I don't know if I believe it...
There is a song that I have been listening to on repeat by a band called Judah. and it features Jon Forman. The title of the song is “I don’t know if I believe it.” Here’s the link for the song.
At first glance it could sound kind of bleak, especially when you realize it’s about God and his love. The beginning of the chorus literally states “But I don’t know if I believe it, and I don’t know how to receive all that you give.” It’s an honest lament from the heart of a human being longing for connection with the divine.
Last Thursday, February 24th 2022, like most people I’m guessing, much of my attention shifted from my regularly scheduled self-centered ideation, to being fixated on the happenings of our Globe. Specifically in Ukraine. I immediately began to try and step out of the confines of my safe, wonderful, and comfortable life and attempt to put myself into the shoes of another. Major events call for us to do this.
All I could think about was that there is probably a young couple, about mine and my wife’s age, with an eight-month-old baby, wondering not just what the next couple of months or weeks will look like, but literally just the next few hours. It’s a sobering realization.
As someone who has chosen to follow Jesus and chooses to believe that God’s kingdom has broken into our reality and is redeeming his world, I can easily in moments like these begin to think like the songwriters above: but I don’t know if I believe it.
It’s an honest lament from a human being longing for a connection from the divine.
That’s not even to mention the long list of Global crises that could help sprout that lament. We’ve never lived in a time when we are so aware of all the evil and chaos that plagues our world. It can be daunting, overwhelming, and defeating.
If I began to think about the issues of sex trafficking, labor mistreatment, injustice, abuse of power, global and national economic crises, poor stewardship of the earth, and many other atrocities unnoted I feel a pull towards two rivaling emotions. One being that I must step up, I must turn my attention and efforts in a way that helps bring solutions to those problems. Then I am quickly met by its opposing emotion that I am not enough. As soon I begin to care about one issue, I am either told or pulled into needing to care about another issue that is of equal importance. I don’t have the capacity, and I’ll quickly think that my best solution is to wash my hands of it all, and allow others to care about those needs.
I am both right, and I am wrong. I’m not the savior of the world, but I am here, and there must be a reason.
The writer of Colossians tells us this:
He is supreme in the beginning and – leading the resurrection parade – he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he is there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe – people and things, animals and atoms – get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross.
We see that everything, absolutely everything, somehow is consumed by this man Jesus. If we really broke this theological thought down, it may very well be the Christian attribute that singlehandedly separates Christianity from all other religions, practices, and thoughts. This godman isn’t just about collecting those who achieved a certain level of goodness, nor is he like some sort of garbage disposal that embraces and destroys everything. But rather fits everything within himself, good and bad, and begins to “properly fix and fit together [everything] in vibrant harmonies.” How could this be?
Last week while talking about the current state of things I had a friend ask, “What would Jesus do right now?” My response was, “We know because He already did it.” Jesus is able to fit all things into himself “because of his death, [and] his blood that poured down from the cross.”
Jesus went to the very place of chaos, separation, isolation, and death that we want to avoid. When we say things like, “God is in the pain, God is in the war, God is in the death.” They’re not meant to be just statements of comfort in hard times, but rather are statements about how God manifest himself in our reality. The cross is how we know Jesus can take in all things, and we know he is in our midst during our darkest time, even to the point of death.
My belief of Gods kingdom breaking in is only realized because of the very moment that that hope seemed from the outside to be shattered, the event of the cross. The resurrection of Jesus, lets us know that even death doesn’t have the final say.
At times it’s still hard for me to believe it. I can admit that. But I must also admit that there is a supernatural peace that overwhelms me when I dwell on a passage like this, and I wish I could better explain it with our language, but I’m not there yet.
My hope for you as you grapple with all the feelings and emotions that come with the hard times we’re aware of in our world, is that you do not look at it as the world does but rather as one seeking to believe the Colossians 1:18-20 passage.
And as you do, I believe you are given the grace to express what your soul feels just like the writers of the song I described:
“But I don’t know if I believe it
But I don’t how to recieve all that you give
But I don’t know how to say this
Somehow I keep falling more in love with you”
Jesus isn’t waiting on us to be perfect or for us to have robotic emotions that never waver. Just look at the disciples. He wants us to rely on him. In our doubt, in our belief, in our frustration, in our forgiveness, in all things. In the meantime, I have no idea of how things will play out. But even in my moments of disbelief I rely on him, and I keep falling more in love.