“It passes all understanding”

If you attend church you hear these words: “It passes all understanding.”

It is said because sometimes a Christian has to put their faith before their knowledge. Sometimes a Christian has to go out on a limb and put their life in the hands of a Lord who is not human – to believe in the one that created, and loves endlessly, and is not limited by time or space. Our human minds just can’t comprehend all that God is and does. But still we believe.

In religion we are not looked down on for having faith above knowledge. In fact, I think true followers of God, believers in His Word found in the Bible, have to ‘let go and let God.’ I have used that expression often in my life. I have enough faith to know I don’t know everything, yet as a child of God I am forgiven and loved anyway.

Lately I have been thinking about how I use the phrase ‘it passes understanding’ with some earthly events, or beliefs, or actions of others.

I watch the videos of the hatred I see on the news that leads to violence, to inhumane treatment, and to killing beautiful innocent children. I can not understand how someone can get to a mental state of lashing out so severely. How can someone use knives and guns against people they do not even know who never did anything wrong to them?

It passes all understanding.

I Think about world dictators who seem to be missing the element of compassion, like a tin man with no heart, who want to be powerful above all else, and who think people are collateral damage to their mission. What brought them to this place? Why are they bullies without a conscience?

It passes all understanding.

I think about a whole group of Americans who have been sucked in to a cult-like belief , denying facts, pushing forward false theories, and who have become defiant in not opening their minds to see other possibilities. I will never get how friends and neighbors who live like me, yet support a man who has shown himself over and over again as an ultra narcissistic liar, someone who has been indicted over and over for illegal behavior, who speaks rudely to and about women, veterans, the disabled, etc. and has no boundaries for civility.

It passes all understanding.

We are who we allow ourselves to be. We make choices that define our lives. Some people seem to be fine with that. I hear this: “I am who I am” so take me as I am. There is no desire for learning more, for bettering themselves, for offering respect to the stranger, and certainly for giving out help when it looks you in the face. “Not my problem” and “this is mine, not yours” – “Come at me and I will take you down.”

It passes all understanding.

I suppose if I were a social worker or a psychiatrist I would understand better, perhaps I would know how the pains of the past, or the lack of education, or the feelings of being unimportant, and more – resulted in a lack of emotion that brought some to be able to kill, to hurt without remorse, to act better than others, to fall into cults, and on and on.

Sometimes I think it is a test for me.

When something happens or a person does something I truly can not understand…. Do I accept that it passes all understanding? Do I forgive and love anyway? Do I put my faith in God and let it go?