess that’s why God’s the judge, and not me.

The whole concept of a just and holy war, unless you are clearing defending yourself from an obvious attack, is hard for me to fathom. It’s beyond my human brain to comprehend.

In John chapter 6, Jesus heals a man who had been lame for over 30-years. After he healed him, he later found him and said the following:

Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.

So if I sin can I expect God to punish me like that? Through some sort of physical pain or ailment? Is a person’s health, or lack thereof, always connected to his faithfulness to God? Maybe I’m missing the true meaning here. Maybe Jesus saw something in this man’s character and he was reminding him that a physical ailment is like a walk-in-the-park compared to a life without salvation? Maybe after he was healed he still didn’t believe???

Honestly, reading Scripture lately has boggled my mind more than I intended.

OK, so what’s the point behind my thoughts?

I’m not falling off the cliff or doubting God’s goodness. I do, however, question how all the puzzle pieces fit together. The problem is, I’m trying to figure this world out through the clouded lens of humanistic eyes, which always seek to make sense of life through a physical and tangible mindset.

1 Corinthians 2:1-16 talks directly about this issue (Read here).

The verse that really jumped out at me was this one:

…so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. (1 Corinthians 2:5)

The problem for me is that I try to develop my faith based on the wisdom of men. I try to explain God in a way that man would understand. But God’s existence - his very presence - is not something that can ever be understood or known from a worldly perspective:

But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. (1 Corinthians 2:14)

The more I try to learn about God, deal with God, express God, and have relationship with God based on my human wisdom, the more confused and doubtful I’ll be.

We as Christians must remember that this life is so much more than what we see or hear. There’s a realm beyond our comprehension, but one that God encourages us to operate in and take part of. Why else would he send us the Holy Spirit to direct and guide? Why else would he speak in parables and tell people to eat his flesh and drink his blood? Why else would God, through Paul, tell us that our battle isn’t against flesh and blood, but “the dark and evil forces in the heavenly realm.” (Ephesians 6:12)

I understand better why Jesus said that he didn’t come to bring peace, but division. It’s not that he desires division, but the very nature of his spiritual presence and truth is so contrary to the world and its wisdom, that men don’t understand it. And what’s the common reaction to something man doesn’t understand? To be against it. And when you’re against something, at some level there’s division.

I’ll never have God all figured out. I’ll always have questions and doubts - I’m only human. But if I continue to approach God through my own wisdom or the wisdom of man, rather than His Spirit, I’ll be forever lost in a sea of hopelessness. Lest we forget that eternal life is here and now; by knowing Jesus, God has offered us the Holy Spirit as a connection point between the physical and spiritual realms.

Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God… (1 Corinthians 2:12)

The hard part for me is taking my focus off the world and its limited knowledge of spiritual truths, and doing what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:18

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Who said a life lived for Christ was easy or always made sense?