Why do we accept "You cannot explain that" as an answer, just because we do not know the explanation ourselves—and what changes when we assume that nothing is unexplainable to God?
In conversations with others, I also say from time to time: "Yes, that is unexplainable." But I must admit, I usually say this because I am tired of explaining why I do not believe it is unexplainable.
And in some cases, a possible explanation comes to my mind. But before I am really sure that it comes from God (and not from my own inability to handle uncertainty when an explanation is missing), I say nothing about it.
In fact, I believe: It can definitely be explained, and very clearly too. I just do not believe that we humans have the ability to explain everything.
Even when we walk with him, there are some things we cannot explain.
I recently said this to a friend: I am a person who needs an explanation for everything—but the explanation in God's Word is enough for me: that some things are not ours to explain, but His.
"The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law." (Deuteronomy 29:29)
Because to explain everything, we would need to see things completely from God's point of view.
And only God himself can do that.
I also believe that we humans explain many things incorrectly because of this—especially because we really want a clear cause for everything.
"This happened because he or she did something wrong."
This simple cause-and-effect thinking has always felt incomplete to me. Something is missing.
And then I noticed: Jesus himself disagrees with this kind of quick explanation.
In John 9, Jesus and his disciples meet a man who has been blind from birth. And the disciples immediately ask him about the cause: Who sinned? This man or his parents, that he was born blind?
So they are looking for the exact same thing we humans often look for today:
What did someone do wrong for this to happen?
And Jesus answers:
"Neither this man nor his parents sinned." (John 9:3)
Of course, this does not mean that our choices have no consequences. The Bible clearly says that we reap what we sow. But Jesus shows something here that I find incredibly important:
We must not take every kind of suffering, look backward for a mistake, and then claim we have found God's explanation for it.
In Luke 13, Jesus makes a similar point. When people talk to him about Galileans killed by Pilate, Jesus asks if they think these people were worse sinners because this happened to them. His answer: No.
He says the same thing about the eighteen people who died when the tower of Siloam collapsed.
And maybe one of our biggest problems is not that we cannot explain things.
Maybe the problem is that we try to explain them anyway—and then mistake our human explanation for God's explanation.
Maybe we see A and then B, and so we think A must be God's explanation for B.
But we only see a tiny part.
God sees the whole picture.
That is why I no longer believe that things simply happen because someone did something "wrong." What kind of God would that be?
Yes, people who believe in karma think this way. But that is only easy to understand as long as you try to do everything right and get "good karma" for it.
Yet when something terrible happens that no one deserves, karma becomes hard to explain. Besides, to me it does not seem fair to suffer in this life for something that supposedly happened in another life—what can you do about that today?
If you feel like you are carrying something from a past life, I encourage you to turn to Jesus and pray for healing from what is really behind that feeling. Because God knows your whole story.
And God is fair.
The world is not, that is true. But God is.
We all make mistakes, and God's grace and love are far too big for every pain to simply be a direct punishment for our faults.
I do believe that our actions can have consequences and that God steps in, corrects us, and judges. But I do not believe we can simply look at a specific event and say:
"This happened to you because you did that."
Because if we do that, we act as if we could see everything God sees.
And we cannot.
Even when we do not understand why something happens, we can turn to him. And he welcomes us with open, loving arms.
When we start to believe that everything has an explanation, we also start to live as if nothing is unimportant.
And nothing is.
Everything matters.
Not in a way where we try to control everything, but simply knowing:
Our life matters.
Every moment matters.
No matter whether it is productive, sad, happy, empty, not so productive, full of motivation, or the exact opposite.
There is a reason why we are doing well. And there is a reason why we are not doing so well.
Some things we can figure out. Some things God has revealed to us. And some things only God knows.
So maybe we do not need to be able to explain everything to believe that everything has an explanation.
Maybe we just need to understand that "I don't know" does not mean "There is no explanation."
Because the limit of our understanding is not the limit of what can be explained.
Some things we know.
Some things we can find out.
Some things God has (already) revealed. Some things are still to come.
And some things... yes, some things stay hidden. Because even any explanation we find never satisfies us completely and in the long run. But trusting in Jesus does.
But "hidden" does not mean "unexplainable."
And one thing is sure: I can trust that God is with me even through the things whose meaning I cannot understand today.
His love does not let us go – even if we feel it less at some times and more at others.
— Lena
NEXT THOUGHT
I didn't want to talk about things like this anymore, and yet it is becoming more and more relevant.
I hope this text finds you at the right time.