Something Worth Understanding

"For when he who doubts can only say 'I do not understand,' it is true that he who knows can only reply or repeat 'You do not understand.' And under that rebuke there is always a sudden hope in the heart; and the sense of something that would be worth understanding." 

- G.K. Chesterton

The Everlasting Man

I finally did it! I completed a journal. It actually has writing on it from the first page to the very last. I am no Anne Frank or anything yet, but it is a start. To many of you this may seem like a small accomplishment, but if you knew me you would know the significance. You see, I have in my possession, well, actually in my parent's basement, at least six half finished journals. Though it is one of my greatest strengths, I have never been fond of writing. Maybe it is that my mind works faster than my hands can record my thoughts, or that my handwriting is typically illegible by the untrained human eye, or that I have just been too lazy to collect my thoughts in written word, or possibly it is the fact that I am a horrific speller (thank you Lord for the blessing of Spell Check). For whatever reason, I have never been fond of actually using my journal for its intended purpose. Yes, I have ceremoniously toted it around with me to provide my Bible with the companionship of another paper based product, disguising my lack of enthusiasm for writing by furiously filling its pages with quotes and song lyrics. Don't the words of artists much greater than I express more perfectly the emotion and experience of the heart? Surely this is true. Well, partially at least. However, it has been my habit to avoid actually writing down any of my own thoughts. Of course I have never been short on words, that is, spoken ones. In speaking words I feel a freedom. No one records your spoken words, you can alter, refine, and correct your spoken words. You can say 'surely I did not say that' or 'you misunderstood what I said' and so, like a poetic chameleon of sorts, adjust and suit your words to the situation, to the interpretation, to the audience.  Spoken words do not remain solidified in memory and time as written words do. No one can go back and read them. No one can mark them with corrections as a grade school teacher does to a child's homework, taking her dreadfully infamous red pen and dramatically circling all the faults and mistakes. You get the point. Of course this argument has its faults. Actually, the truth is that I can remember with painful exactitude many of the words that have been spoken to me over the years. They burn in my mind sometimes like haunting melodies of truths I would rather forget. However, the illusion remains: if I don't write them they won't be permanent. 

My journal is currently sitting on my book self. As if it even deserved a position next to the words of Alexandre Dumas, Charles Dickens, or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Between the purple leather cover lay pages of words, my words. No they are not as elegant as those of other greater authors, but they are mine. They are honest. Possibly it is because I find few other forums to express my thoughts, being a foreigner in a country whose language I do not speak with few friends with attentive ears, that I have taken to writing them down. Or maybe I have finally stumbled upon a truth that I should have realized a long time ago. I think what scares me most about a journal is not the fact that my words are placed permanently on a page, but that in writing them down there is a certain expectation that in them will be found some hidden wisdom, an answer to the question or problem that first propelled me to begin an entry. However, what I find most often is that what I am left with is more questions. While I write, my ideas don't get narrower, they expand, they become greater, they become questions themselves. I think that sometimes questions scare me. Having a question means that there is something that needs clarification, something that I don't understand. In the past I have prided myself on understanding, on feeling like I have some insight or wisdom. I now see that this was all a matter of immaturity. You see, the closer I come to know God, the more I experience in my life, the more books I read, the more people I speak to, the more I seek understanding, the more questions I have. Maybe the difference now is not that having questions doesn't scare me, but that I don't see questions as negative things. In fact, I think I should be more concerned for not having questions, for believing falsely that I have it figured out. In reality what wisdom can I boast of? As I encounter God I don't see him as smaller, I see him as greater than I ever did before. If as we got closer to God, if as we studied what the Bible says about him, if as we prayed and searched we found our searching leading to something, or rather, someone more reasonable, more recognizable, more able to compact and to summarize then I think that I would rather give up searching now. What value is there in believing in something that is no greater than our own imagination, than our own limited knowledge? Sure it would be safe, it would be easy, it would leave us feeling comfortably in control, but it would have no real power, no mystery. I don't know if you would agree, but I find that the things that scare me the most are those that are actually worth giving my life to. I don't mean that we cannot open wide our mouths, or rather minds, in search of truth and not find something solid to close them down upon. God has made himself knowable to us, he has revealed himself that we might come to know him and in him have true life. Life with mystery, with questions, with a recognition of a truth that, while at the same time being too great for us, encompasses and expresses all our human experience. I agree with A.W. Tozer. He explains, "To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love, scorned by the too-easily satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart." How I love that description, "children of the burning heart". How I long to be one myself. I think coming to terms with having questions is the beginning. 

So, yes, I finished a journal. I have the temptation to look into it hoping to find myself at some greater point of wisdom and understanding than when I began, but I know that is not what I would discover. Rather, I have something greater. I have questions. Questions that serve as evidence that, yes, I am am a "child of the burning heart", a child that is not satisfied with simplicity and wisdom that I can safely understand. How funny it is that Jesus calls for us to come to him as children. I think I understand a little bit more what he meant when he said that. Maybe in coming to God what we really need to to is express 'I do not understand' and in that utterance come to recognize that what we don't understand is all the more worth the pursuit for that fact. Most books, if they are truly good, if they really say anything of value, leave their reader not with a conclusion, but with a question. Not that I am comparing my journal to such a great book, or to any book at all, but I think the same thinking applies. I finally found the value of journaling, of why we bother making our thoughts into written word. Because writing is a form of searching. In it we find some answers, but even more so, we benefit from unearthing questions. Writing is a way of me saying 'Lord, I do not know' and a way of my hearing God reply 'You do not know'. Yes, this that I do not understand, this alone, is worth understanding.