Knowable But Incomprehensible

Daniel Friess, Elder

The recent comet, the launch of another rover to Mars, and the launch and return of astronauts to the space station has reawakened our kids’ fascination with space. And it brought up a question: How big is space?

As a former math teacher, I’ve spent a good deal of time processing magnitude. As with so many things, the more I’ve learned, the more I realize how little I know. The vastness of the universe is far too big to comprehend. This brings up a really important idea about comprehension versus apprehension.

Here’s an illustration: How much is 1,000,000,000? There’s a lot we can say about the purchasing power of $1 billion. We could list some of the small number of people with that much money and what they’ve done to get it. We can think about how many people are on the earth as a comparison (around 7 billion). That’s helpful. 1 billion is 1,000 million. That helps me grasp it a bit more.

Here’s another statement about how much 1,000,000,000 is: If you received $5,000 every day for the next 500 years, you would not have $1,000,000,000.

Read that again.

We can apprehend 1,000,000,000, but we really don’t comprehend 1,000,000,000.

Comprehension is an understanding of something. It’s when we can say, “yeah, I get that.” Apprehension is moving toward an understanding, grasping it, and holding on to it.

It’s a mistake to think that we can comprehend the nature of God. We will never fully understand God because He is infinite and we are not. His ways are higher than our ways, and His thought higher than our thoughts (Isaiah 55).

It’s also a mistake to think that we can’t apprehend the nature of God. When we talk about different attributes of God, we’re apprehending. This is what meditation is: moving toward something the Bible says about God, grasping hold of the idea, and turning it over in our hearts and minds.

I don’t mean to make a big deal over exactly what words we use. My point is just to say that, unlike some religions, there are things we can know about God, and we’re supposed to meditate on these things.

We have a God that is knowable but who is beyond comprehension! That’s even more amazing than putting a man on Mars!

Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Deuteronomy 6:4-9