I’ve been sick a lot lately. Like, a lot. I’m sick of it.
More than anything, I’m sick of the uncertainty it brings to the delicate equilibrium of a family with young kids.
If a family has two parents and one goes out of commission, it’s like flying with one jet. Everything is worse for everyone.
And the worst thing of all is the uncertainty it brings.
Physical uncertainty, economic uncertainty, and all the small things like, “Am I going to be well enough to drive and pick up the kids today, or does my wife need to come home early, or do I need to ask a friend?” and everything that comes from that.
I hate it.
Now, I’m a Christian and you are, too.
Theoretically, uncertainty is our chance to show the world that we’re cool with uncertainty because we know God’s in control.
He’s sovereign. He loves us. If he’s for us, who can be against us, and there’s a reason for this, and it’s to bring us closer to him and you know the drill.
In fact, that’s what it’s become — a drill.
It’s been drilled into us in every sermon, verse, Bible study group, our own prayers.
All that theology is true.
But I’m also certain of this, and it’s what I want to tell you.
The person at church, sitting next to you — she hates uncertainty just as much as you.
The Bible study group leader who’s taken on the “shepherd role” — he hates uncertainty as much as you.
They struggle with it, just like you and me, and even though the Christian world might put on a face that lies, the statistics don’t.
We experience as much clinical anxiety as non-Christians. And a deep, abiding hatred for uncertainty is one such symptom.
Now this phenomenon — a Christian’s fear of uncertainty — is completely understandable if you believe in clinical anxiety.
In fact, it goes hand-in-hand with our disease.
If you have anxiety and don’t hate uncertainty, then it’s as medically bonkers as breaking a bone and not feeling pain.
But of course, Christians like to distinguish ourselves from the world in all kinds of ways (many of which are based on pride — just like the religious folk did in Jesus’ days).
And for us, aping a relative indifference to anxiety and uncertainty is one of those ways.
And I have no doubt some are relatively indifferent to it, but I suspect it’s because they’re just not the anxious type to begin with, and even if they weren’t Christians, they’d still be writing songs like “What a wonderful world” and talking about how the journey of life — with all its “exciting twists and turns”, even the bad ones — is what it’s all about.
I’m an extrovert and open about my struggles with mental health, and have therefore interacted with a lot of Christians you’d never expect to be wracked by fear and uncertainty who, nevertheless, go to bed at night and can’t find sleep, and wake up, desperate to go to sleep again, because they can’t face another day of uncertainty.
Nevertheless, the stigma surrounding our fear of uncertainty is so deep in the Christian church that, in order to fit in, we have to bow — not to God — but to the general consensus of Deep Faith.
But Deep Faith, in this context, is rarely about faith in Christ.
It is about a million other things that have nothing to do with Christianity but have nevertheless become American Christianity.
And perhaps, standing above it all (although politics is vying for first place) is the notion that Deep Faith is about showing our Deep Difference in how the world affects us.
Thus, we’re supposedly immune to the things that trouble others — like uncertainty.
Yes, we are, in fact, loved deeply by a Father who cares for us, deeply.
But we are also, in fact, humans who develop medical conditions that are no less painful than the ones experienced by others.
Last year, I was hospitalized for a stomach thing and had a 20 minute or so bout with a heavy potassium injection into my veins.
I didn’t know that pain existed.
Those 20 minutes didn’t make me doubt God’s love for me.
But they did make me think, “I never want to go through this again,” and to this day, when I’m battling electrolyte imbalances, I tremble at the thought of another potassium injection.
Uncertainty. See, it sucks. That’s a small example. But it says nothing about Deep Faith.
It just sucks to wonder whether you’ll have to feel the pain of a potassium injection.
Then there are far worse pains, emotional ones, that we’ve been through and fear going through again.
I don’t want to. I don’t like to. I’d rather not.
I hate the idea.
And here’s the discouraging thing.
If I said that series of sentences to a group of Christians — “I don’t want to,” “I don’t like to,” “I hate the idea” — most the time I’d be met with “But that’s how God grows you.”
Perhaps. But I’d rather not grow that way.
And then there’s this. I’ve seen deep emotional pains shrink people. Not grow them. They crumble.
Nothing except an overwhelming fear and terror emerges. We call that PTSD.
“In hindsight, it was for the best,” many of us say. Some never get to say it, because this side of heaven, we’ll never really understand.
I don’t pretend to know how God works. Or what’s the reason for things.
And that’s the point. None of us does. Not you, not me, not the church.
The church, on one hand, talks about how God moves in “mysterious ways” (true), but then tries to explain those ways, and it doesn’t take Kurt Godel to find just how hopelessly tied up in confused logic they get at trying to explain those mysterious ways.
God’s ways are mysterious. Let’s leave it at that.
Except for this.
I don’t know the reason for your pain or mine (beyond original sin).
But I do know that there’s nothing mysterious to the fact that if you have a medical condition, you are going to feel its pain.
And anxiety is a medical condition.
And you can’t expect to look at an MRI, showing anxiety, inflammatory markers suggesting that, and then say, “Oh, but that person isn’t going to experience dread, fear, an overwhelming terror over the uncertainties of life.”
That isn’t mysterious. That’s medical.
Why God’s allowed some of us to go through that — there’s the mystery.
So yes, I’m a Christian and I hate uncertainty and have since a child, and it continues and will until I find myself safely and securely in the arms of Christ, in heaven.
And I also know this.
I’m certain that if you feel this way, you know scores of other Christians who also feel this way, but are too shy to say so, because the church worships a Deep Faith that is often more about how different, how above it all, how tremendously certain we are about life, unlike all those “faithless heathens.”
We think it’s our badge of honor, and yet it is really our mark of pride.
So please, don’t think you’re a bad Christian because you hate uncertainty, because you experience dread, because this world is so this world.
Of course, we have a Savior who’s adopted us as his children, but what child — even a deeply loved child — doesn’t battle fear?
What kind of father or mother would hold that fear against them?
My young son hates the uncertainty of first grade.
I try to comfort him, but I don’t hold his dread against him. I’d be a loveless parent if I did.
So, capping it off, there are three things I’m certain of.
First, that it’s okay to hate uncertainty.
Second, I’m certain your church is filled with people who hate uncertainty, too, and are sadly struggling with having their medical condition, spiritualized.
Third, that Christ is the Good Shepherd, and the Good Shepherd doesn’t demand his sheep become lions. He knows we’re scared little things or else we wouldn’t need a Shepherd.
He lays down his life for us, because frankly, we’re not very good at life, and if we think we are, we’re deluded little sheep.
So if you have a medical condition that goes hand-in-hand with a dread over uncertainty…
Find a psychiatrist here.
Find a therapist here.
[Painting: Nocturne in Black and Gold — The Falling Rocket (Whistler)]
