Re: Andrew's Question

Andrew! So good to hear from an old, long lost, much respected friend on my blog. I have great memories from the ping pong table at Heritage. Given the big open space and the quality and attitude of those of us who played (and the fact that we sometimes garnered an audience!), I think that those were my favourite times I've ever had playing ping pong.

In response to the question, "In regards to your most recent post on Blue Like Jazz...do you think there is a point where attempting and striving to understand God from our limited perspective is actually a hindrance to ones life and/or faith?"

I would say that I'm very hesitant to ever suggest that we should stop striving to understand God as much as possible. I just think that we need to understand that part of understanding God is understanding that the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God are inscrutable.

But being hard to fathom does not mean that we shouldn't strive to fathom. I think that loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength means (in part) using our minds to get to know/understand God. I think we were created to know and enjoy God and that part of knowing Him is wading deep into the ocean of knowledge that is God and grasping all that we can....then I think the more we grasp/understand, the better off our life/faith will be - as long as we are intentional about not just accumulating head-knowledge to be puffed up with.
Augustine tells of a vision of seeing a little boy at a beach scooping up the ocean thimbleful by thimbleful and emptying it out on the sand. Then he sees an angel who tells him that this boy will have emptied out the entire ocean long before Augustine has exhausted what can be said about God.