Scripture text: None
My favorite teaching on the Trinity is a simple one, just a single sentence. “If you understand the Trinity, you are probably a heretic.”
The Trinity. God-in-Three. Three-in-one. One-in-three. How does it work? I have no clue. Do I understand it? Not even remotely. I’ve said before that is one of those things in life where the answer “I don’t know” is acceptable.
But therein lies the rub. How often is that true? How often can you get away with the answer “I don’t know” in life? When you were a kid, and your mom asked where your shoes were, you knew if you answered “I don’t know” you were going to get THAT look. If you answered a question in school “I don’t know,” well that would have been one of those wonderful red Xs on your paper. Tell your boss “I don’t know” and see how well that goes. We’re not allowed to not know things in this life.
So we make up stuff, offering up our best educated guesses and (if that fails) whatever comes to mind. But even our best most well-meaning answers to these deep mysteries are themselves deeply flawed. Hence why most every explanation of the Trinity ever presented probably falls into the trap of being one heresy or another. “I don’t know” is, in fact, the correct answer to the question of the Trinity precisely because this is a metaphysical mystery that is beyond human comprehension. Like a lot of things about God. He’s so much greater than us. There’s so much about Him that we will simply never know.
And that just doesn’t sit well with us. God is so much beyond us, and we’d really like to KNOW that he’s not going to squash us like a bug. We’d really like to KNOW what he wants out of us in life. We’d really like to KNOW what he’s going to do next. We’d really like to KNOW how all this works. And in our desperate need to KNOW these things, we can fall into the most dangerous heresy of all: the heresy of certainty.
I KNOW what God wants. I KNOW what God thinks. I KNOW how God does things. We’ve got it all figured out and we never question. We never doubt. We never wonder, because we’ve got all the answers.
But we also know precisely where that sort of thinking about God has led us.
God wills it! That battle cry of the Crusader as he marched across the land, weapon in hand, to slay the unbeliever. Men, women, children, didn’t matter. God wanted them dead. We KNEW it was what God wanted.
They killed Christ! God wants revenge. So we stuffed the Jews into camps and into gas chambers and into ovens. Men, women, children, didn’t matter. God wanted them dead. We KNEW it was what God wanted.
From CNN
Their lifestyle is an abomination. So we chained Matthew Shepard to the back of a truck and dragged him for miles. Didn’t matter. God wanted him dead. We KNEW it was what God wanted.
From Pinterest. Where Matthew Shepard's body was found.
Christians did these things and many other things like them (and also turned a blind eye to those who did them.) And we did them because we were convinced we KNEW what God wanted. And how convenient it was that God wanted precisely what we, in our baser and more vicious selves, wanted too. The heresy of certainty is dangerous. It gets people killed. It destroys lives. All so we don’t have to feel uncomfortable not knowing everything about God.
But here’s the thing. Certainty is not faith. Christians who fall into certainty are not faithful. They are not devout. They are deluded. They have made an idol of their own knowledge and often elevate their baser impulses to divine mandate. I hate “those people” so I will think that God hates them too. I want to live a life of debauchery and excess so I will think that God wants that for me too. I want power and domination over others so God won’t mind if I seize power in his name. I want to be rich, so God will surely bless me with wealth and if I steal or cheat to get it, well, that’s okay, because that’s what God wants.
Faith questions. Faith wonders. Faith doubts. Faith may not find all the answers, but when knowledge fails, faith continues. Certainty never questions or wonders or doubts. And when knowledge fails, certainty makes stuff up. And that’s what makes it so dangerous, because what we make up is invariably what justifies our worst qualities.
But God does not call us to certainty. He calls us to faith, to radically trust in him no matter how awkward or uncomfortable it may be. We don’t know what God will do. We don’t know how God works. We don’t know the mind of God. We don’t know a lot of these mysteries. But we do know what he’s told us in Jesus Christ. We’ve been told that God loves us. That he wants to save us. That he has prepared a place in eternity for us. That he wants us to treat others with kindness, compassion, and respect. We’ve been told all these things, passed down second, third, fourth, fiftieth-hand from people we’ve never met who died centuries before we were born. There’s no certainty in any of that. And that’s okay, because it’s not about certainty. It’s about faith and trust and belief.
Do I know that God exists? Nope. But I believe he does. Do I know that God loves me? No, but I believe he does. Do I know that God will save me? No, but I believe he will. Do you see the difference? Knowledge is limited. We know none of these things anymore than we know how the Trinity works. But it doesn’t matter. God calls us to trust him. He says that he created us, that he loves us, that he wishes to spend eternity with us. We have heard that he sent Jesus to this Earth to make that happen, to show us that love. None of us have ever met Jesus face-to-face. None of us were there (jokes about our age aside). But we believe it. We trust in it, because that’s what faith is.
We don’t have all the answers. But God does and he has promised to take care of us. Hold to that promise. It is greater than all doubt and all certainty. Amen.
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