Proverbs 3:5 indicates, Trust in the Lord and not Your Understanding. Mathew 7:7 indicates seek and You will find. This to Me this is a conflict, am I to seek or am I to accept like Zen?
Is this about Faith or Doubt confusing Me and Dis-Belief.
This is the problem with the Old Testament and the New Testament. There are others like Deuteronomy Punishment/Justice or Forgiveness Seven times Seven. The conflicts cause Doubt and There is No-God.
Much depends on how we interpret such passages. I believe that we may get a more comprehensive understanding by interpreting such passages in the context where they have been told and by comparing similar type of promises in the different parts of the scriptures.
Proverbs are not promises, they are a collection of general wisdom of life; this is how things usually go. Trust in the Lord, decide according to the guidelines He has informed, and your life will (usually) end up fine.
‘Seek and you will find’ or ‘ask and you will get’ type promises can be found from all the gospels. They seem to be connected to having forgiveness and shalom-peace among the followers, to asking according to the will of God, or to receiving the Holy Spirit. There also seems to be a ‘safety clause’: God will give what is good, not what is bad for you. In addition. there seems to be an ‘if you believe, you will get’ type connection to faith.
My understanding is that asking/praying/seeking what we need is according to the will of God. God knows what we need even before we ask but asking helps us to see how much we depend on the help of God and to be thankful of what God gives. It may strengthen our trust, faith and the personal relationship with God.
The answers of God have been compared to traffic lights: they may be red (no), yellow (wait) or green (yes). We can get an answer but the answer is sometimes ‘wait’, sometimes ‘no’ - God will not give to us what would be bad for us or what is against His will or plans.
You seem to be forgetting the focus or subjects involved.
The trust in the Lord is not about human knowledge, but God’s interpretation of things.
Seek and ye shall find is about enlightenment or spiritual truths.
Neither impinge on the human need or quest for knowledge and understanding within the physical or even artistic world where we reside. scientific endeavour is not automatically linked to God, especially as God is not part of science. Many scientists have taken their inspiration from God, but their understanding has been very human. So that when someone like me comes along I do not fit into their view of knowledge and understanding. It would be vane for me to claim a superior or Godly understanding,(and I do not), although scientists seem to think that theirs is the superior view.
Richard
I’m guessing what you meant to say there is that “The conflicts cause doubt that there is no God.”
It’s easy enough for us to recognize the messiness and gray areas of life when it comes to ourselves - as in, we can usually concede that different things can become important in different contexts. Is it important that somebody is always cheerful and smiling? Well - of course not. Life gives us seasons of mourning too. Is it important that somebody never get angry? Is anger always wrong? Surely not, since many a prophet, not to mention Jesus got pretty fiery at times. Is anger always right and appropriate to every situation where somebody has made a mistake? Obviously that doesn’t fit either. If we allow ourselves all this complexity of context-awareness, then how much more so would all that apply to God? A God who was always and only just one thing regardless of the situation wouldn’t be so much any kind of personal God as a mere automaton. Sure, we can claim that God is always righteous and faithful without exception, but that still leaves open the question “what does such righteousness look like in relation to us?” Eventually we may be able to recognize how scriptures too enter into cultural messiness where we all live, after all.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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