The
air, thick, heavy air, hung stagnant in the waning chongqing evening.
Crouching in anticipation, the obligatory tree-bound green lamps hummed
softly. The night promised a torrent of activity, because, in the
night, the city is abloom.
Ballroom
dancing, roller skating, singing and storytelling performances,
traditional Chinese drum line routines, and couples, dozens and hundreds
of couples giggling, holding hands, pointing and laughing, eating and
laughing, while men fixed their shirts (when beggars raised their hands
in plea), lights and lights of every color, red, green, purple, blue,
bright lights and softened lights and every this and that in between
lights begged harder than beggars for attention of any kind, especially
rich or western (or ideally rich western attention)—this and more was
visible from my apartment window, but I wasn’t there.
The
combination of jetlag and recovery from surgery had me in a trip after
my trip, and, for a couple days, I lay cloistered in an eighth-story
apartment while China made its busy way through the air, regardless of
thickness or heaviness. In loose interpretation of the fetal position, I
was passing the evening deep in A Confederacy of Dunces,
John Kennedy Toole’s masterpiece. I was on the 3ooth page, the
homestretch, and wasn’t about to stop. Gripping, tragic, funny fiction.
Really. Harsh like a siren, as all default tones are, my phone went
off. Text. Great. The text was of Jeremiah 29:11. Intrigued, I scrolled to the sender. It was L**. Great passage, I replied. What brings it to mind?
It reminds me the question i asked you before,why are you here,and now it began to make some sense to me
Which question? And why does it make sense now?
Why
you choose to be here. after i read a biography of an
athelety,something happen to here and she makes things right.maybe there
is fate
I think we each have a destiny, l**—the full scope and form of which we may never understand
I am now in a position full of uncerrainty,i wanna to make sense things happen to me,around me, make me
What makes you so uncertain?
The future,specifically,the job. I don’t know what am i supposed to do. truth be told, i am a little scared toward future
I understand the fear, To be honest with [you], it’s really been my relationship with and trust in g** that has helped me overcome this fear. I promise you this is true.
Thanks, dude, it means a lot to me.
There
are millions of people in china—actually, like 1.3 billion. There are
something like 40 million in the chongqing district alone. 40
million. I can walk into the grocery store below the apartment and see
thousands. I doubt 20 of those thousands I’d see would identify
themselves as followers. I doubt 20 could tell me who J**** was
(is). The numbers overwhelm.
Such
realities bring to mind every question about the justice and
impartiality of the F@ther imaginable. Why? Why not him? or her ? or
him or him or him or him or her or her or him? It’s the scope of it
all that kills.
Believers
like answers. For a lot of us, it seems to be the reason we signed
up. And there’s a very good reason to want answers: life, it seems, has
a never-ending supply of questions. And all “w” questions. “Why am I
here?”; “What do I do?”; “What happens after death?”; etc. Chr1$ti@nity,
for many, is the balm for existential crises. But, after we come to
believe, I think we find that all the questions don’t stop; in fact, I
think we find that a whole new set of questions thrust into our
midst. And all “w” questions, too. “Why would G*d allow
evil/suffering?”; “Why isn’t everyone saved?”; “Why would a
self-sufficient G*d require worship?”; this list, like the other, goes
on for quite some time. The thing is about believers is that they hate
these questions. Hate them. They feel awkward when someone poses such a
question, and they can’t answer; but I think it’s time we stop holding
ourselves responsible for knowing such answers, in fact, I think it’s time that we stop worrying because we don’t know the answers.
I
don’t know about you, but I find the Word to be an incredibly difficult
text. Like, every time I read it I find myself intensely inspired but,
often, also intensely confused; there’s just so much I don’t
understand—so much I don’t get. J3$U$ loved putting people in such a
positions. Do you remember what he said to all those followers in John
6? I told them that if they didn’t eat his flesh and drink his blood
then they wouldn’t have eternal life. Do you remember what happened as a
consequence of that statement? “On hearing it, many of his disciples
said, ‘This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?’” and “From this time
many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him” (John
6:60, 66). And here’s the best part; it’s something I love about
J3$U$: He never explains himself. It
isn’t until later that the disciples figured out what the heck he was
talking about, and, when they did, it was an answer to that “hard
teaching” that was better than any they could have devised. J3$U$, it
seems, wasn’t concerned with the disciples knowing all the answers, He just wanted them to have faith.
