We are brought up in a society which places great value on understanding. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but it can be limiting in our spiritual journey if we place understanding at the top of our list of essential requirements. We are finite beings. God is infinite. We dwell in time and space. God isn’t limited like that. So it is inevitable that there are questions to which we cannot comprehend the answers and aspects of life which we cannot at present understand.
Jesus said to his disciples as he washed their feet, ‘You do not realise now what I am doing, but later you will understand.’ (Jn 13:7) Many of our difficulties in life come because we do not understand God’s ways and are tempted to judge him by our own understanding. As we wrestle with difficult questions – why God allows natural disasters, why he does not put an instant end to suffering, why the wicked seem to flourish and the righteous flounder – we often feel as though God has forsaken us forever and struggle to understand the timescales of the unknown, which leave us asking ‘How long?’ (Ps 13:1-2) and ‘Why?’ (Ps 74:1, 10-11) Asaph’s comment ‘none of us knows how long this will be’ (Ps 74:9) reminds us that it can be the ‘not knowing’ and the ‘not understanding’ which leave us flat on our faces unable to carry on in faith.
Prov 3:5-6 reminds us that it’s dangerous to lean on our understanding, for it has precarious foundations. Despite what we are taught at school about the need to understand to progress in life, we have to be able to embrace not understanding in order to make spiritual progress. Anselm said we believe in order to understand, not the other way around.
Faith accepts God’s evaluations – that he is good and loving, acting always in our best interests and working in righteousness, justice and integrity – rather than our own. It’s time to progress from the temper tantrusm of the toddler who howls the place down because a parent does not grant instant gratification of a desire to a mature confidence in God as our loving Father, who will not give us more than we can bear and who works for the good in every situation, even if we don’t understand. (1 Cor 10:13, Rom 8:28)