This morning I was talking to a friend at work and we began to talk about heaven and hell and other spiritual things. I have always enjoyed talking about this subject with people whose opinion differs from mine. He made a comment saying “I don’t believe anything I can’t understand.” That comment really resonated in my mind. I began to dwell on it and think about how for so many this is quite true. However, instead of not believing, many people just try to understand. We have tried to understand what cannot be understood so that we can believe it. For example, we have pictured heaven in our minds and have theorized about it in such a way that we feel like we can almost understand it. We attempt to answer questions that are unanswerable just so we can believe them. If there is no answer how can I believe it? In the midst of dealing with the loss of his wife C.S. Lewis writes this:
“Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask—half our great theological and metaphysical questions—are like that.”
We get caught up in questions of these sorts and then get angry when God fails to answer them. We ask questions like “why did this happen?” or “why couldn’t it have been someone else?” or “why didn’t you heal him?” By asking such questions we are seriously limiting God and what he can or can’t do. We are putting him in a box. We have been so accustomed to hearing messages that fit nicely into a box. Messages that tell us to do one thing and in return we will get another thing. I have learned we cannot interact with God on our own terms.
Maybe our prayers and our interaction with God is more like a vending machine than an ATM. How many times have you stuck your dollar in the machine and not gotten anything in return? The machine has eaten your dollar. Or how about those sticker machines where you put a quarter in hoping you will get a certain sticker and out pops the sticker you prayed you wouldn’t get. The irony comes when the person right behind you puts their quarter in and gets the sticker that you had hoped you would get.
Why do these things happen? Why doesn’t life make sense? Well… God is on a whole different wavelength then we are. We cannot expect God to answer us on our terms. He sees the bigger picture. What makes sense to God makes no sense to us because of our lack of ability to understand. While wrestling with this concept and really getting angry with God, C.S. Lewis again writes
“Lord, are these your real terms? Can I meet Helen (his dead wife) again only if I learn to love you so much that I don’t care whether I meet her or not? Consider, Lord, how it looks to us. What would anyone think of me if I said to the boys, ‘No toffee now. But when you’ve grown up and don’t really want toffee you shall have as much of it as you choose’.”
I thought this was so profound. Much of why I long for heaven is again, to see my brother. C.S. Lewis asks the question “Can I meet her again only if I learn to love you so much that I don’t care whether I meet her or not?” Wow! Is this true with Benji? Am I only going to meet him when I come to the place where I love Jesus so much and want nothing more than to just be with him? But this doesn’t make sense to me. This is not the answer I am looking for. If this is true, then I must ask the question, “Am I willing to sacrifice my memories of my brother and my desire to see him again in order to just be with Jesus?” Do I trust Jesus enough to sacrifice these things? Wow!
I think back on the comment my friend made “I don’t believe anything I can’t understand.” The reason we struggle believing what we cannot see is because of our lack of faith. We can’t trust God enough and so we formulate our own ideas about the supernatural so that we might be able to believe in them. Why? Because we struggle to believe in what we do not understand.
The loss of my brother has made me ask so many questions and there is so much more I do not understand, but it has been by faith I have been able to accept and cope with these things. I have to just trust Jesus. I have to put my faith in him. This is how we believe what we do not understand. We believe because of faith. As I think about my brother and his fate, I do not understand. I do not understand heaven or what Benji is currently doing, or where precisely heaven is, but I do have faith and I am trusting God. He is bigger then anything I could ever dream up, therefore it is in his hands that my brother lays.
