Where My Understanding Ends
A song we sing pretty regularly at Evangel is called Rejoice (VOUS Worship). One portion of the chorus goes like this: “Where my understanding ends, there's a peace that makes no sense”. I like that line. Especially coming off another legislative session.
If you’re like me, you seek to understand; to make sense of things. It’s something beyond mere curiosity but is focused on the why and not just the what. And not just the first or even second layer of explanation, but we follow it as far down as it goes until we are satisfied we’ve answered why.
I believe it is how we were created. While we see animals try to understand the why, it only goes so far. The famous gorilla Koko learned over 2,000 words and quickly figured out that the why for getting grapes was because she demonstrated an understanding of new words. Annie, our dog, has figured out why she gets a treat; because she sits and waits for it until I tell her she may get it. However, I daresay that Koko never wondered why she was being taught words, just as Annie does not wonder why she was trained to wait to grab the treat. They simply know on a very rudimentary level that x causes y — that’s the why.
We humans are not so easily satisfied. If we were given a grape every time we learned a new word, we would wonder about a lot of things. Why am I being rewarded for this behavior? What is being studied through this reward system? Why was I chosen for this experiment? And perhaps most importantly, what in the world am doing in a cage with a plexiglass window?
We are pretty proud of ourselves when we fully understand something (as if that could ever completely happen). Why does the perceived pitch/frequency of something such as a police car siren change as it moves past us? Because of the Doppler Effect. Pretty impressive that we figured that out, right? We have figured out the why behind diseases, human behavior, physical phenomena, and much more. But because we’re so good at it, we take not only pride in our ability to understand, but start to believe that if we dig deep enough, we can figure out anything. As Francis Bacon put it, “God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.”
The same is true in the public policy world. During the legislative session, we need to be experts on why things happen. Why bills are introduced. Why committees or legislators vote a certain way. Why Governor Burgum decided to veto a bill. While we can often ferret out some reasons, we are always left with unanswered questions. It is where our understanding ends, and where God’s peace enters the picture.
Ideally, we should have the peace of God during all of session, but I’m sorry to tell you that it just doesn’t happen for most of us. Unfortunately, it takes our understanding to hit a wall so that we have no choice but to trust in that “peace that makes no sense”. How can we explain that? We can’t understand the why behind it, however, God gives it to us freely and reminds us to rest in Him.
There are many things one must understand to shepherd a ministry like NDFA – lots of operational, tactical, and strategic things. If you do them correctly, you can look back and be pretty impressed with yourself. After all, the ability to tackle 50 bills this session and end up with an 83% win rate is impressive. But we deceive ourselves if we think our great understanding of the issues is the primary thing that leads us to that place.
I regularly pray for NDFA, as I hope you do. I pray that we may have the funding to continue and hopefully grow our work. I pray for a lasting increase in pro-life and pro-family biblical values in North Dakota. I pray that we do a good job educating and providing information to you on key issues. However, there is one thing I consistently pray for every day: that we at NDFA remain humble.
As it says in Proverbs 3, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” NDFA is the Lord’s ministry; we are caretakers. I’d like to think that we understand more about public policy than Koko the gorilla, but I also hope we are never too proud to admit that we don’t have all the answers, and we’re at peace with that.