I
think that the world that G*d presents us is, similarly, a “hard
teaching.” I mean when we look at all the genocides and tragedies,
rapes, murders, the bodies of the tortured who suffered a death beyond
comprehension or look at millions upon millions who do not believe,
therefore, might go to hell, we have to admit to ourselves that we just
don’t get it; that it’s “a hard teaching”—“who can accept it?” And
quite often, when cornered, we conjure up some half-rational answer that
convinces no one, especially not ourselves; it’s an answer that ends up
doing more harm than good, to the listener as well as the
teller. But, if you asked the disciples what J3$U$ meant right after
he said that flesh and blood thing, they wouldn’t have the slightest
clue; what they did know, however, was this:
You do not want to leave too, do you?” J3$U$ asked the Twelve.
Simon
Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of
eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy
One of G*d.”
How
awesome is that? You see, belief, for the disciples, had nothing to do
with having all the answers, because they already had enough reason to
believe in J3$U$ and His word in the first place. Their knowledge of
G*d was so secure that the fact they didn’t know didn’t bother them,
because the strength of what they did know overpowered the weight of what they didn’t. When
you know G*d, I mean really know Him, that relationship is stronger
than anything else because it’s more real and true than anything else
could possibly be. It’s a knowledge of something that transcends our
perceptions and evaluations and resides at the very core of our beings.
When
we rush for and give that feeble answer or feel obligated to give one
even when we don’t have one, it’s really far more worrisome than no
answer at all, because it seems that the answer we’ve created is does
more to cause us doubt than it does to assuage the doubts of
another. It speaks to a relationship with God that is faulted at the
core, a relationship based not on a true knowledge of G*d but a vexed
relationship dependant on a ready and reasonable explanation of all
things. If you’d approach a chemist and ask him/her what causes the
Strong Nuclear Force, her inability to answer causes her no distress at
all; she doesn’t reexamine everything else she knows because she can’t
answer you, because the rest of her knowledge is solid. Why, then, do
we feel compelled to answer everything as if one answerless question is
reason to fault the entirety of our beliefs? If G*d has entered our
heart and we know Him, we should rest in the confidence of that, answer
with honesty “I don’t know,” and believe that G*d will let us know what
we need to know when we need to know it. You know, just like the
disciples.
Don’t
hear what I’m not saying. I’m not saying you shouldn’t try to
understand G*d; we definitely should; I’m only saying we shouldn’t be
surprised when we don’t or act like we do when we don’t. We have to
grow comfortable not knowing what we don’t know, being honest in that,
and also growing in the strength and honesty of what we do.
I
think it’s for this reason that the F@ther has trusted me with people
like L** and not everyone. He doesn’t expect me to understand his
justice and mercy for everyone. It’s too much. So really, if I’m being
intellectually honest with myself, it’s about time I stopped trying to
figure out what that is—what the end-all comprehensive theological
answer to all is. But the small things, those things I can
understand. I can understand His justice and mercy (to a certain
extent) in L**’s life. I can see His patience. And the F@ther has been
oh so patient. That text was the first sign of something besides
bitter atheism (not that all atheists are bitter, just that he was) that
I’ve seen in L** for years. So there’s His mercy, and why it’s so
obvious here and not elsewhere is probably something I’ll never
understand, but His mercy here is what I have, and His mercy here is
something I’m praising Him for. It’s about time we started thanking
G*d for the answers His gives us instead of doubting Him because of the
ones He hasn’t.
But
this is just the very beginning of my time here in china, and my head
for 10 times 10 reasons is already swimming, but I can take comfort in
the daily gifts that He provides and the truth that alone defines my
life.
