For most of my life, there was nothing more comforting than certainty. Connecting two dots made me feel safe, like the chaos and confusion was not so overwhelming. A crack of light in the darkness.
Mystery, then, was often a cause of fear. Uncertainty felt like this big void I was wrapped up in, trapped in my imperfection and inability to control or figure things out.
This pattern has reinforced itself and helped determine my attitude and perspective.
Lately, it has changed.
Here is a truth that took me a long time to understand. There is a choice. A decision. An elected perspective. The choice is to be comforted by certainty. The other is to be comforted by mystery. Or, just as possible, to be comforted by both…or neither.
Comforted By Certainty
I have some friends who are very comforted by certainty. You can hear it in the way they talk about things, the way they tell stories. They celebrate when they prayed and there was a clear, circumstantial development. They look for connections. Evidence. Their stories are heavy with what we often call “God moments”, times where we can clearly see a physical or emotional manifestation of God’s presence.
There is nothing wrong with this. It is a legitimate way to go about life. But there are a couple dangers. First, is that we get something wrong. When we think we have made a certain connection and that connection is a false one, our very sense of safety will be threatened. Our response to this is usually to continue in our falsity because facing our feelings of unsafety is a terrifying prospect. Another danger is that we only see God when we see God. We are only happy when things make sense. This is obviously an oversimplification, but what I am trying to say is that we often reduce the most meaningful of life’s experiences to superficial manifestations, because those are what we can see and touch and hear most confidently.
So, if we take this orientation, we find great comfort in this situation: we ask God for an answer and something happens in our lives that seems like a direct, circumstantial answer. It is proof God is there! He is providing for me! He cares! There is much certainty that comes with this and that certainty is comforting. But the danger is that we trick ourselves into that certainty, often attributing things to God that are not of him, in order to reach that comfort we crave.
Comforted By Mystery
The other option is to be comforted by mystery. To see the uncertainty not as a stifling void of silence, but as evidence of the vastness of reality. A beautiful reality that is too big to comprehend.
Lately, my orientation is leaning in this direction. Strange as it may sound, I find a certain comfort in my lack of understanding. A certain beauty and appreciation in the mystery.
When I pray for something and I don’t know how (or if) God is answering, it is oddly comforting. He answers with the wind in the trees. He answers with the silent peace of being. It is an enigma, but the comfort comes in this: God is bigger than my circumstances. Bigger than my emotions or fears or uncertainties. Bigger than my problems. He does not answer my troubles by giving me a circumstantial solution but by making those troubles small in comparison with his mighty and comforting presence.
Obviously, this comes with its own set of dangers. We could become avoiders, not acknowledging the trouble we face or giving it the weight it deserves. We are also just as prone to self-deception. The real opportunity of finding comfort in mystery is that it is always available, we don’t need anything to happen. But the danger is that the ever-present reality becomes something we take for granted and, rather than seeing it always, we see it never. Apathy sets in.
So, the choice we have is concerning two perspectives: comfort by certainty or comfort by mystery. The Bible has a lot that promotes each. My favorite book, Ecclesiastes, is basically an ode to the latter.
And at the end of the day, it is not a binary choice. We can choose to be comforted by mystery and certainty. God is the god of each, of both. The real magic is in our power to choose to be comforted rather than being dependent on any specific happening, certain or mysterious.
