Faith and Mankind

It is difficult for mankind to get a fix on God.  I am reminded of my earliest algebra lessons when we learned how to work with fractions, and how to begin by finding the lowest common denominator.  If faced with the fraction of 16 under 4 the student would divide the lower figure by the upper figure to 4.  Both numbers were quartered.  The fraction then became the conclusion of one fourth (1/4) – gaining the lowest common denominator fraction.  If mankind is the lowest common denominator (1) in the piece, and God is the identified perfect 100 above the line, we presume God 100 times greater than mankind.   Although no human being can do more than play games with such an idea it does become a means whereby we can gain better understanding of both entities.  The play of the numbers suggests the difference between natural and supernatural.  The creature is so far removed from the Creator that the only contact can be by faith.  How do we come out with two persons using human language, logic and feelings articulating God meaning to each other?  Faith, guided by the mathematics of Scripture, is quite effective in achieving understanding between man and God.  A factor in the matter is that mankind may miss the understanding about misunderstanding.  (This is not a frivolous play on words.)  A great problem is: understanding.

One of the reasons God participated in nature with the person of Jesus was entirely for the benefit of mankind, and to be grasped in the idioms of human making.  He took natural life as it is and was functional in the society of which he was one part leaving a legacy.  When the disciples grasped the context, fully after the resurrection of Jesus, they lived normally but with intense interest in representing the redemptive Christ.  They illustrated even the metaphor of the promise of care so that when the Apostle Paul was bitten by a snake, and shook it into the fire without suffering negative consequences, the promise of care was illustrated.  (The bite was an accident for Paul, not the result of tempting either God or Satan for consequences.)  Faith and promises relate to trust and commitment, not to melodramatic presentations of presumption.  Paul did not give credence to religious oddities.  He shook off the viper and went about his business.  He was prompt in his act, and did not advertise the experience.  Observers did.  Out of the juggling of human mental machinations some oddities emerge to hurt the main point of what God is trying to accomplish in us and for us, even through us – with his aid deciphered from his word.

Recent to this writing I have been reading the biography of Frederick the Great, The Magnificent Enigma, by Robert Asprey.  The volume is divided into several Books.  The first two Books concentrate on the relationship between Frederick, the Prince, and his father, King Frederick William.  The story would be unbelievable if it were not documented carefully.  The father acted in contradictory ways so that the Prince was oscillated between acceptance and rejection, between harsh beatings and kisses, between acceptance and rejection, even to banishment for a lengthy period.  The love/hate engendered in Prince Frederick seems almost beyond human consideration, but Frederick managed it, even with his own hypocrisies.  After reading in Christian von Wolffe’s, Metaphysique, Frederick wrote gratefully, You have convinced me that I indubitably exist.. . . . According to [Leopold von] Ranke: Frederick’s friends now found him more gentle, frank, and generous, less harsh and contradictory than before. Asprey wrote: The discovery of one’s soul does not occur every day, and it is certainly exciting to learn that one is immortal.  Frederick was something of an intellectual sophisticate and believer in God even if his education had been distorted in the contradictions of Christian theologies, but this transfer to the inner logic of faith was the beginning of a new education for Frederick, and detected by others in the change of his conduct.  This is the way of faith for good or ill, and some faiths virtually guarantee the dark future, ill for the persons of those faiths.  Frederick had received innumerable hours in Protestant teachings, in ministerial attention, in debate over doctrines, but had not really been guided into the understanding of personal faith.  Only God knows if Frederick transferred biblical knowledge to personal faith.  We can believe that if he did follow the biblical pattern he did find the way of spiritual life and safety.  There is no other way.