The Counter-Cultural Nature of Trust

picture source

For a long time, I have been aware of my biggest battle in my Christian walk. Maybe it's something something you can relate to.
Trust.
The foundation of the faith.
We are supposed to take God for His word. To lean hard into it, in the face of adversity. In seeming contradiction. And yet, unfortunately, most times, when the going gets tough, I split.
I've been doing it ever since I was a little girl, when I thought I found my first flaw in the Bible. You see, I've always been an analyser, a thinker. Kinda smart. But not so smart that I know to trust God, period. Just smart enough to go, 'Ahah! God, I've found a loophole and I just can't get past it!'
(Not so smart at all, actually)

It's no wonder, given this attitude of mine, that I have struggled with anxiety.When you think that you can outsmart God, or that you have somehow out-thought Him, the result is pretty much guaranteed. You're gonna feel anxious. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. It's a pretty big call to think you've found error in the Creator of the Universe.

I'm thirty four years old and I am just beginning to grab with determination God's instruction to trust in Him with all my heart and lean not to my own understanding. It would have made my life a whole lot easier had I grabbed it by the horns twenty years ago. But I had my own journey to take.

Leaning not on our own understanding...
This instruction pretty much flies in the face of a progressive, post modern world.
Christians look pretty ignorant these days, by education standards. Casting our doubts into the hands of God can get us the label of 'ignorant', 'blind' or 'naive'.
Modern culture encourages us not to be wary of our understanding, but to use it as a navigational tool for truth.

How well is that working, do you think?
Six billion people each using their own understanding to navigate and interpret the complex, multi-faceted world of ethics, morality, and truth.

I've touched on post-modernism before and while I definitely engage with some of the issues the movement raises -- and consider myself an advocate for critical thinking -- there are times when we need to put our thinking on the altar. God offers a unique way to find truth, one that bypasses the mind and goes straight to the spirit.
Faith.

After all these years running in the circles of 'intelligent thinking' I have come back to my pretty simple, base foundation, which is:

God is good and I can trust Him.

It's blind trust.
It's basically stupidity.
And deliciously, ironically and counter-culturally it's the starting point for knowledge.

'...The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple.'

Psalm 19:7b