Certainty

    If there is something I long for it is certainty.  Certainty as to what am I supposed to be doing, what I will be doing, what God wants me to do.  Though I know some things for certain, it typically is not enough because there is so much that I do not know.  However there seems to be a grand contradiction for my desires to face, Certainty is frightening.

    In this North American mindset that I reside it is awfully scary to imagine that I would have no control of what is going to happen.  (Maybe this expands further than that, but I cannot speak for other places in the world) In Canada and United States it seems to be emphasized that we are own people, regardless of the fact that so little of life is made up of choices that we make.  For instance I don't know a single person who chose the setting in which they would be born, IE parents, country, family, etc.  So this all being said, why does certainty scare us, why is so frightening to think that we cannot change what we know is coming.  Maybe because it is not true certainty, because certainty especially for the future is more or less impossible to know. Yet the knowledge of inevitable death is typically taken with a lot of peace with the realization that nothing can be done to stop it. So is it the certainty that scares us or the feeling that we might mess something up or actually be able to stop something bad from happening if we really tried?

    When somebody tells us that it is certain it frees us up, for instance look at arranged marriages.  These people seem perfectly content with their spouse because emotion and gut reaction is left out of the equation. Yet I do not know the feelings they go through before they get married, like will they learn to love this person.  Maybe all this fear does not steam from certainty but the lack there of knowing certainty, because one cannot simply know for certain.  All the evidence in the world cannot make anything certain.  Certainty can only be accepted, like the certainty of the end of this life as I know it.  As a part of this we naturally feel doubt, like doubt about God as certainty is so foreign and impossible at least seemingly.

    Maybe really certainty is what we choose to be certain, and what we choose to believe as certain regardless of what can be proven.  I choose to believe and I feel as if I know that when I die I am destined for heaven, by the grace of God that I received.  Can I prove it, not a chance, but I feel as I can know it all the same.  What if I just believe things to be certain, that would not help either.  So I continue to long to know all that will happen, knowing that if I would now everything that would happen there would be no point to living, and would be better off just watching my life for entertainment value.  Maybe it is good to be dissatisfied, maybe it is worth not knowing.  In all honesty I just do not know, and that is all I can say.