God's Divine Absence of Information
Friday, September 25th, 2015 10:28am

Thought for the day.  Have you ever wondered why God tells us about some future events in the bible, but never gives us the details?  Why would He tell us, for example, that a wicked king was coming, but never give the who, when, why, what, and where in regards to it?  Especially when it comes to dates.  IE, King Warhammer is coming on June 5th at 6pm and he's bringing 300 tanks and 5000 men.  I'm sure that kind of information would be hugely useful to us, but at the same time, giving such details is actually counter productive.  Allow me to explain.

Consider the fact that right now God is in a war against Satan, and in in general.  Or more correctly Satan is waring against God and is looking for every advantage he can reap in this clearly lopsided battle.  With that in mind, if you were to ask any good commander what his battle plans are, he might say, for example, "We're going to be in Berlin by December."  However, if you press him for details, he won't go any further than that.  Why is that?  Because if the enemy got word of HOW he would do it, WHEN, WHERE, and all the other details he could easily concentrate his forces accordingly to thwart the general's plans.

The bible has a great example of how too much information can be detrimental to your efforts.  God showed Abraham all the land that would some day belong to him and his children.  Satan then had 430 years to prepare a minefield of epic proportions to thwart God's plan and promise He gave to Abraham.  Had God simply said, "I'm going to prosper your family and give them a big slab of land, but hadn't gone into the details, Satan wouldn't have had anything to work on save only that at some future point a piece of land would be given to Abraham and his children.  That would have made the situation all that much harder on Lucifer, and he would have had to spread himself pretty thin in order to ensure he covered all the possible bases.

So if God knew that telling Abraham these details now, while he was still on Earth, would give Satan the information he needed to ensure that Abraham's descendants were destroyed should they escape Egypt, why did He give them anyways?  He could have simply withheld that information for later.  Well, there's two reasons.  The first was so future generations knew about this promise, and the second is that God was setting up a training ground for the Israelites, and needed to trick Satan into setting up the necessary circumstances beforehand.

But what about other situations since then?  What about the statue of Daniel, or Daniel's 70 weeks, or the date of the rapture or the second coming, and so on and so on.  Well, another reason for God not giving anymore details than He does is that humans are naturally lazy.  If they realize they have a lot of time to spare, they'll wait until the last second.  But if something could happen at any time, they'll always strive to be prepared, which is how we should always live.  But since constant vigilance and preparation is tiring, we will always seek the path of least resistance and become lazy over time.

The other reason God never gives us the details actually comes out of temporal physics.  IE, the study and interaction with time.  For the nerdier among you, time as we know it is the result of entropy, the second law of thermodynamics.  Without that, time as we know it is not possible.  That's also why there is no time in Heaven, the new Earth or eternity because thermodynamics doesn't exist.  It's also what helps separate events in our world into past, present and future.  There is also a well known, although I would say not well understood phenomenon known as the butterfly effect.  IE, one small change anywhere on Earth, or in this case time, has massive consequences on the future, with each resulting effect growing larger and larger over time despite the initial action being inconsequentially small.

Now, picture this from God's viewpoint.  Let's say He goes in and tells someone, "Your aunt will come over to your house next Tuesday at 5:02pm and bring $1000 with her.  She will arrive in a red car and will be wearing a blue dress."  Lots of information there, right?  So what is our likely response to this revelation?  Believe it or not, the moment we heard that we'd start meddling in God's plan.  I kid you not.  I know this from personal experience.  The more information I have, the more likely I am to tamper with what God wants to do, or toss in my own efforts to make it happen, causing me to take what was meant to be a blessing and totally destroy it, or make things worse than they were before.  This is why I've come to accept the fact that it's best if God DOESN'T tell me what's coming, or if He does, He only gives me the bare minimum of necessary info.  And I will show you in this example above why that is, and why it's pertinent to all of us.

Let's say, as the example above implies, God gives you the nitty gritty details of a soon coming visit from your aunt.  First off, you know the exact date and time she's coming, how she's coming, and the fact that she'll have a thousand dollars in her possession.  This will likely initiate phone calls from you to her inquiring about a number of details, either directly or indirectly about her, the money, if she's coming over, etc.  Even if it doesn't, it'll still spawn a LOT of sinful urges, such as impatience, greed, anger, and so on.  This might surprise you a bit, but remember, by nature we are sinful.  As such we lean naturally towards sin and will continue to do so while we're in this body.  As such, the more we know the more we're likely to try and control things.

Now, let's say your aunt arrives as predicted, but she either doesn't have the money with her at that moment, or she only has half of it, the other half still being in the car.  Because of this you now become angry, worried, you possibly yell at her for not having "your" money with her, and so on, ruining your relationship with your aunt.  Why?  Well, where did God say the money she was bringing was for you?  Eh, I bet you didn't catch that, did you?  Likely the first thought out of your mind was, "Oh, she's bringing me some money!!"  But God never said that.  He only said she was coming WITH the money, not WHAT it was there for.  It could have been meant for something else, such as paying bills or making a house payment.  So now your information boon has become a mega relationship bust.  You're worse off now than you were before you were told this.  Plus, the amount of trust you've been made to express towards God has been minimized.  After all, how much do you really need to show when God has told you all the details?  Not a lot I'd think.

Now let's flip this around and look at it another way.  Let's say your car got wrecked the day before and it'll be $1000 to get it repaired, but you don't have the money.  This time God says, "I will take care of it," but nothing else, and certainly not the details He gave you before.  Now suddenly you're forced to trust Him far, far, far more than you ever would've before had you been given all the details, which in the grand scheme of things really is a plus.  Now this time, when your aunt shows up out of nowhere (in this example you didn't know she was coming) she hears of your situation with the car, and having the $1000 with her, decides to help you out, and because you didn't know the money was coming, you're incredibly grateful both to her, and to God who sent her with the money.  See the difference that little bit of information can make?  Or for that matter, the lack of it?

There are reasons God doesn't tell us some things, and with others He is extremely light on the details.  Some of it is to prevent Satan from interfering, some to keep us from interfering, some to build and maintain trust in us, and really, in the grand scheme of things, to make His life easier by not having to deal with our sinfulness and our constant interference in His plans.  Remember, God's will is always done.  The only question is, how much is involved in making that happen?  Also, what are the benefits of telling the whole story vs only a few choice details?  Which one provides the best results for the least amount of effort.  Remember, God may be almighty and all powerful, but that doesn't mean He wants to do things the hard way every time, and thus we're more often than not kept in the dark, both for His honor and glory, and at some point for our good as well. :)