doubt | the first month

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.