Our Understanding, the Pin Hole
For the past few months, I have been exploring my own personal beliefs in what I was raised to believe was "the way," or what I was taught about God, and what He expects from us. I happened upon Little Whips post of "My Issues with Christians." A year ago, I would have been offended. Today, I look at it, and consider it.
The main reason for this post is one of the comments on LW's article. MasonM posted "I agree that no person can even begin to truly understand the nature of God. I think we can and have the capacity of gleaning a small bit of understanding, much like seeing a mountain through a pin hole, but complete understanding is beyond our ability." That made me think.
Here in Utah, we have beautiful mountains. But what if I took a sheet of paper, poked it with a pin, and looked through that tiny hole in the paper at the visible mountain range. What would I see? A pin hole amount. I could describe this tiny amount, and write a book about it. I could go on about the color of the space, how big the rocks appeared to be, how many trees, or weeds there were, or if there were any animals. It would all be right, unless I started saying that tiny amount of space was the WHOLE mountain.
Now what if there were more than one person looking at the mountain, say 25 people. All these people looked through a pin hole, and all of them wrote a book about what they saw. It would be more than likely that you would end up with 25 different accounts of the mountain.
What if all 25 of these people claimed that what they say was the WHOLE mountain, and went out and tried to convince others of this. How many people would ask for the sheet of paper with the pin hole, and try to see what one of original 25 tried to see? How many would look through the paper at all, simply believing that whatever was described was correct? Who would deny there was a mountain?
Of course the mountain is a metaphor for God, and the pin hole in the paper a metaphor for our human understanding of God.
Do I believe that any one account of God, or any one religion is true? No. I am beginning to believe that God is what we make him. But he is only that to US. We each have a different view, different experiances, etc. How can we expect someone else to believe something about God EXACTLY like we do, when we are all different period.
How do we get a better view of the mountain? We take all the accounts, and put them together. Why should God be any different?