We Don’t Need to Understand; We Need to Trust

August 29, 2022

In a movie I watched about a mathematician who helped to design the A-bomb and the hydrogen bomb, there was a scene that made an impact on me:

The man had had a brain injury after extreme stress that caused a hemorrhage. During his lengthy recovery, the wife of the mathematician said to him, “You don’t need to play the game; you just need to know the result.” He applied that statement to probability in understanding how many games should be played to ensure one will win in gambling. But the “game” I am playing with God is not the casino. It is pre-calculated and determined by God from the foundation of the world, and I am not playing multiple games but only one. One life.

I was thinking about what that wife said, and the line changed in my mind: “You don’t need to know the results; you just need to play the game.” God knows the results; I need to trust His moves.

What good is it to me to worry over whether or not God‘s promises will prove true, when all I have to cling to–the highest source of truth–comes from the written Word of God, and when all the evidence I have of its reality comes from the goodness He lavishes on us day by day? Peter said, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:68). If we can’t trust the Bible, what other source can be so supported by the evidence of its claims? The creation shouts His glory, His faithfulness, His beauty, and His lavish love toward those He made. His day-by-day presence with His people in seeing them through every circumstance proves His faithfulness to sanctify, grow, and hold us in the faith. Though we might be going through “hell” on earth, should we not live as if the promises are true? For what other hope do we have? If we have fully lived on the solid rock of God’s Word, following Him at His word, and yet still end up in hell after this life or find that it was all a bubble of empty promises, what can we do about that? What we can do is what is revealed to us and our children and then hold onto the hope of faith in the evidence. If we find that all the promises have indeed proven true once we have crossed into eternity, then how we have lived now will feel overwhelmingly justified. But we need to act on the conviction of what we are “sure” of concerning the evidence, and not flounder back and forth like one tossed on the waves of the sea.

“Then we will no longer be infants, tossed about by the waves and carried around by every wind of teaching and by the clever cunning of men in their deceitful scheming. 15Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Christ Himself, who is the head” (Eph 4:14-15).

Surely this was the reasoning of the designers of the hydrogen bomb. They perceived that even though it could surely result in a cataclysm of world destruction, without it, it would result in sure destruction by the wicked forces encroaching on world freedom. Would its destructive threat be enough to put into check the current dirge of death? The mind game was excruciating, but those who produced the bomb were playing chess. They had to believe in the course of action they thought was the only way to preserve the world in light of the present evidence.

“Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see” (Heb 11:1, NLT).

And so we must act. We must act–no matter how painful the course of our lives–on the joy that is set before us, even as Jesus did in His greatest hour of agony: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. 2We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne” (Heb 12:1-2, NLT).

*All Scripture is in the BSB (Berean Study Bible) translation unless otherwise noted.