Thinking is hard work

Sometimes it hurts.  It's a lot easier to accept what you're taught without examining it.  Sometimes...I wish I could just take the blue pill and go back to sleep.  Back to a time when I didn't have all these questions.  But here's the thing: there is no Matrix.   In real life, once you know the red pill exists, the blue pill is powerless.  There's no going back—there's only pretending.  So the choice comes down to truth or willful denial.  Argh.

And not only that, but truth is so...elusive.  Anyone who thinks he knows all truth, that he is right about everything, is fooling himself.  Wouldn't it be great if there was a Sudoku, or a crossword, or a mathematical formula that, once solved, gave us the ability to correctly perceive truth?  Instead, we get to study and ponder and wonder, and eventually arrive at something that we can only hope is more true than not.

It's at this point that I start to make even myself nervous, sounding all agnostic and stuff.  After all, I was raised in church, so I know that agnostics are definitely going to hell.  The only people who escape are those who unquestioningly believe what they were taught in Sunday School, right?

But I can't help it—I have to wonder.  Why would God leave the answers to so many important questions open to interpretation?  Why wouldn't He just lay out the Sixteen Fundamentals of Faith in the Sermon on the Mount?  How can so many people sincerely study His Word so thoroughly and arrive at different conclusions?  Is it possible that He wants us to explore, and seek, and think, and even (gasp) question?

I know, I'm supposed to have “faith like a child”.  And honestly?  I think I do.  I trust God.  I trust that He knows me, and loves me, and is smarter than I am.  I trust that He is big enough to handle my questions, and that He wants me to know the truth.  I trust that He is an infinitely patient father, even when I am stuck in this annoying stage of constantly asking “why?”.  I trust that He will walk with me through this stage, and that better understanding waits for me on the other side of it.