Risking the leap

Sometimes life seems like a wager. We don't know anything with certainty, and yet we constantly have to make choices about out thoughts, actions, and beliefs. We can amass piles of arguments and evidence to support what we say we believe, but our verbalized creed doesn't always match what we really believe in our hearts about things like who we are and how the world works and whether or not there is a god. It is tempting sometimes to give up and just live life however we feel fit at the moment, because we can never really know for sure what's right anyways - but on the other hand, we tell ourselves, we only get one life, so we don't really want to waste it. It can be stressful to deeply want to know what reality truly is and how we ought to live in it and to be faced with the realization that there is no way for us to know these things beyond a shadow of a doubt.

But you know what my answer is, to the doubts and the shadows and the uncertainties? Bring it on!

I'll take the dare.

I'll risk the leap.

I'll chance the odds.

Part of the thrill of living lies in the seeking for truth, and part of the excitement of loving lies in the striving for knowledge. This life is about yearning and questioning, seeking and asking and searching. Even in our relationships with other people there is no way to fully know the other person and no certainty that what we think we know is true - but part of the joy in loving them comes from getting to know them more deeply and truly. So with the philosophical and theological questions of life: there is no way to fully understand the world and God and humanity and all the countless aspects of how all things work individually and relationally, and there is no certainty that what we think we know is true - but part of the joy of living and asking questions comes from ever discovering more and more about the truth.