Do the Math

During my schooling, easily my least favorite subject was math. My grades were pretty good across the board but in math sometimes I downright struggled.

 

 

In fact, to this day (confession time) when reading I often just skip right over numbers in my head…it’s not like they are words and are they really that important? Of course, this has its downside. Like if someone were to ask you a specific historical date. I could tell you it contained some numbers but probably couldn’t get more specific than that. As I come across numbers in the text I’m reading I don’t hear numbers….I hear something like “blah, blah, blah”. Being a carpenter I do understand the importance of accurate numbers but I don’t think I will ever love them.

 

 

That all being said let me get to my point. My hardest year in math was algebra. Not only were there numbers but there was considerable thinking about numbers. Not a good combo for someone inflicted with numerical indifference. After struggling (aka - failing) certain lessons several times I hit on the answer to success. You see, I tried to memorize the answers to the test (since I had to take it several times - 4x to be exact) but after the third failing I realized this method wouldn’t work. You see algebraic answers aren’t easy to memorize. They aren’t like “2″ or “7″. They were usually numbers on top of numbers to the left of little numbers that were floating a bit higher and sometimes you would have to mix in a letter or two. Well enough of my struggle. Here is what helped me through that particular section. I actually had to learn to do the math. Guessing had miserably failed me. I had to learn how to understand and figure algebraic equations. I didn’t like it but I did it and the fourth time I passed that test. Try as I might in my effort to skip truly understanding algebra I was actually hurting myself and limiting my understanding of the subject. Now I understand why teachers want you to “show your work”. They want to see how you got from point A to point B. They don’t want the answer that was whispered to you across the aisle. They want your answer that you’ve worked out because you did the math.

 

 

By the way, this isn’t turning into a math blog (God forbid!). My math lessons have reminded me of other lessons that I am going through right now. Lessons about my faith. More than ever before in my life I have been plagued with doubt. I’m not talking about small questions here. I am talking about doubt in foundational truths. This is the scary kind of doubt I’ve found. The answers to the questions I’ve been asking have real and lasting meaning. Honestly, most of the answers I’ve begun to toy with have been dark, brooding, and not too pleasant.

 

 

Many of the responses I get to these doubts and questions are of shock and dismay. “How dare you ask questions like that!” “How could you ever doubt?” These responses have caused me to keep my doubts to myself like a pariah afraid to be seen in public. People really want to see the old me. Never questioning, always trusting, refusing to entertain doubts regarding the core of my faith. Strong, resolute, committed. I can’t really say I’m that anymore but I don’t advertise it. Nobody wants to hear that I’ve changed. Neither do I but I have changed.

 

 

I used to think it was a change for the worse. I don’t think that anymore. I would never volunteer to walk these paths again, never, but I have come to see some of the value of the questions I have been asking. You see, before the change I had the answers (I’m not saying those answers are wrong) and I never questioned them. I trusted. It’s what was expected. Yes, you are allowed to pay lip service to questioning your core beliefs of faith and God but you aren’t allowed to really question. It was never said like that though.

 

 

But as I have learned to live with these doubting questions I’ve come to realize that I (and many others) had skipped the math. At some point I had been handed the answers. The answers that were true. The answers we don’t doubt. The answers that we will always believe. The answers that we will never question. The sacred answers. The answers.

 

 

I had the answers. Did I really have to do the math? If we have the answers we can just skip the work right? I mean, we’ll come to the same conclusion eventually. Of course, when we write all the correct answers in their proper places after having skipped all the figuring maybe we’ve actually gained nothing. Maybe we just cheated. Maybe we cheated ourselves. Maybe it is a lesser thing to have all the answers correct and a greater thing to be able to do the math that will eventually arrive at the same answers.

 

 

If the church doesn’t allow doubt or questions or struggles maybe we are creating spiritual dunces. Low IQ disciples that have a list of the right answers but don’t know why they are right and true and unchanging.

 

 

The only way to avoid this, the better way, is to do the math yourself. Maybe those answers begin with doubt. Maybe they begin with dark questions about the core of your faith. Maybe those are questions that we’ve been told “…we just don’t ask.”

 

 

I learned the hard way that knowing the answers to algebraic equations and knowing algebra are two vastly different things although at certain times they may look alike. I’m learning the hard way that knowing spiritual answers and knowing the spiritual are even more vastly different. In some cases I’m finding my answers remain the same, in some they are the opposite and some I may never know. But I am going to learn to do the math. My answers will be the answers I’ve worked out to the best of my ability with God’s help no matter how many spoon-fed solutions are shoved my way.

 

 

Yes it is tempting to take the offered answers as my own and pin them on my chest and proclaim “There, all better!” But I won’t shortcut the discussion, the argument, the banter, the tension, the relationship that God and I share right now for the sake of being accepted into the “I’ve got it all figured out club”. I’m still learning this stuff and class is still in session.

 

 

And you know what? God is big enough for my questions. No matter how dark, how hurt, how skeptical, how wounded, how meaningful. He can handle them. Trust me. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He’s heard them and He’s answered them.

 

 

Take the answers from someone else at face value and never question them or do the math yourself as the teacher instructs you and really learn the truth of the answers.

 

 

I’m doing the math.

 

 

Answer to the problem above is… E, but you probably already figured that out.

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