Fallible

I recently saw a young man in the quad whom I thought was wearing a purple skirt. I even told some people that I'd seen him, no name included, and that I found it very peculiar. I saw him today wearing a pair of shorts that were baggy and had the same pattern. I carried on a minute or two argument with someone else today, (it was more like a playful disagreement) over whether or not they had sung a certain bridge during a worship service he'd led the other day. Finally he realized what I was thinking and said that yes there was a bridge to that song, but sang the one it really was and I realized I was wrong. In psychology we've been discussing confirmation bias and the fact that there are things we cannot test with science, the ways we perceive our world are heavily biased, and our memories leak. It makes me realize that I don't know everything, that the world is not always the way I think it is, and it scares me how fallible our view of God is as well.

I may see green where he sees blue, I may remember the thief wearing a red shirt when someone else says it was stripped, I may remember a song wrong based on my previous experiences and memories leaking, and I may perceive God in the world completely different than someone else, maybe even completely different than the truth. It says in Job 9:11, "Behold, he passes by me, and I see him not; he moves on, but I do not perceive him." Everyone is fallible including myself and it makes me wonder how I will find complete truth in world that doesn't know how to go about discovering it. I ask the question, and even as it leaves my finger tips God reassures me that he will make known his truth. He's got that small confident smile on his face as he looks at me, I believe his hair is a shaggy dirty blond and he is relatively young, and he tells me: you will know. I will make sure you know.

I have no worries about my own fallibility, just trust that he will make sure I know.

9/9/11