the certainty of uncertainty

Some things are certain.

Scientific laws are an example, such as gravity: you can’t stop it, it’s always true. I remember as a child finding it amusing to read: “Gravity is a myth, the earth sucks!” But the reality is that gravity is always gravity. The strength of it may change (for example it’s different on the moon) but it exists.

Another certainty is the speed of light. It always travels at the same speed (which is why E=MC² works as an equation (C is the universal constant, the speed of light).

Some people suggest that another certainty is that it will rain when you have put the washing outside, but experience has told me that this is not always true.

And one thing that seems to be certain is that some people seem to have developed the ability to ignore certain things…

It seems to me that there are some politicians at the moment who say that some things are true when they blatantly aren’t, or claim that something is true because ‘they say that…’ when they can’t give their sources. The phrase ‘fake news’ is an example – it is used to disparage and discredit something that the person doesn’t like even though it is blatantly true. It’s a bit like kids sticking their fingers in their ears and going ‘la la la la’ when being told that it’s bedtime.

I want to suggest (tentatively) that sometimes we mistreat the Bible either by claiming absolute truth about something or by ignoring inconvenient truths.

It’s true that there are lots of rules and regulations in the Bible (almost all of them in the Old Testament). And, because we want certainty, we turn them into dogmas – a definitive belief that is unchangeable. That’s okay, except that when you look at Jesus he didn’t treat the Bible like that. He broke religious rules and regulations, and he ignored dogmas of the day. He only had two fundamental rules – love God and love people – and they were more important to him than the rules and dogmas.

Yet some Christians today can be fixated on dogmas and focus less on loving God and loving people. We can apply the dogmas rigidly in ways that are unloving, and ignore the inconvenient fact that Jesus seemed to go out of his way to include people that had been excluded by rules, regulations and dogma.

People matter to God more than rules because God loves people.

Be blessed, be a blessing