Things I Don’t Understand

by Dan Bouchelle

Recently my wife took my 4-year-old son out to lunch to eat pizza. As they sat during a moment of prolonged silence (a rare event in Seth’s presence), Seth was grazing on pizza and staring out the window. Suddenly, he sighed and said, “You know, Mom, there are just some things about life I don’t understand, . . . and there are some things about life that my kids won’t understand.” When Amy inquired what those things might be, he told her, “Well, like some of the things Daddy says.”

Seth believes I understand far more than I do. He asks me endless questions about every imaginable subject and always seems genuinely surprised to get an “I don’t know” answer. But, in reality, I am like Seth. Some things about life I just don’t understand.

I don’t understand why hot dogs are packaged in groups of ten but buns are packaged in groups of eight. I don’t understand perfume commercials. I don’t understand why I like sports.

I don’t understand why scientists who claim they know how the world came into being think they have answered why the world exists. I don’t understand how anyone can stare up into the night sky and still not believe in God.

I don’t understand why some churches are more interested in condemning minor differences in other churches than they are in reaching the lost. I don’t understand why people who claim to be devoted to the same Jesus have divided into so many churches. I don’t understand why people who never go to church can always tell you what is wrong with churches.

I don’t understand why we spend millions of dollars to save premature babies while legalizing abortion or how someone who claims to be pro-life can commit murder in the name of the cause. I don’t understand why people get angry at the federal government in Washington and blow up a building full of innocent people in Oklahoma City. I don’t understand why babies die, why parents abuse their children, or why some godly couples can’t conceive after years of prayer and thousands of dollars of high tech treatment while a sixteen-year-old girl can get pregnant in the back seat of a car the “first time.”

I don’t understand how prayer works. I don’t understand the Holy Spirit, the incarnation, the atonement, the resurrection, the second coming, the Trinity, the providence of God, or most other really deep theological matters.

I do understand this: Only God is God, God is good, and “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”