Sometimes I feel that I just don’t get it. Things just doesn’t make sense. Faith doesn’t make sense. God doesn’t make sense. Yesterday I saw some light. Well… I should rather say I was reminded of the comforting knowledge that I am not the only one feeling this way. On the blog CRN.Info Jerry answered a question from Neil. His answer struck me because it resonated with me on so many levels and explained how I feel in much better words than I could ever put together. With Jerry’s permission I repost his reply here.
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Neil: “Would you expound on the relationship between “certainty” and “desperation.”?”
Jerry: Neil,
You know what it is? Last week I was at a camp with four kids from KCU. One has a 13 year old brother whose body is riddled with tumors.
I have a brother whose 30 year old brain is being crushed by a tumor. He is 30 years old and cannot control his piss any longer, eats paper, wanders aimlessly around the house. In short, he’s dying. 30.
I am about to take on a mortgage for my family, rejoice in God’s blessing, while others in the world are starving. Rejoice in all things, he says. And yet, I want this house so bad for my wife and sons and I shouldn’t feel badly that I have to have a place to live and that after 14 years of preaching I’m tired of living in a parsonage which provides nothing for my future or family.
I believe in Creation and the theological importance of such a belief. But what if Darwin was right? (I”m not interested in debating this so please spare me.) And why is what’s so obvious to me so hazy to others? (I’m not interested in debating so please don’t bother. Here I’m sharing those ‘certainties’ and ‘desperations.’)
What about all the lost? The Calvinist escapes this fear and angst by attributing all the lost to God’s just election. I cannot do that. Every person that dies without Christ tears me apart. What about hell? I don’t want to imagine it in any way.
What if David never really did exist?
What if I die some glad morning and I don’t have the requisite wings to fly away?
What if my sons grow older and end up hating God like my youngest brother does?
Why won’t my church grow even though I am preaching Sola Scriptura? Why does one man in the church continually harp on me about the length of the worship? Why have I been stuck preaching in small churches since the day I graduated while many of my peers have done far more?
Even on the mountain when Jesus ascended some doubted. The problem I have is that sometimes doubts have no answers.
Why have I had to struggle the way I have had to struggle with certain sins? No matter the prayers. No matter the faith. No matter the resistance. Struggle. Struggle. Struggle.
You know what it is? Grace. I cannot, no matter how much I believe and preach it, understand God’s grace. I am desperately clinging to that grace. Desperately.
PS. I don’t get dispensationalism either. Then again, I don’t get mathematics. I cannot reconcile Calvinism with Scripture and yet there are some who see nothing but ‘Calvinism.’ I don’t get ‘Left Behind’ and yet some see nothing but Left Behind. I play guitar and sing, but I don’t understand music. I am desperate.
But I’m learning that I am more desperate for Jesus than I am for answers.
I’m learning to live in the ambiguity of it all. Isn’t it strange that God could have give us straight answers–like the straight forward Laws of Leviticus–and yet he chose more often than not to give us ambiguity? Am I the only one who finds that strange, dissatisfying, and completely unfair?
I guess that’s what faith is about, huh?
jerry
Sorry for the long reply. Maybe this song is helpful to explain my position:
Well, sometimes my life
Just don’t make sense at all
When the mountains look so big
And my faith just seems so smallSo hold me Jesus, ’cause I’m shaking like a leaf
You have been King of my glory
Won’t You be my Prince of PeaceAnd I wake up in the night and feel the dark
It’s so hot inside my soul
I swear there must be blisters on my heartSurrender don’t come natural to me
I’d rather fight You for something
I don’t really want
Than to take what You give that I need
And I’ve beat my head against so many walls
Now I’m falling down, I’m falling on my kneesAnd this Salvation Army band
Is playing this hymn
And Your grace rings out so deep
It makes my resistance seem so thinYou have been King of my glory
Won’t You be my Prince of Peace–Rich Mullins
July 23, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Eugene,
Thanks for re-posting my thoughts here. I am glad they helped you express your own thoughts. In all things, I pray that God will be glorified through our lives together in Christ.
y/f
jerry
July 23, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Jerry,
Thank you for visiting and allowing me to use your thoughts to say what I want to say.
May goodness and mercy stalk you and may grace surprise when you least expect it.
Eugene
July 23, 2008 at 5:27 pm
[...] thoughts were also picked up by Eugene at Eugene Roberts Weblog. My point is not to boast about my insecurities concerning faith. To be sure, there are some things [...]
December 3, 2008 at 2:39 pm
wow, both of you, wow.
I think part of our ills stem from the “myth of certainty”. Our expectations -for textbook answers – stem from some place far away from Gods heart, in some world of “objective truth”.
I resonate with the sense of journey here. The pain and desperation to make some sense, because I know it too well.
I am just reading Thomas Talbott, Christian Universalist, on “The Inescapable Love of God.” It is a book of such profundity that I can almost not find words for the sense of awe, at both Talbott’s vision, and above all at God’s. (See http://www.thomastalbott.com/)
There are many things that have NEVER made sense to me, and this book goes a long way to explaining why.
But I’m not here to push a point of view, but rather to resonate with you both in your shared space of pain and of hope.
December 5, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Thank you Nic. I will try to get the book. I see it’s R446 at http://www.take2.co.za so it might take a while, but in the mean time I will read the chapters that’s on the website.
As I read through Jerry’s post again this just jumped out: