Compatibilism - It's like bookends without knowledge

The mind is a maze and many of us will never fully map all the ideas that we have. There are probably some propositions we have that we'll never honestly consider on any other level than a superficial one....perhaps.

One of ideas that engages me so richly is this idea of compatibilism. It's a term, in theological circles, that describes the idea that contradictory theological positions can be rectified by the unifying bond of love, peace and harmony. And that differences of theological precision, even on essential doctrine are not important and probably not necessary for salvation. It doesn't state that all ideas are the same, or equal, in a sense, but in another sense it certainly under-girds that principle in it's practice. That is to say, that by words we assert that mutually exclusive ideas like predestination and free will are certainly not the same, but a salvific belief does not consider doctrine rather a belief in God as a primary and perhaps unilaterally effective position. True as this may be in a sense,  this idea reduces the beautiful sophistication and clear scriptural design of salvation written of in the Bible to simply a belief in God's existence, or more appropriately, his son, Christ. I find most commonly that those who are suffering from the disastrous effects of compatibilism have been led astray, taught not to read their bibles or search for knowledge of God but rather to blindly accept deep theological positions based on the quaint, easy to digest slogans of the pulpit and media outlets. Probably the most common, or obvious is "judge not". An easy test would be to ask them who created evil.

I think this idea is allowed to exist, at least in part, because people have not been taught to think thoroughly through who God says he really is. His word teaches clearly who He is, but for various reasons, we're afraid to share what that is. So, you train a person in the way they will go and in all their lifetime they may never depart from it. This gives rise to conversations where a person with their own mouth can say, "I believe that God is in control of everything"...to which the reasonable reply might be, "does that include your ability to sin?" and they follow, "well no. God doesn't create evil".

How Interesting! It seems that in their mind God IS in fact in control of everything, but then they run across this, seemingly contradictory, information about the attributes of God, to which they must deny the validity of their original proposition, thus revealing the premise of their understanding of who God is. For if he has control over your sin, then, isn't he sinning himself? God doesn't sin! And on both bookends of this propositional logic, they are correct, God IS in control of everything and he does NOT sin.

This person has neither thought fully through what it means to be literally in control of everything, especially considering the reality that God is all knowing, all powerful and ever-present, furthermore, probably has not fully read all of the attributes of God. For certainly if they had, they would know that they[the attributes] do not contradict each other. And what are they left with?

I would liken this condition to a set of bookends with no books in-between. A blind person could easily believe he had a fortune of knowledge in books, if he merely felt the bookends alone. He may even be proud of how often he thinks about those bookends, and tells other people about how beautiful they are. How often he wonders about, but never investigates, all the knowledge that must be contained between them. Or perhaps how often he might tell his friends in a tough situation that they should investigate the deep library of wisdom in between those bookends; contented himself in the knowledge of merely their existence.

This is what it's like to not read the entire Bible. This is what it's like to not make loving and knowing God your first and most important duty in this temporal life. It's like believing you have books in-between your bookends, or worse, being convinced of it.