Having faith in God is better than being certain about God
We don't need arguments from the pulpit. We need living water.
This spring I gave a lecture on “The Temptation to Be Less Than Human.” My main point was that our humanity is restored in Jesus Christ. The Gospels depict this beautifully in his baptism, when he identifies with us and heaven proclaims him as God’s beloved. Jesus doesn’t receive this designation until his public identification with humanity—meaning that we too are the beloved of God. I then described how Jesus’ three temptations following his baptism reveal the ways the devil entices us to doubt our identity as the beloved and thus become less than human. So far, so good.
Jesus’ second temptation is to jump from the top of the temple so the angels would swoop down to catch him. I said this was a temptation to be certain of God’s love. I could sense that people were getting uneasy. Then I went on to claim that “nothing is more dangerous to our souls than trying to be certain we’re loved by God.” At that point I lost my audience.
When we got to the time for questions after the lecture, there was a line of people at the microphone. They were all very kind, but they were troubled by my claim that seeking certainty of the love of God is one of the great temptations of life.
