A Path through Uncertainty
The world is a mess and the uncertainty of our nation’s future is a source of anxiety for a great many of us. Even in “normal” times, life is full of uncertainty. I’ve often asked myself where I’m going in life and not known the answer. So, how do we navigate uncertainty and anxiety without falling into despair?
As one who tries to follow Jesus’ teachings, I think we might find some pertinent wisdom in his conversation with the disciples right before his arrest.1 He’s trying to prepare them for life without his leadership so they’ll be able to continue their ministry of justice after he’s gone. He begins by telling them that they shouldn’t let their hearts be troubled. This doesn’t mean just be happy and ignore the world’s ills. Jesus himself is often troubled about the plight of the poor, the hypocrisy of religious leaders, and the oppression meted out by political leaders. If we care about the earth and the people, animals, and plants that enliven it, we can’t help but be troubled by much of what is happening around us today. However, Jesus advises us to be troubled about the right things. We should be troubled about injustice, but uncertainty about the future isn’t reason to be upset.
The future isn’t something we can control. We can’t guarantee a particular outcome. So instead Jesus asks us to pay attention to what we can control – how we live our lives. He asks us to trust in him and in God. I think Jesus is worried the disciples will feel abandoned when he’s gone from their midst, just like when we look out onto the evils abundant in the world we might wonder where God is. We might be tempted to believe that God has left us on our own. But God never abandons us. God is kind of like the air. Air is everywhere but we don’t see it. We know it by it’s effects, just as we know God through people like Jesus who live prophetic lives of honesty, compassion, and justice. Just as other people might come to know God through our lives. Jesus has never left us but he lives on in the lives of his followers who follow his teachings.
It’s also helpful to know that each of us matters more than we will ever realize. When the world seems to be falling apart, it’s easy to think there isn’t anything we can do. That we’re too small or unimportant to make a difference. However, we each have our place, our own calling. Each of us is loved. Each of us matters. Jesus reminds the disciples of this when he tells them there is a place for them in God’s house. Some may hear that promise and think of an afterlife, but finding our place with God doesn’t begin only after death. It begins now. Everyone has a unique and important purpose to fulfill, a journey to complete.
And it is a journey. If we can’t control the future then what becomes important is how we walk into and through that future. If we envision a world of love and justice, then we ourselves need to live that out in our lives, nurturing honesty, empathy, love, and compassion. We need to live in harmony with the God of Love.
Now, the scripture that has inspired these thoughts infamously claims that “no one comes to God but through” Jesus. Christians sometimes use that statement to divide the world into us vs. them. The good people and the bad people. That’s a harmful and dangerous theology that gives birth to blasphemies such as Christian Nationalism. However, it’s not Jesus himself that is so important, it’s what Jesus claims to represent that is the key. Jesus says he is the Way, the Truth and Life. That doesn’t mean one has to be a Christian, though. One can be Buddhist, Hindu, or any other religion, or even no religion, and still walk the Way of Truth and Life. What is required to live a life harmonious with the Divine is a commitment to Truth, to honesty and vulnerability, and a commitment to Life, to love, compassion, respect, and justice for all – every human, without exception, as well as non-human life. Of course, for Christians, Jesus is the one that reveals this Way of Love, the Way of Truth and Life, to us.
What binds us together is not our religion, politics, nationality, race, gender, or sexuality. Thinking in terms of followers and non-followers, good people and bad people, or insiders and outsiders is a harmful waste of our time and energy. We need to draw a much bigger circle than that. We’re all in this life together. Everyone is welcomed by God. Everyone is invited to come out of the darkness and into the divine light, walking in Truth and Life. Everyone belongs in God. We are all God’s beloved Creation, each of us fabulously unique. Our differences are not to be feared but embraced for they are what make the world so wonderful.
This is the path through uncertainty:
To only be troubled by the right things.
To know that each us matters. We belong. We are loved.
To live boldly with respect for all life as unafraid and unapologetic speakers of truth and enactors of compassion, peace, and justice.
This is the way of healing and wholeness.
1. John 14:1-14