Aren't God's Ways Too Mysterious For Our Understanding?

When it comes to understanding God, shouldn’t we just shrug our shoulders and say “Well, God works in mysterious ways” and just leave it at that? After all, isn’t it rather arrogant or presumptuous of us to think that we’ve got God all figured out?

One of the first things a young man named Serge told me in answer to my question about what happens after we die was that he really didn’t know, that he really couldn’t be sure. Now, I could understand the first part about not knowing, but what about the second – that he really can’t be sure. Not trying to be snarky here but – are you really sure about that?

As I try to initiate Gospel conversations with various people at various levels, I often get accused of arrogance in presuming to know something about God and eternity. My answer is that I really don’t know anything by my own ability, but I can be fairly certain about what the Bible says about these different topics.

Granted, the Bible itself can be mysterious and confusing at times, and there are passages within it that tell us that God’s thoughts and wisdom and ways are much higher and more complicated than our own, such as this from Isaiah 55: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

There are several similar passages in the Old Testament like this, and the confusion seems to continue into the New Testament where even the apostle Paul seems overwhelmed: “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!”

But this passage in Romans 11 comes near the end of a long treatise in which Paul spends the entire first half of Romans explaining the things of God to all who will take the time to read it – not for the purpose of muddying the waters but in order to make crystal clear who God is and what His purposes are in human history.

In fact - and this is the point I want to make – the entire Bible is given to us for the expressed purpose of God’s revelation – revealing Himself – to man in a way we can understand. Yes, God’s character and thoughts and ways are impossible for us to understand on our own, and for that reason we have many warnings in Scripture that it is foolish for us to try to do so.

But we are not on our own. We have the Bible, which was written by men who “spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Peter 1:21)

And this same Holy Spirit who inspired the writing of the Bible is there to help us understand it: “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.” (John 16:13)

So again I ask – How sure are you that God’s ways are too mysterious to understand? Is it really humility that leads you to give up trying, or is it the pride of certainty that the effort would be futile, the pride of a laziness that says you have more important things to do, or just simply the pride of being content to live life your own way without God’s interference?

Yes, God does often work in mysterious ways. But that is precisely the reason he gives us the Bible, the Holy Spirit, and godly teachers both past and present to help guide us through it.