Check Your Pockets

It is terrifying to me that my pocket sin is the very sin that introduced a perfect world to death and suffering.

A what? A pocket sin? What is that?

A pocket sin is like sticking a receipt in your pocket, so that every time you reach for your phone you pull out this irritating slip of paper and you don't remember what it was for or why you didn't throw it away but for some reason you stick it back in your pocket. Every. Time. So that next time you reach for your phone, that trusty old receipt is there, being purposeless per usual.

A pocket sin is an attitude that is detrimental to your relationship with God that is just subtle enough that you never bother to throw it out. It might even be a "good" thing that just distracts you from fully grasping God's unrelenting love for you. Yes, I did just make that up, but I needed a word for it.

My pocket sin is my need to know.

Well that doesn't sound that bad, right? Learning is good. Truth is good. Education is good. Touche, but see, love is good too but when it's twisted into lust it gets really really ugly. That's kind of what sin is anyway--taking something beautiful and adding just a drop of self-worship, and suddenly beautiful is walking around in six inch heels in forty degree weather until your feet bleed and your ankles are swollen. And I've watched my need to know traipse around in stilettos for too long... I am tired.

I wanted answers to all of my questions. I would still like to know why God let some of the church's most central doctrines be decided at councils where the opposing side was excommunicated. I want to know if Jesus wrecked the temple tables before or after his ministry outside of Jerusalem. I want to know why He chose freedom at the cost of suffering over creating a garden without untouchable trees. And for goodness' sake I want to know how an electron can be simultaneously a particle and a wave!

While we're at it, why does math work?

I'm getting distracted. My point is: I don't know. There are a lot of questions for which I will never have satisfying answers. And that really grinds my gears! I want to know everything! But life is just not that simple--there aren't black and white lines drawn through everything and we don't have to take a stance on every single issue. Knowledge and faith form a complicated web swimming in doubt and truth and mystery and simplicity and at the end of the day we can just look to Heisenberg and know one thing: we just can't know everything.

In the midst of this web I realize that I've been holding God at an arms length, interrogating and investigating Him like knowing Him can be entirely exoteric. But if it is true that I was created with the purpose of delighting Him by living and enjoying the rest of His creation, then this whole objective approach to faith doesn't make any sense! He is continually whispering to me, "Life is not a text book." There absolutely is value to questions and academia and learning about God, but when my thirst for knowledge strips me of my satisfaction in His presence, I find myself biting into the forbidden fruit of my pride.

God's answer to Job's very legitimate plea for an answer as to why his life had suddenly come crashing down around his ears was not, "Well, I was thinking this situation would make you stronger and better able to handle situations in a godly way in the future... blah da dee blah blah." No, His response was a long string of rhetorical questions that basically said, "Job, who am I? Who have I revealed myself to be?"

God didn't give Job a good argument, He just gave him Himself. And Job is left without any more questions, replying simply, "My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you" (Job 42:5).

So I guess, if for nothing else but the sake of practicality, I have to trust that some of the things I have learned and know are true. It would be a tragedy to bounce so far into the camp of I-don't-know-anything that I pull my foundation out from under me. I believe that I am a sinner, that the Bible is true, that God is real, that God is good and that Jesus is God because I've experienced those things to be true. For many things I don't have tangible evidence or a solid logical argument. I just have faith.

And imagine--what a miracle it would be if God made Himself knowable!

So right now I'll tell my heart to leave some room for mystery. Because on a scale of 1 to knowing everything about God and the Universe, I'm probably sitting around a 0.2. It's beautiful to me to think that we will spend eternity in heaven digging through the infinite character of God and the secrets of his history and his creation. I would love to sit down with Jesus and spend like seven hundred years learning about particle physics--I mean we'll have eternity, so why not? Until then, it's just humbling to know that I don't have it all figured out, and I don't have to. I am a broken, sinful, selfish person whose doctrine I'm sure is skewed and who's mental image of God is disturbingly shrunken. And in the face of all that God loves me. He takes immense joy in me.

He's just so ridiculous sometimes!

So. Let's toss those receipts, shall we?