Certainty

John 3:16-18(NRSV)

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God."

Do you know or remember what it feels like to be drunk? Tipsy?

Intoxicated?

Generally speaking, when we think of those words we think of them in relation to alcohol. But we can be drunk on other things too. I once had a German professor tell me once he got "drunk" on coffee. He was intoxicated - lost control of himself - from the caffeine.

And we know about people getting "drunk" on power. It is "intoxicating" to be given so much authority. I think we can see that playing out daily in the news.

Plenty of things can be intoxicating. I am currently reading Rachel Held Evans newest book, Searching for Sundays, and a line in it struck me in a deep way. She spoke about her temptation as a Christian to be "intoxicated with certainty."

Intoxicated with certainty.

That stuck me to the core, because, if I'm honest, I've been there.

We all have, haven't we?

Sometimes it isn't about religion. Sometimes it is about politics, or household rules, or how to cook a steak, or any number of things that we choose to live or die on.

Yet when it comes to our faith, certainty is the last thing we should be intoxicated by.

Certainty is in fact, as writer Anne Lamott says, the opposite of faith.

Where do we get this certainty? Well, one of the quotes we might cling to it is from John 3:16. Do you see it there?

"...everyone who believes in him may not perish."

Believe. We tend to get pretty certain about our beliefs.

And yet the next line says what?

That the son came into the world not "to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him."

The world.

The 'cosmos' as the Greek says. 

In other words, everything.

Where does our certainty sit with such magnificent grace?

Where in that do we come to understand that our own understanding is more correct - more 'believable' - than someone else's?

Instead, this verse gives us the freedom to see the mercy that comes from being wrong sometimes. From needing that extravagant unmerited goodness from God that we deserve no more or no less than our neighbor.

Who may or may not believe what we do.

Certainty is intoxicating. Humility is hard.

And yet either way, God is working through our beliefs and our certainties to save the world. In spite of us.

Lord of mercy save me despite my doubts and my certainties. Amen