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The old-fashioned keyhole in a Victorian door has proven to be a wonderful plot device for novels.
Behind a closed door – whether that door leads to a drawing room, den, or bedroom – some kind of conversation is in progress.
On this side of the door there’s a secret agent. Or an eavesdropper. Or perhaps just a servant or stranger who, spurred by curiosity, can’t resist the temptation to take a peek through the keyhole to see what they can see and hear what they might hear.
In the typical mystery, spy thriller, or comedic misadventure, something always goes sideways.
The person peering through the keyhole can see only one person. They can hear only one-half of the conversation. “Then it’s settled,” they might hear. “Everything must be accomplished by midnight next Monday.” That sounds like important information. But who is this person talking to? And what must happen by midnight Monday?
Armed with only partial understanding – but more than ready to jump to life-or-death conclusions – the eavesdropper hurries off to report what they have seen and heard, setting into motion a series of events that inevitably bring about chaos.
It’s a great way to advance an entertaining story.
But it’s a lousy way to cultivate a healthy understanding of God.
Author and theologian Os Guinness calls it “keyhole theology.” In his book God in the Dark, he describes “the trouble with keyholes. You don’t always see enough to come to a conclusion, but once you’ve seen a little it’s difficult to resist trying… There are times when we see glimpses of God’s ways but not enough to allow us to make conclusions about what He is doing and why… Being insistent as well as inquisitive, we refuse to suspend judgment and our wrong conclusions so misrepresent God that we end up doubting him.”
We hear Jesus, for instance, make astonishing promises to his disciples at the Last Supper: “And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it” (John 14:13-14).
That is deeply reassuring.
But on this side of the door, there’s a child who’s been stricken with cancer. And the residents of a village in Saharan Africa are starving because it hasn’t rained for six months. And a disastrous war in eastern Europe just seems to go on and on.
“Ask me for anything,” Jesus says. So we pray and we plead. But nothing seems to change.
How can we reconcile what we have seen and heard of Jesus – and believe to be true – with the painful realities we see, hear, and experience on a daily basis?
Guinness notes that what we “see” through the keyhole is never complete. We don’t know the whole story. When it comes to God’s timetables, it’s obvious we’re only guessing.
And that can lead to disillusionment.
More than a few people question God’s goodness and God’s very existence because they cannot reconcile what they think they know with what they think they’re experiencing.
Our glances through the keyhole may convince us we know exactly how life should be unfolding. But then it doesn’t happen that way. And we find ourselves doubting God – our incomplete picture of God – a picture that, quite frankly, deserves to be doubted because it’s so far off the mark.
What can we do?
We can cultivate patience.
In this world, at least, God – for his own reasons – has not chosen to let us see and hear everything that’s happening on “the other side of the door.” Our resulting experiences are entirely consistent with those of the men and women whose stories are highlighted in Hebrews 11, the so-called biblical Hall of Fame of Faith:
“By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:8-10).
The text continues, “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth” (11:13-14).
We don’t always know where we’re going – only that God assures us the journey is worth taking.
We don’t aways know what God is doing (or not doing) along the way – only that we’re never alone.
As Guinness puts it, we may not always know why God is doing what he is doing.
But we do know why we trust God.
And he knows why.