No Guarantees

I am writing in my blog again, because I have time off. Forced time off. Right now I should be at Covenant Bay Bible Camp in Alberta, but due to circumstances beyond our control, we may or not be going there and we may be looking at other options as how to end our summer. At the very least, this week's camp was cancelled which is too bad for sure but at the same time I taking advantage of this time to reflect. And when I reflect I have to let my pretentiousness out into the internet. After all, the internet needs pretentiousness in order to work.

I have been thinking about dynamics between people and trying to unravel what makes me frustrated and what can I do to help my relationships be better. I think the that stands out to me that makes me frustrated is guarantees.

We want everything to be guaranteed. We want our things to be guaranteed to work for forever. We want jobs to be guaranteed. We want people guaranteed to never change. We believe relationships (at least the ones we are apart of) are guaranteed to bring us happiness.

The big problem that I have with guarantees is that really nothing is guaranteed. Even the highest quality items break down. The economy can change. People will change. Relationships have never been guaranteed. At the same time, we are surprised when the guarantee falls through and angry or frustrated that it did. We lean heavily on the guarantees in life and can often be neglectful because of them.

I get why people like guarantees. They can rest easy. They know that things will be okay. A guarantee can align their world right.

But isn't a guarantee merely some words used to convince someone to go along with whatever the plan is? A guarantee requires nothing of us and yet should we really be so angry when the guarantee turns out to fail? I live as though there is no guarantee. I have never trusted guarantees because I don't believe they exist.

Remember when Jesus forbade oaths in Matthew 5 because of the reason that you don't know the future. There is uncertainty in the future. Instead we are told to simply make your "yes" "yes" and your "no" "no". Oaths in that time was a basically a way of saying, "Trust me". I remember reading somewhere that the lesson is to be honest all the time and that the use of an oath implies that they rest of the time you might be lying. There are a couple of ways of looking at the passage, but for me it comes across that it boils down that there is uncertainty in the future and that it is wrong to claim certainty.

I think that is what bothers me. When people are certain and perhaps they shouldn't be. They are going to be devastated when it turns out that it is not. That their certainty has led them to stop thinking because in their mind they don't have to think anymore. They are certain. It's fact. You are either uninformed, willingly ignorant, or looking to pick a fight if you are not lining up with their definitive statements.

You see it when people treat their jobs with a cocky attitude and are surprised that a worker of their caliber is so foolishly let go or they treat their relationships with a carefree attitude and then are devastated when their spouses leave them and no one wants them.

It's the world of black and white. It's the world of children's stories. It's the world of comic books. In a word, "fantasy". There is little that is certain and to make things simply black and white in a world of complex colours will only bring conflict and you see it.

I suppose that I have an equally difficult time with black and white in regards to faith. People still love their guarantees and especially in the realm of the fate of their souls. Accept Jesus as your Lord and savior and know that nothing can separate you from your home in heaven. That's one of the biggest guarantees out there. Unfortunately, our treatment of guarantees still transfer to this one. Since it is a guarantee there is little reflection on it, there can be neglect of it. Things become black and white. Eventually more and more becomes black and white and soon our lives of faith are dull and meaningless. The only thing left for black and white faith is to eliminate the colour and make things line up and if that means some relationships are destroyed, some people declared 'heathens' or some lives are taken then so be it.

If faith is treated like a guarantee, then I fear that faith is dead. If a Christian cannot see the life-giving value of the way of Christ without heaven and without a guarantee, then you will be like the disciples and abandon Christ when the darkest times come. They also guaranteed Christ that they would never deny him or abandon him, but they did because they were certain in their mind about Jesus. They thought he wouldn't be captured and killed. They thought he was going to establish the earthly kingdom of God. They were certain and because they were certain they did not consider that the bigger issue at hand was that a religious system that suffocated it's people needed to be broken. But in the face of the loss of the guarantee of God's kingdom, the loss of the guarantee of eternal life, they could not see the value of being faithful to something bigger than themselves.

My question for those of you who follow Christ: If there were no guarantees in your faith, can you see the value of living faithfully? Is it possible to have the truly wonderful, full life-giving life that Jesus speaks of without those guarantees?

"On bended knee is no way to be free
Lifting up an empty cup I ask silently
That all my destinations will accept the one that's me
So I can breathe
Circles they grow and they swallow people whole
Half their lives they say goodnight to wives they'll never know
Got a mind full of questions and a teacher in my soul
So it goes...
Don't come closer or I'll have to go
Holding me like gravity are places that pull
If ever there was someone to keep me at home
It would be you...
Everyone I come across in cages they bought
They think of me and my wandering
But I'm never what they thought
Got my indignation but I'm pure in all my thoughts
I'm alive
Wind in my hair, I feel part of everywhere
Underneath my being is a road that disappeared
Late at night I hear the trees
They're singing with the dead
Overhead...
Leave it to me as I find a way to be
Consider me a satellite for ever orbiting
I knew all the rules but the rules did not know me
Guaranteed..."
- "Guaranteed" by Eddie Vedder from the "Into the Wild" soundtrack