Recently, I've been learning a lot about myself. It's strange. I've been me for as long as I can remember (thank God!), and yet, often I don't get myself. In so many ways I'm a walking contradiction.
As most of you know I'm by nature, partial to spontanaity. Every personality test I've ever taken for whatever purpose has shown that I strongly favor being spontaneous over being planned (my Myers-Briggs type is ENFP every time I take it). It shows up in a bunch of ways. I don't see a real purpose in owning movies because for me, the fun and thrill of watching a movie only comes around the first time through. There are exceptions. But those exceptions aren't so much that I like the movies but more that seeing it again serves a separate purpose.
I read. But I'll read a book once. I know that there are great benefits to reading a book twice, three times, or even more. But the idea has no appeal. Again, there are exceptions... but those exceptions are due to some perceived greater purpose (i.e. class textbooks and the Bible).
I hate TV re-runs.
I don't take pleasure in the familiar. I don't like knowing everything that's going to happen. Or so I thought.
A few months ago, on the subject of what I wanted to do when I went home on vacation, I wrote in my blog that I wanted to experience the familiar. The reasoning? I've been doing nothing but the unfamiliar for a year and now I want a change of scenery. Prior to coming here, I figured that I'd thrive in this situation because everything would be new. Things didn't quite turn out as I expected.
Did the unfamiliar become familiar? That is, did being unfamiliar with my surroundings... that feeling, become familiar? Maybe to some extent, but I don't think that's all of it. Searching my heart I came to the realization that my obsession with new things is within the context of the condition that I perceive that some things are certain. For example, I like reading new books because I think that the new books have something I can learn from (my perceived certainty). I like going to new places with friends because I think that I'm going with friends. I've often felt at liberty to try new things in ministry because I've perceived that the people I'm working with or would be working with, are people I can trust.
So I'm thinking about this last night... while sipping on some grape juice, and then, a behemoth of a question smacks me in the head. "Does this mean that I don't perceive God's promise of being with me always to be an absolute certainty?" I've come to the conclusion that up until this point, many of the things that I truly think are absolute certainties are not absolute certainties at all (because God alone is the one true absolute certainty in life). That's not to say that I don't believe that I have a personal relationship with God... because I do through my belief in Jesus Christ.
But a belief and an absolute certainty are two very different things... at least in my understanding of the usage of the word "belief." I may be very wrong in my understanding of the two terms but when I think of "absolute certainty," I think of a thinking and process that pervades in the life we live. That is, the addition (or subtraction) of an "absolute certainty" in our lives, changes the way we live and see our life drastically. The addition or subtraction of a belief, however, at best, changes small little things in our lives to make us "better/moral people."