Written by T. M. Suffield |
Sunday, June 30, 2024
Our ignorance matters, especially in the questions where we haven’t freed ourselves to question. Our knowledge of God is limited, and acknowledging this is required in order to push further into God and the faith. This can sound like valorising doubt, as though it’s ‘stunning and brave’ to doubt key truths of Christianity. It isn’t, and it’s not. Instead, we have to acknowledge the truth of what we do and don’t know—and what we surmise and suspect—before we can keep walking towards understanding.

“In order to arrive at what you do not know, you must go by a way … of ignorance” says Eliot in East Coker.

Commenting on this, Matthew Lee Anderson says,

“It is a truth that is easy to write, but difficult to live out. Yet we can only learn when we are free to not know.”
Called into Questions, 26.
Anderson argues that it’s the art of questioning that takes us from the known to the unknown and gives us the opportunity for understanding.
In one sense it’s not revolutionary to say that to learn something new requires us to first not know. It doesn’t sound difficult, we’re all pretty good at not knowing stuff.
Except, we aren’t philosophically or emotionally good at this.
Imagine the scene, and let’s make it a church one:
The church is considering a tendentious theological question. Perhaps there’s a push to change their opinion on the subject in question. Inevitably there will people in the room who would welcome a shift and people who wouldn’t. The group that’s discussing the question will include a number of people who’s livelihood is tied up with the church, giving them financial incentives to go along with whatever the final decision is.
Both ‘sides’ in the room are anticipating that if the position is the opposite, this might have profound financial implications for them. Most in the room will have deep emotional ties to the church even if there are no financial ones, they will be are aware that a decision that they are opposed to is going to give them difficult decisions about whether they ride it out or not.
There are other angles to this but suffice to say that most people in the room have skin in the game. It makes clear thinking difficult. Christian thinking doesn’t need to be dispassionate, but it is difficult to think something through with others when the decision can have burdensome effects on your life that you’re already considering. It prevents you from asking the questions that put everything out on the table and let you start thinking things through from each required angle.
In the church so many decisions can be like this, or feel like they are this even when they aren’t objectively. It makes the freedom of not knowing very hard.
Free inquiry requires spaces where we can be free to be ignorant on the way to understanding. This is not ‘ignorance is bliss’—
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As believers we can trust that God is at work in these disappointments for his glory and our growth in holiness. He may be testing our faith to see if we are willing to trust him even when circumstances make no sense or are terribly unjust and evil, and this kind of faith is a great testimony to the world of what is most important—our relationship with God that will last for all eternity. The pain we face as sinful human beings in the rejections of life cannot compare with all the rejection that Christ, who was without sin, willingly suffered because of his great love for us. The rejections we experience should also make us even more determined to treat others with love and respect.

Someone once said, “Don’t let the opinion of one or two people decide what you think about yourself.” Here are eight good things to remember after experiencing rejection:
1. People say and do unkind things because of their selfish desires.
We are all prone to think our motives are purer than they actually are. The people from whom we have experienced rejection likely feel they are justified in their actions for a variety of reasons. Of course, these are not necessarily good reasons, but the likelihood of such people recognizing their selfish motivations is slim to none most of the time:

Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the heart. (Prov. 21:2)
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jer. 17:9)

As much as we wish other people would acknowledge the pain they have caused in our lives and ask for our forgiveness, this doesn’t often occur. Even when it does, it can be years before they understand and are sorry for their actions. It’s best not to expect an apology and instead forgive the person as Christ has forgiven us.
2. There is good in reflecting on possible factors leading to the rejection.
If we reflect on the rejection we have experienced, we may find some patterns. Perhaps we have a tendency to make friends with people who already have a well-established social network, and they don’t have the time or feel the need to commit to a relationship with another person. Or it may be that we have unreasonable expectations for the relationship and the person feels excessively burdened by them. We may have sinned against the person in some way either knowingly or unknowingly that made them unwilling to continue the relationship.
While we may have thought that our job performance was stellar at an organization from which we were fired, others may have seen our work differently for a variety of reasons. Taking time to assess our patterns of behavior and responsibility in the rejection can help us make changes in future interactions with others. We may even need to ask someone’s forgiveness, but we shouldn’t expect a full restoration of the relationship. Earning someone’s trust again or being able to trust someone who has hurt you takes time and doesn’t always occur.
3. People don’t always want our help.
Perhaps we reached out to a friend or someone at work or church, or in our family, in an attempt to be a good influence in their lives in some way. Yet, the person saw our “counsel” as criticism. While it can be frustrating to say or do nothing when we want to help a person, it is good to remember the words of George Washington from his Rules of Civility:

Give not Advice with[out] being Ask’d & when desired [d]o it briefly. (Rule 68)

Knowing when to give counsel and when to be silent requires the wisdom that comes from much prayer, Bible reading, and life experience. The process of acquiring such wisdom cannot be rushed. Sometimes a relationship can go on for years before enough trust is established for advice to be solicited—and received.
4. There are positive steps we can take to produce a different outcome in the future.
Take some time to think about people you know at church and work and in your community who are kind, yet somewhat shy. Perhaps they have experienced rejection as well and are hesitant to try to build new relationships. In many cases, they would love to have a friend who would enjoy their company. Be sure to pay attention to appropriate boundaries if you or the other person are married or in a dating relationship with someone else.
Maybe you can plan a walk or hike together, go to a matinee, or meet for coffee.
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This visible realm into which we are born is merely the chessboard on which invisible cosmic warfare is being waged. It is the stage on which we live out our days, rejoice over God’s gifts, suffer in life’s hardships, weep over our losses, battle through life’s temptations and trials, beat back Satan’s assaults, and then walk through our own shadowy valley of death, the final enemy of all.

Time to be real.
If I’m to tell it straight, I’ve felt a few times lately like God and Satan are playing chess, and I’m a pawn. Please don’t misunderstand. That’s just a figure of speech—though the feeling isn’t. I know that God would never use and treat me like a disposable game piece. I know, too, that I’m not cheap plastic, molded into an inanimate and passive pawn.
In truth, I am a hand-formed and divinely in-breathed person, both loved and cherished by the One who manages the game-board of my life. And while he chooses the next square where I will land, I get to choose what to do when I get there. Knowing all of this, I know that I am made to matter; and that, by the mercy of God, I will share in the victory with the Chess Master himself.
There is one more thing I know. I know that my God and Savior has been bloodied to death in this cosmic battle. He stepped into the arena as the One ready to sacrifice himself in the great universal struggle, to redeem the lost and defeated, so that we might share in his victory, glory, and love.
But still.
When I think about my present stage 4 cancer, my latest trial on a very long list (not to be recounted here), I’ve sometimes felt like God and Satan are contesting over me. Sometimes I’ve felt like a human pawn, rook or castle moved onto difficult spaces—either by God’s direct sovereign hand or by Satan’s fiendish but God-permitted hand. And even though I know that God can see and plan a thousand all-wise moves ahead, I’m still sometimes left feeling vulnerable and afraid.
In the Invisible Realms
By faith in God’s perfect Word, I take at face value those biblical texts that unveil the invisible realm. These describe a conflict between good and evil in which Satan and his minions scheme their evil, while God is always planning his good.
Consider Job. I believe that the cosmic conflict over Job, recorded in Job 1:6–2:10, really happened—that angels and demons, including Satan, really stood before God’s throne (1:6); that God called Satan’s attention to righteous Job (1:8).
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