Today's soundtrack is Dev/Null: Lazer Thrash, a super chaotic electronic album that is largely instrumental and very experimental.
This afternoon, I'm reading the sixth chapter of John Calvin's The Institutes of the Christian Religion, "We need Scripture, as a guide and teacher, in coming to God as Creator." I am now in the second part of the book: "God's Word and God's Spirit."
So what, aside from His creation itself, does God give to us to lead us to Him? The scripture. He used the Israelites as a vessel, protecting them through the ages so that they would not go astray. Calvin compares the Bible to a pair of glasses, saying that "those with poor sight can hardly make out the words in a book, but with the help of glasses can read clearly[;] so the Scripture crystallises ideas about God which had been very confused, scatters the darkness[,] and shows us the true God clearly" (p. 39). God did not leave our knowledge of Himself up to His creation to show Himself to us; he "successfully keeps us knowing [H]im" (p. 39) through the sacred words that He gave us, telling us not merely that there is a god, but that He is "the only God deserving reverence" (p. 39). Only through an understanding of God's words can we "gain an atom of sound doctrine" (p. 40). The presence of God's words in one's heart is the only thing that will remove error from him.