Confessions Of A Need-To-Know-It-All

by: Elexis Penner

 

I had just pulled up at work when I noticed a text message from my husband that read, “I managed to get the chicken into the slow cooker.” Oh boy.

 

I’d gone in early for work, but before I left I had tried to fit a whole frozen chicken into the slow cooker. It’s not that the chicken was all that big, but we had bought it from a private farmer and I guess, for whatever reason, it appeared that the chicken had been placed in the freezer in some kind of ninja roundhouse kick position. And I just couldn’t get the lid down on it.

 

But I was the one who had to leave first, so I asked my husband if he could finish up, suggesting he maybe run some hot water over the legs until they softened up enough to – you know – bend.

 

I’m pretty sure he muttered something about that was dumb and he didn’t have time… But I had to go, and with him having grown up in a butcher shop, I figured he could work something out.

 

I started to respond to the text with, How’d you do it so fast? But I realized, you know what? I don’t want to know. Especially since I had a strong suspicion that there was a hacksaw involved.

 

There are some situations when I just don’t want to know. But other times I feel this incessant need to know.

 

For the Need To Know type, the Google/smart phone combination is the best thing since stretch denim. It’s like, you never need to not know something. You can be standing around, and someone says, “What was that movie from the 80’s where Michael Douglas was looking for that thing in that country with those guys with the swords? Google. Boom. Jewel Of The Nile. Done.

 

Of course there are some life questions that aren’t quite that simple. Google will have answers for you, but you’ll have to narrow it down from about 4,359,000 results.

 

I have a lot of questions about God and the Bible and what it means to follow Jesus. It seems like when I was younger I knew everything. It was all cut and dried, black and white.

 

And well, you get a bit older, your world gets a little bigger, you go through some rough patches that you may or may not have brought on yourself. You’re forced to either accept that God’s grace is excessive enough and extreme enough to cover all that. Or you can self-destruct. Many of us try it the hard way first. Maybe we need to.

 

But if you can just catch even a glimpse of that grace, God’s wink, Jesus’ welcoming pat on the park bench beside Him saying, “.. and neither do I condemn you…” If you catch that, you now have the tools and permission, well the command actually, to extend that compassion to yourself and other people. Which is now possible because you can get past their actions and see their stories. Sometimes. It doesn’t work on everyone. Ha ha.

 

But sometimes this glimpse of grace is the start of a quest. A good quest.

 

To my annoyance, I sometimes go on these NEED TO KNOW RIGHT NOW benders. It frustrates me that God is not Google, and seems to refuse to answer my questions straight out. And when I start to panic about this, I’ll catch myself (on a good day) and recognize that this comes from a place of fear. Fear that if I don’t get the theology exactly right, then something terrible will happen that might involve thunderbolts.

 

Then I’m reminded that I while I may have screw ups, I really can’t screw it up.

 

Maybe at that point it’s time to get back to basics. Thomas Merton, in New Seeds of Contemplation writes, “How am I to know the will of God? .... whatever is demanded by truth, by justice, by mercy, or by love must surely be taken to be willed by God. To consent to His will is, then, to consent to be true, or to speak truth, or at least to seek it.”

 

Or, as a dear friend of mine says, “Keep it simple, Stupid.”

 

I don’t know if we are meant to seek from a place of fear. I kinda don’t think so. I think it’s possible to seek truth, and still have some kind of peace, even not knowing everything. (Repeat mantra to self).

 

I love to read. I love to read people’s God stories. I love to read what people have learned. And I’m learning to sit and listen.

 

Mother Teresa was once asked about her prayer life. The interviewer asked, “When you pray, what do you say to God?” Mother Teresa replied, “I don’t talk, I simply listen.” The interviewer next asked, “Ah, then what is it that God says to you when you pray?” Mother Teresa replied, “He also doesn’t talk. He also simply listens.”

 

Sounds like communion.