Avoid the Gaps

Don’t ever define God by your ignorance.

Have you ever heard someone say, “Where man’s understanding ends is where faith in God begins”?

What about the always cliche, “God works in mysterious ways”?

Or this… “Science can only take us so far; for what we don’t yet understand we need God”?

Defining God by what you don’t know is called the “god of the gaps”, and it is not Biblical Christianity.

The gap represents an absence of knowledge. Pagan concepts of God attribute God’s power or existence to things they did not understand.

Later, when scientists discovered natural processes that explained these phenomena then those pagan concepts of God disappeared. The gap was filled.

God is not represented by a gap in our understanding, but by the revelation of himself in scripture.

The Bible gives a description of God, his attributes, his works, his name, his nature, and his will.

This is not an absence of information. It is a revealing of information and a giving of knowledge.

We do not call the empty space in our knowledge God. We receive the knowledge of God from scripture, and whatever is contrary to that revelation cannot be attributed to him.

The god of the gaps only exists in your ignorance. The God of the Bible exists among the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col 2:3).

If there is a gap in your understanding, don’t make it your god. That is just your ignorance. Dispel the ignorance by learning about God from the Bible.

Never define God by your ignorance. Let God tell you who he is from his inspired word.

For God’s grace,

Justin “mind the gaps” Johnson

P.s. (The same goes for faith.)