BitterSweetLife

…A Journey Toward Certainty



Some decisions can haunt you for years. Generally, they are the type you make only once. Buying a digital camera, for example. No matter how well you do your homework, evolving technology will eventually make you look like a fool. Carelessly upping the ante, a friend of mine (who will remain unnamed for obvious reasons) once compared buying a digital camera to getting married.

His logic was something along these lines: The longer you wait, the better the options get, and the more of them there are. But if you wait indefinitely, you will eventually get too old to enjoy your purchase. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. This struck me as a considerably bleak, jaded way of looking at the whole realm of marriage, and very insightful.

But no, wait! Not in the way you think! (Lindsay, don’t stop reading now.) The marriage-phobia that many profess provides a clue to a reality that virtually all of us experience. I think we suffer from a low-grade fear of disabling choices which is, at the very least, persistent if not paralyzing. Digital cameras aside, there are few decisions that cannot be creatively second-guessed at—and many of them are painful.

Most of us can fill in the blank. Choices can and do go wrong in so many ways, they hardly need to be listed. But in a world where blueprints of God’s down-to-the-minute plans are carefully veiled, hesitancy, concern, and regret seem nearly unavoidable. God tells us all he wants us to know, but he doesn’t tell us everything. We know enough, but not all. And so we must pick our paths with courage and with faith.

That, and we should avail ourselves of the few options that will never take on shady hues in hindsight. Many decisions are non-refundable; only a few are fully guaranteed. We should be sure to grab those rarities.

The thought that launched this post (aside from the thought that I should really be writing my Theology 1 paper, and that I needed some coffee) was the realization that whatever I come to lament in life, no matter how large a sum of regret accumulates, there are some things that will never appear rash, will never be a cause for sorrow, will never be second-guessed. And because that was a very long sentence, I’ll say it another way:

There are some choices that will never, ever, ever go bad. Ultimately, only one. Everything else might fall apart—I could end up selling book club subscriptions door to door for a living, and question my interest in literature; I might dramatically throw out my back some day on the blacktop, and wonder what possessed me to spend so much time throwing down dunks—I might, in fact, experience very real regret and sorrow. And just the same, the one decision, incontestably bright and shining, would remain undimmed.

For this reason, I’m trying to capitalize on my position as Christ’s disciple. Few routes through life are fire-proof, flood-proof, poverty-proof, death-proof—but this one is. And the person looking for certainty will enjoy this pathway, this decision, for all its worth.

A step onto the road that leads to Christ, once taken, can never be proved worthless. In the end, that choice not only can bear the weight of the world—it can buy it. My step into Jesus’ life is worth the entire earth, and heaven thrown in. Finally I am faced with a choice—a God—who remains unquestionable. I’ll ruthlessly bank my success on this God. This is a life worth every ounce of my spiritual currency.