fragmentsofcertainty

[fragmentsofcertainty]

People try to make things simple. They want a black-and-white answer to who you are and what you represent. They are trying to make a structure in their mind to organize the world and your place in it. But how can you fit neatly into anyone's structure when you constantly defy and confound your own. To paint a picture so starkly is to miss out on the complexity of the muse. It’s like drawing a picture, and you are only given two colors to measure contrast when there is an uncountable number of colors and shades in between. Reality is often lost in simplicity. The world is not one-dimensional, and neither are we or our motives or perceptions. We try to diagnose ourselves and others, speculate our motives to try to predict the next outcomes, and understand how we can properly use what is in front of us. They ask “what are you?” and perhaps you don’t even know what to answer, and even if you did, you would change before the answer left your lips.

A child will draw a simplistic version of the world around them, but unlike children, we, as adults, arrogantly insist that our rudimentary depictions of reality must be the truth. We conjecture and simplify, creating a personification as simple and misleading as the Bohr model, and wonder why our subjects so adamantly reject and defy their definitions and manageable reductions, refusing to be a predictable medium that offers us security in our own definitions that we so desperately seek.

[fragmentsofcertainty]

I've seen too many people thank God for answering prayers that ultimately led to their destruction. While this is purely anecdotal, I’ve witnessed far more unanswered prayers or painfully ironic outcomes than genuine, loving answers. We should be cautious before declaring something as "proof of what God can do." Often, in our desperation to find hope or reinforce our faith, we rush to attribute any good outcome to Him, even when it may not be legitimate. Eventually, constant disappointment shatters the illusions that once sustained our faith in a personal, active God. We're left with gaping holes where His presence once provided answers, forced to confront those questions and redefine everything on our own.

As a child, I often tried to imagine what God looked like and how He felt watching us overjoyed, thanking Him for something He knew would become our worst nightmare. I pictured Him sitting silently, as always, yet feeling some form of remorse or pity—just enough to make sense of His consistent lack of intervention. I am happy to no longer make excuses for the universe or convince myself that there "must be a reason" and eventually it would all make sense somehow.

The god-colored glasses are off, and I can see the world as it truly is. Somehow, pain becomes easier to endure when it no longer feels like a betrayal from a father who claims to love you but offers no care or intervention. Or worse seemingly being an answer to prayer in the form of a cruel cosmic trick. I find pain harder to endure when you feel connected to someone who has the power to make it all better from your perspective, but chooses not to intervene. Meaningless causation feels more comforting than sovereignly guided betrayal.

Its all rather mind twisting isn't it? Often the price for a sense of certainty is delusion.