I Don’t Fully Understand God (& I’m Okay With That)
I don’t fully understand God. And I am okay with that.
Let me explain.
Years ago, I thought I had the perfect plot for a Twilight Zone episode.
Now, if you are not familiar with the Twilight Zone, allow me to describe it. Originally broadcast from 1959-1964, this suspenseful (if not creepy) series was hosted by the enigmatic Rod Serling. Week after week, Serling ushered you into into a drama that soon became deeply unsettling or horrifying. One never knew what surreal twist would occur, but one thing was certain: there would be a twist.
So…here is my episode. It would be called “Knowledge”.
The main character is an insecure middle-aged man who derives worth from being regarded as supremely intelligent. Awkward in social settings, he consistently sought to dazzle others with what he knew. The breadth of his knowledge was impressive and ranged from the sciences to literature, from theology to history. While he was, indeed, regarded as deeply intellectual and broadly cultured, he invariably found himself deficient in some arcane fact or niggling detail at just the wrong social moment. While most would chalk this acceptable ignorance up to the limits of time or interest, he simply couldn’t. Self-flagellating, he would return to his lonesome, book-lined home from what he perceived as a deep, irrecoverable humiliation only to adopt an even more punishing schedule of study. But his efforts were to no avail. Almost as if designed by cosmic cruelty, the more desperately he wanted to perfect his knowledge, the more acutely he would suffer when faced with his inevitable intellectual insufficiency. And so, the swirling feverish collapse would begin. Sleep is sacrificed. Books are obsessively and erratically flipped through. Aspirations are replaced by delusions. And the man becomes an unkempt, disheveled, bleary-eyed recluse until one night in a pique of exhaustion he raises his eyes to the heavens and begs – no, demands – that God grant him the knowledge that God himself possesses.
The next scene is a slow, focused withdrawing camera shot of the man’s face, now his upper body, now his entire body, now the entire room. The only sound is the hum of industrial fluorescent ceiling lights. The man looks catatonic. Drooling. He is in a straitjacket and propped up against the wall of a padded cell.
Finis
What would it be like to know what God knows?
Just imagine. A few descriptive words come to mind: Daunting. Overwhelming. Incomprehensible. Even frightening.
As the Gospel of Mark tells us and Father Robert Barron emphasizes in his Catholicism series, when the disciples perceived – I mean really sensed – just who Jesus was,
“They were on the way, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus went ahead of them. They were amazed, and those who followed were afraid.”
– Mark 10:32
They were afraid. And it was doubtful that they truly understood the magnitude of what they were witnessing, of what they were a part of. They were afraid and confused. We even struggle with this today. And yet in the midst of my fear and confusion, I find myself complaining because I don’t understand what God is doing or why he is doing it.
But here is the curious thing: We are told again and again that we simply aren’t ready for that degree of knowledge, for that kind of truth. When Job demands an accounting from God about why he has suffered so much, God answers with a series of questions unveiling a vivid recapitulation of the Creation story. Job is speechless. He finds himself profoundly humbled by the awesome majesty of God and contrite that he would ever presume to question God’s operation of the moral universe when Job couldn’t even begin to comprehend God’s operation of the physical universe. God’s question of Job should echo in all of our minds when we become a bit too smug and dissatisfied with God’s management of the world,
“The LORD then answered Job and said:
‘Will one who argues with the Almighty be corrected?
Let him who would instruct God give answer!'”
– Job 40:1-2
We don’t understand God. We get glimpses of him, as Moses caught sight of the back of God. But not his face. Not God in his full glory. It would simply be too much.
“Then Moses said, ‘Please let me see your glory!’
The LORD answered: I will make all my goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim my name, ‘LORD,’ before you; I who show favor to whom I will, I who grant mercy to whom I will.
But you cannot see my face, for no one can see me and live.”
– Exodus 33:18-20
St. Paul describes our incomplete understanding of God coupled with the future glorious comprehension at the time of our heavenly reconciliation,
“At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.”
– 1 Corinthians 13:12
St. Augustine asked, “Why wonder that you do not understand? For if you understand, it is not God.” And G.K. Chesterton, noted the futility of trying to rationally “understand it all” (the logician) instead of affording room for mystery (the poet).
“Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite… To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.”
And Jesus Christ himself leveled his loving gaze at his disciples and simply assured,
“I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.”
– John 16:12
The Catholic Faith is extraordinary. It is deeply intellectual and profoundly mystical. But even more, it redeems and saves. I will never be like the man in my Twilight Zone episode. I don’t need to know it all. I know that my God made me, gave me ineradicable dignity, loves me infinitely, forgives my shortcomings and desires to spend eternity with me and all his beloved children. Beyond that, the rest can remain deliciously mysterious.
I don’t fully understand God.
And I’m okay with that.
