Scared of Being Scared

I'm really fascinated by what Don Miller says in his chapter called 'Worship' in Blue Like Jazz. I think what he's saying is true of me - in my desire to understand all of my experiences and why everything that happens is, I attempt to dissect God and His ways. I analyze and think and ponder all angles until I fear I am going crazy. But I think I do this so that I won't be confused, won't be mystified, so that God and life won't be mysterious anymore. And if I can understand all of the hows and the whys I think it will be easier to deal with what happens, and perhaps be able to control my life.

But maybe it's okay to be confused sometimes... like a writer on Boundless wrote, maybe it's not a failure to be confused... maybe it's okay to be uncertain for a while. I know what confusion and uncertainty usually lead to for me - a lot of anxiety. And to lessen the anxiety and try to get some sort of peace, I dissect, and dissect, and dissect ("Why would he/she do this? What does this mean? When will such and such happen? What kind of purpose could this possibly serve? What the heck is going on?" etc.).

Would my heart be more open to a perspective of awe and wonder of God if I allowed myself to sit in my state of confusion and uncertainty a while longer? If I was still would it become clearer to me that He is God? Would it more easily lend itself to hearing His voice? When I'm distressed and stressed and asking Him a million questions in my state of suffering or perplexity, I don't seem to hear His voice very well. Is He waiting for me to quit asking questions and just sit with Him? And that way better hear from Him?

While discussing the enormity and possible endlessness of the universe, Don says:

We have two choices in the face of such big beauty: terror or awe. And this is precisely why we attempt to chart God; because we want to be able to predict Him, to dissect Him, to carry Him around in our dog and pony show. We are too proud to feel awe and too fearful to feel terror. We reduce Him to math so we don't have to fear Him, and yet the Bible tells us fear is the appropriate response, that it is the beginning of wisdom.

By my concordance I can see that Paul used the word "mystery" 15 times in his letters. I'm going to look up the references and see what all he described as a "mystery" - clearly he couldn't figure them out, even he who had seen Jesus face to face on the road to Damascus and had received direct revelation from God in Arabia.

Too much of our time is spent trying to chart God on a grid, and too little time is spent allowing our hearts to feel awe. By reducing Christian spirituality to formula, we deprive our hearts of wonder... At the end of the day, when I am lying in bed and I know the chances of any of our theology being exactly right are a million to one, I need to know that God has figured things out, that if my math is wrong we are still going to be okay. And wonder is that feeling we get when we let go of our silly answers, our mapped out rules that we want God to follow. I don't think there is any better worship than wonder.