How Inscrutable are His Judgments

By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo

In St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, we read “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!  How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways!  For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor?”  (Rom 11:33-34)  God is undefinable because He is infinite in nature.  We can define objects such as rock, plants, and animals but we could not fully define God or man for they are not objects, they are subjects.  There are three kinds of subjects:  God, Angels and Man.  All are unfathomable, most especially God.

We can acquire knowledge of a man’s body such as his hands, feet, and other organs that’s why doctors can prescribe medicines to ailments because of the progress in medicine which is a study on how our body functions, how it develops sickness and how to remedy that sickness.  But knowing another man’s character, his inner thinking and consciousness, or why man does what he does, is beyond our intellectual reach.  We can’t even fully know ourselves!  (As well as trying to fully know others!)

If man is a mystery to himself, how much more is God to man.  Bishop Barron would say many would make the mistake of thinking that God is just one being among the many beings we have in the universe, and conclude that God just happens to be the Supreme Being among all beings.  But God is not a being like us or a being comparable to any being in the universe.   The Catholic Church’s intellectual tradition calls God (in Latin) the “totaliter aliter” which means “totally other” or God has that “otherness” that we could not define.  St. Thomas Aquinas adds to that by saying we could define “who God is not” but we could not define “who He is”.  God is not a rock, a cloud, not man nor an angel because He is more than all of those combined.

Given all these unfathomable greatness of God, what should be our attitude towards Him?  Humility and trust.  Humility because we can never fully know God and trust especially when we don’t understand things happening in us and around us that He allows or wills to happen.  That’s why one of the best prayers is the shortest one:  Jesus, I trust in you.

Tasha Kann, is a mother of two in Michigan, USA who was told to by her doctors to abort her baby because she has brain cancer she acquired back in 2021.  The baby according to them should be aborted because “it” could interfere with her chemotherapy treatment.  Her reply to her doctors was “Absolutely not.”  She is a devout Christian and abortion is never an option for her because according to her “Aborting my baby was never an option to me because it goes against God’s will”.  She gave birth to a baby girl after a few months later and defied the prediction of her doctors who only gave her a few weeks to live without treatment.  Currently she is trying to fight her cancer with immunotheraphy, an experimental kind of treatment and is receiving donation for her medical bills from Go Fund Me that her family had set up for her.

We could wonder why would God allow a devout Christian like her to suffer a devastating disease when she just wants to be a good mother to her still very young children?  The answer is we don’t know, and will never get to know, at least not in this world but only in the next.  But what we know is that God loves us and will draw something good with the sufferings of His beloved children.  One of the spiritual goods that goes with suffering is intimacy with God through prayer.  Suffering brings us closer to God because we would surely pray more when we are undergoing some trial.  We will just have to trust God during those dark moments in life.  That’s why faith is important.  “For we know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.”  (Romans 8:28)