Ted Voigt is a poet and writer who lives in Richland, Washington.  His recent works include a contribution to Generate Magazine and a collection of poetry titled "Pages Called Holy."  He blogs at jtvink.com, and he wrote the following as a part of our "Changed Minds" project.

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I used to think it was possible to understand everything.

When I say "everything," I don't mean understand all the scientific and theological intricacies of how the world works;  I knew I would never get that far, but I thought I would eventually arrive at a working understanding of most things.

Take high school for example.  In chemistry, we did experiments that had a known and usually fixed outcome, and by the end of an hour lab we would understand exactly how an element would respond under certain circumstances, or how to tell the chemical make up of a star by looking at it's spectrum.  In English class we learned the meaning behind the actions of Holden Caulfield, or how exactly one was supposed to interpret the poetry of Lewis Carrol.  When we went home from school we played video games, games in which there was almost always a set number of objectives and a specific way by which they needed to be achieved.  We played sports, where the rules were clear cut, and if we were following the wrong rules we were probably playing a different game.  As a high school student, the world seemed to work a certain way, and the whole idea of living was to figure out how it worked.

Then I started college.  I met people who were significantly different from me, and suddenly I realized that the way I thought things worked wasn't the only way things worked.  In fact, it seemed that there were lots of different ways the world worked, and now in addition to just figuring it out, I was going to have to chose which way I preferred as well.  I went from group to group for a while, finding flaws with each and finally settling on a kind of hybrid that I thought worked the best for me.  And then I graduated.

After college, I worked in youth ministry at two churches over the course of four years.  I met people who seemed to understand the world the way I did, but their understanding lead them to conclusions I thought were absurd, sometimes even destructive.  I had to reevaluate again, this time by looking at my own beliefs and trying to see what wasn't working.  It was in this process that I came to see that it's not just difficult to figure how things work, it's impossible.  There is no logical explanation for everything.

In the science realm it's called the search for a unified theory.  Theoretical physicists spend careers trying to work out a theory that includes both quantum mechanics and general relativity in a cohesive, logical way, and it has yet you be done successfully.

And maybe there will never be a unified theology to understand both the love and grace of God and the broken, suffering state of people.  And maybe we need to be ok with that. 

Photo Source: Jared Smith