BELIEF IS SOMETHING SPECIAL

There are moments in my life when I just don’t know. I don’t know if what I’m doing with my life is the right thing to do, I don’t know what to put in my lunch, and I don’t know if I believe in God. And in these moments it occurs to me that everything I’ve been living for could be a myth, and that there really might not be anything more to life than what is blatantly obvious.
It’s in these moments that I really just want someone to tell me what’s going on. Someone who can tell me with absolute certainty that everything is going to be Ok, so that I too can be absolutely certain. There is this part in me yearning for everything I’m doing and everything I believe in to be right, while another part tells me its all wrong.
In these moments I get scared that I’ll never just know, ever again, and that I’ll forever be stuck in this wondering, questioning phase. In these moments I just want someone who can just tell me “this is how it is, this is how/what you should believe.” The thing is though, that realistically even if someone tried to do this for me, I wouldn’t listen. I’d probably think they were crazy. It’s unlikely that I’d agree with everything they said, and so I couldn’t simply blindly accept everything they said as truth. I’d only get my back up and in the end be left with even more confusion.
And if I was absolutely certain, then it wouldn’t be a belief any more, it would be knowledge. Some how God and Jesus would all end up in the same category as math and the guy down the street; just the way it is. And really these things are not in the same category, and never should be. God and Jesus are supposed to be thought of as more than a random celebrity or historical figures somehow they are supposed to be above these things. Somehow I think that if you knew with absolute certainty that these beings were out there, the lack of wonder and mystery would make it difficult to separate them from the people you learn about in your history textbooks or on MTV.
So maybe I like this phase after all. The whole wonder/confusion thing. Or maybe I just wish I could have certainty that I was on the right track without having to lose the wonder of it all. For now though I think that maybe belief is all about not knowing, that’s what makes it different from knowledge. Really, it’s unlikely that we’re ever going to know. So I’ll deal with the moments of disbelieve, and hang on to the moments of certainly. I’ll remember that I choose to believe, and that belief is something special and knowledge is every day. And I’ll know that I believe.
-Kathleen Kerr