“I Am Not Skilled To Understand…!”(Job.38:12-21).
This morning I asked google,“What is the goal of research?” I got this first answer:“Research is a careful and detailed study of a particular problem or concern, using scientific methods. An in-depth analysis of information creates space for generating new questions, concepts and understandings. The main objective of research is to explore the unknown and unlock new possibilities.”
Job chapters 38&39 has provided for us enough research questions to enable us “to explore the unknown.” It is even possible that some of the questions which the author of Job posed – thinking they were questions that defy human answers – have been answered by us. We may have even concluded that such questions were perhaps relevant in the dark ages, but not in the age of advanced technology and modern science.
Nevertheless, even where we have answers to some of the questions which God posed to Job, it should still keep us humble.
My mentor and great African scholar, the late Prof Kwame Bediako, said research is a quest for truth, and when this truth is found, it must be submitted at the feet of Jesus Christ. Yes, Jesus Christ is the wisdom of God. He is the ultimate philosophy, the pre-existent Word without whom nothing was made that is made.
All questions about the world before creation are embedded in Jesus Christ. In our curiosities, our quest for research and the excitement of wanting to know how everything is or was, let us not become wiseacres. Othetwise God will mock us in the same way he mocked Job. After having raised a barrage of questions which neither Job nor you and I can answer, God mocked Job,“Surely you know, for you were already born! You have lived so many years!”
No! We were not born! We are limited in time and space, we cannot claim to know much about things that happened in the beginning. Yet we can have full access to what was, if we trust that Word that was there in the beginning with God and who is God. He is Jesus Christ through whom we have a full reconciliation with God.
Jesus Christ alone is the answer to the questions we cannot answer by ourselves. Trust him alone!
Prayer: Heavenly Father we submit all the results of our quest at your feet so that you should teach us to know our limitations. Amen!
Have a blessed day! Peace be with you!
Rev Babila Fochang