Unknowledge is impotence

Uncertainty can be a scary state of affairs. And, boy, are we swimming in uncertainty right now.

• Am I or someone I love going to get this virus?
• When am I going to be able to go back to work and my kids to school?
• Will we ever get a vaccine?
• Where did the virus originate?
• Do our government and healthcare leaders know what they’re doing?
• What businesses are “essential”?
• When’s my stimulus payment coming?

Uncertainty makes us feel helpless. We can’t control what we can’t get our hands on, metaphorically speaking, and the unknown leaves us grasping at thin air. It also leaves us dependent on others whom we’d rather not be, especially since, as is the case in this crisis, they seem about as uncertain as we are.

If knowledge is power, then “unknowledge” is impotence. How we long for answers to all our questions so that we can take back control of our lives. But as we struggle with the uncertainties that currently plague us (pun intended), it occurs to me that some people convince themselves that they have knowledge they really don’t have. They want that power and control over their lives so they assume and assert knowledge when in fact there’s no way they could possibly know what they claim to know.

I recently involved myself in a discussion with an atheist on Facebook in which he said that I am “certainly deluded” because I “believe something that isn’t true,” i.e. that God exists. He cited as supporting evidence the fact that we cannot know the location and velocity of electrons (which, by the way, we believe exist though they can’t be seen). How anyone could claim to know that God exists was just baffling to him.

But as I pointed out to him, as an atheist he’s claiming to know that this unseen God does not exist. That seems to me not only more baffling but unreasonable as well. Contrarily, it’s eminently reasonable (hence, the title of this blog) to conclude to a high enough certainty to justify “knowledge” that God exists. Just as though we can’t see electrons scientists have discerned from the evidence that they exist, there is a preponderance of evidence for the existence of the unseen God.

And here’s the thing…as we wait to finally know all the answers to our questions related to this pandemic, we can manage well the uncertainty and helplessness if we already know that there is one who is never uncertain and never helpless. And that we can completely entrust our lives to him.

Infinite knowledge is infinite power. God has complete control over the universe and everything in it, including tiny viruses. If we know him, we can rest in not knowing anything else.