Why an Amateur?

            Most of my life I’ve been a Christian.  I grew up in a Christian home with Christian parents.  I accepted Christ and was baptized when I was seven years old.  Since I made that decision I have always wondered “do I really understand what it means to follow God?”  I’m still asking that question.

            Later on I decided I wanted to go into ministry as a career.  I wanted to help people understand Jesus better, but selfishly I also wanted to understand Jesus better.  Despite many years of attending Church faithfully I still felt like I knew next to nothing.   So I went to Lincoln Christian College.

            At Lincoln I was presented with more information than I could process, more ideas than I could think through, more insights into God than I could ever really internalize.  When I finally graduated I had learned more than I could have ever possibly imagined, but I still felt like I didn’t really know or understand God. 

            I went and worked at a small church as a youth minister for five years.  I had many experiences and I learned even more about what it meant to serve God, but I still felt like I really didn’t know what I should know.  I didn’t understand what I should understand when it came to God.  I would read commentaries and other books on theology and I would always come out either more confused or with more questions than when I started.  I would listen to preachers, speakers, professors, and know-it-alls and I would wish and pray that I could be as confident as they seemed.   I would try to debate other people on theology and I would always come out, in my mind, as the loser (even though that wasn’t the point).  For so much of my career I felt like a child among all the other pastors and thinkers that I knew and I was frustrated by that. 

            It wasn’t until one day while I was praying for God to grant me wisdom of all things, that I realized I was never going to know it all.  If God was infinite and I was limited, there was no way that I could ever know or understand all of Him.  Why then should I be frustrated by my lack of knowledge?  It was so simple that at first I couldn’t believe that I had never realized it before.  I knew I had heard it before in college, but for some reason it didn’t really sink in till this point.  The conclusion was that I would always be an amateur when it came to God and that was really a good thing. 

            Let me make it clear, I am not saying we can’t know God in a meaningful way.  I believe God has revealed a lot of Himself to the world, for instance through the Bible and God’s only son Jesus Christ, but we cannot know all of Him.  It is simply impossible.  This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to know Him better.  In fact I think it is the job of all Christians to constantly work at knowing Him better and that is the point of this blog.  My goal is simply to write on things about God that I am wondering about in the attempt to know Him better.   If you would like to comment or offer advice I welcome anything you have.  If you have questions or disagreements I would love to read those also.  My hope is that if anyone reads what I write they will see that one doesn’t have to be a scholar or a theologian to know God.  When it comes to God we are all amateurs.