Prior to being a youth minister, I was a 4th grade teacher. One of my favorite subjects to teach was math. As I write that last sentence I have to laugh at myself because I want to let you in on a little secret, math was definitely not my strongest subject in school and when I taught 4th grade math there were times that I as the teacher didn’t know the answer to the problem I was teaching and I quickly realized that not knowing was ok!
I know at this point you might be laughing at me. How could I possibly not know 4th grade math answers, I mean I was the teacher right?! During my math lessons one of my kids’ favorite things to do was “be the teacher”. I would put math problems on the board, I would choose students to solve and they would teach the class how they solved the problem. I remember we were working on word problems one day and I had a student up at the board teaching and I remember looking at the problem and thinking to myself, “gosh, I don’t know how to solve this!” In my first year of teaching, I would have panicked at the thought of not knowing how to solve the problem. However in years 2 and 3, I realized it was ok that I didn’t know and I readily admitted to my students on a regular basis that I did not know all there was to know, but I was willing to work to find out the answer with them and I would never leave them hanging high and dry.
We live in a world where we may feel on some level, that we have to have it all figured out. If I am a teacher I need to know everything there is about every subject that I am teaching; if I am a youth minister I need to know everything about the faith, etc. But the truth of the matter is that I don’t have to know it all. It’s ok to still be learning, in fact we should always be learning and seeking knowledge. The problem arises, particularly when it comes to knowing our faith when we say, “I know it all” and we close ourselves off to any new knowledge that God may be trying to reveal to us and ultimately we end up closing ourselves off from God.
Our God has a deep desire to know us and to be known by us. Unlike math, God isn’t a problem to be solved, and if I say, I have Him all figured out and I know everything there is to know about Him, then I would be hard-pressed to say that I truly know God. The fact of the matter is that through Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, our deposit of faith, what God gave us to know more about Him and His plan for salvation, is a great treasure trove. One so vast that even the greatest theologians have barely scratched the surface of understanding and knowing. So if the greatest minds in theology have readily admitted to not having it all completely figured out, how can we say that we do? I don’t know about you but I like the idea of learning more about God each and every day. Simply living in and being open to the mystery of who He is, makes my life that much more joyful, and at the end of the day, I don’t have to know it all. I know God is going to be working with me to help me learn more about Him each and every day. I just have to be willing to keep learning, to be open to His grace, and to allow myself to be changed by Him at every step of the way.