I am most definitely not hedging. I have been trying to give you a full explanation. The doubts, fears and attempts to debunk are in your mind, not mine. I am content to be a student of the Word, and not arrogate to myself a conceit that I have mastered it.
To me, learning the Word in awe of a God vastly more intelligent than ourselves is a lifelong activity -- in English, the Bible is approximately 775,000 words inspired by the Mind of the Divine.
Most importantly, it is impossible for the Created to completely understand the Creator. If it were possible for mankind to completely understand God, He would not be God because He would not be any smarter than the average Bible reader. That just doesn't make sense.
There are some here who claim to know the mind and will of God with great exactitude and are willing to judge others severely based on that knowledge, yet the meaning and accuracy of the source is very open to dispute.
That's not me; and I would be as skeptical as you of persons who make claims to know the mind of God. But there is an established canon among the branches of the Body of Christ going back from 2,000 to 5,000 years. There are Commandments and other major principles clearly articulated. Those form the backbone of "moral absolutes."
As to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, a problem there is that different people hear the Holy Spirit telling them many different and contradictory different things.
God is not looking at whether our decisions are right in man's terms or society's terms, but in His terms. He alone can read your mind, your heart and your intentions in relation to what you have learned and what you choose to do based on your understanding of His Will. Our lives are to please Him, not to meet some objective standard among our fellow man. If there were no uncertainty, there would be no growth and no free will. Your growth cannot be tested if you only had to make easy decisions -- it is when there is a giant moral dilemma that your growth of spirit is really tested.
There are people in jail who will be more favored by Him on Judgment Day than many of society's leaders and prominent decision-makers, as the Bible makes clear in parable after parable.
Throughout these conversations, you have tried to make everything black-and-white, and all the math equal out at the end of the column like an accountant -- but life is eternal, infinite, gloriously varied and very messy, on our level. Either you are rather young; you are naive; you have not studied the Bible or even read it -- or you are an accountant or engineer. LOL!
Here we agree.
However, I also inclined to believe that the Bible itself also probably does not have a great deal to contribute to our understanding of God. What it does give us, in my opinion, is a lot of knowledge about man's conception of God through the ages which is something vastly different.
Throughout these conversations, you have tried to make everything black-and-white, and all the math equal out at the end of the column like an accountant -- but life is eternal, infinite, gloriously varied and very messy, on our level. Either you are rather young; you are naive; you have not studied the Bible or even read it -- or you are an accountant or engineer. LOL!
I have not tried to make things out as black and white and believe that those who do have built there houses on quicksand. I agree with you heartily that "life is gloriously varied and very messy".
Finally, I'm not young by a long shot. I don't think I am naive (but that is open to debate!) I have studied the Bible as well as other great scriptures. Also, I am neither an accountant nor an engineer. In fact, if there is one of profession whose services I require above all others, it is the accountant!