Certainty
A glass idol
Why do we want certainty so much? Is it the safety we long for? Do the answers of tomorrow comfort us? Why do we feel hardwired this way?
It doesn’t match how God works. The prophets of old lived lives where each day could bring something never seen before. Jesus hopped from town to sea to mountain and was about as predictable as a 100-sided die. There may have been seasons of routine and predictability, but the seasons always change.
Throughout it all, no one found a way to live a foreseeable life. No one that followed God, that is.
You’d think that would lead to a radical shift in our beliefs. Millennia later, it should be intuitively known that certainty is for the cows. We should have learned from the past, and rest without knowing what is to come. We don’t need to know, we know God. He shows us some things, but not everything. And we are ok with that.
There are people like this, yes. Most are not. Fear of the unknown is prevalent. It nags at you whenever the path ahead is cloudy. It saps you of energy and strength. And naturally you want it gone, so you reach for absolutes.
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If you knew God, if you could predict the source of all things, then you’d finally have nothing to worry about. You delve into the Bible. But you’re not a scholar, you could be misunderstanding. So you find someone to look up to, someone who knows and understands it well. They do something you disagree with, you find someone else.
This person says you can’t find all the answers to God in the Bible, you must have a relationship with Him. It’s hard and you don’t know where to start. You end up knowing God vicariously through the expert’s experiences. At some point they lose your trust too. You try to know God yourself. It is wonderful. Another expert comes along. Their views and yours contradict. One of you sees God wrong, and doubt creeps in.
There are many versions of this path. Certainty will always be a glass idol, and people’s views will contradict. There will always be details of God and His nature that are debated. No one will ever know the completeness of God, and thus certainty is unattainable.
You could own the world and death would rob you in an instant. You could own nothing and find everlasting wholeness of life in Jesus. Sometimes we have to wander outside of what is normal and reset our perspective to see this. Following Yahweh is everything. The news, our jobs, our possessions, they are all meaningless in comparison.
We must embrace this. We must surrender our need to know, and clutch onto Jesus. He is the only One that unconditionally floods us with love and grace, and He is without a shadow of a doubt the only part of life worth pursuing. Without Him, all is nothing. We can find certainty only in His benevolence.
We can fall back into the banal worries at any moment. But we can escape at any moment as well. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be our guide.
Here is the meditation for this week: Divine
May the Lord bless us all.
