Yesterday as I was driving around town I was pondering the statement, “God wants to be known.” I deeply believe that God does not hide. While He is mysterious, He desires us to know and experience Him through relationship. Jesus’ prayer with the disciples before His crucifixion recorded in John 17 talks about the knowledge of God that comes through relationship.
While I believe in God’s desire to be known, I have an issue with the unknown parts of God’s character. There are things that He has not answered about the way He works and about His character. My assumption that He wants to be known creates a tension with what He has not revealed through His word, His creation, and His community.
I have a couple of options on how to handle this situation. The first is to state that what He has not revealed to us is not important to knowing Him. The questions we have about Him in these areas are not important to understanding Him. The second option is to state that what He has not revealed is not comprehensible to us now either because of sinfulness or how we are created. This means that the boundaries of our humanness will always limit our knowledge of Him.
This forced me back to an assumption in my understanding of God’s desire to be known, does relationship mean a journey to complete knowledge?
