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There is a joke about men that when we are at crossroads and want to find someone for direction, we should not ask men because men will guide you even if they don't know the way! Men's ego does not allow them to admit that they don't know something! But the fact is that none of us knows everything, and we never will. We are only puny little people who have been given the grace to know certain things, but then we should not get the idea that we know it all.

This is something we must remember when we study the Bible and especially if we teach from the Bible. Obviously the Bible does not tell us every detail about all things which we may be curious to know. God has revealed to us what we need to know now about God and our salvation, and He has stored many things to show us later (1Co.2:9). Naturally, there are also many things that we will never know while we are on earth, and other things we may know only in hints. We have to learn to accept the situation that we cannot be certain now about many things. We may have our opinions about what might be true, but if God has not chosen in His wisdom to reveal some things to us we cannot be dogmatic about them. "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law" (De.29:29).

When God showed the prophet Ezekiel a valley of dry bones and asked him if they could live, his answer was truly humble (Ez.37:3). Is this how we would behave when it comes to different questions about the Bible, God, life, etc.? Think of how confidently people state their opinion about who the sons of God were in Gen.6 or when the day of the rapture will be! Churches get split on differences of opinion like these!

On one hand we must be clear about what we believe concerning God and our salvation. We need to be sure that the God we worship is the true God and we are in a right relationship with Him. We need to keep learning about what is pleasing to Him in order to do them. But then there are also many things which the Lord has left vague about which we must not be argumentative. We can even discuss our different opinions among like-minded people in order to improve our understanding. But let us acquire discernment to see what we should boldly stand for even if it comes to losing friends and what we should avoid fighting over.

This discernment is not easy. We tend to consider what we have understood or received as a revelation as being precious to us and we find it difficult to see why some others are not as excited about them as we are. In our excitement, we may forget to check how really important our understanding is in the overall scheme of things, and end up making minor issues look major. Church history is full of splits, and many of those splits have been following differences of opinion about minor issues. Let us be quick to listen, slow to retaliate and slowest to break fellowship.

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