I thanked her, reassured her I wasn’t going to be a jerk about it, and it got me thinking, that “I don’t know” is a perfectly honest answer. In any area of inquiry, our available pool of facts is limited, and nothing is ever known to an absolute certainty. (Unless you’re going on faith, in which case you’re taking “belief” and counting it as “knowledge” which is, at the very least, dishonest. More on that later.) Based on the HR rep’s reply, I was at least able to eliminate some hypotheses: that there wasn’t an error in my time reporting or in the payroll submission. Anything else is left to the vagaries of the electronic banking infrastructure, which I know from professional experience to be arcane and impenetrable–the money gets there when it gets there.

I think not knowing stresses people out–for most, “I don’t know” seems to elicit a reaction of DOES NOT COMPUTE. Where’s my direct deposit? How long until we get there? What am I sick with? What’s broke down on my car? Who’s going to attend the meeting? To many of these questions, it’s not even that we won’t ever know. Evidently, the span of time between not knowing and finding out is never short enough, and I think there are a lot of problems caused by that desire. People get harassed, harangued and henpecked to ruin someone else’s day–who also doesn’t know–to mollify someone for whom “I don’t know” isn’t good enough. Guesstimates and speculations are calcified into fact, and people staunchly defend their errors in the face of others who later come to know better.

Do you remember when Donald Rumsfeld, then Secretary of Defense, got no end of grief when he articulated that fighting the Iraqi insurgency is a complicated process? There are “known ‘knowns,’” he said, and “known ‘unknowns,’” and beyond that there are “unknown ‘unknowns.’” People thought he was dissembling, but I disagree. There’s a world of difference between a non-answer of ignorance and a non-answer of deceit. Now, arguably some of those really ought to have been moved up one or two categories before we went in, but the statement itself is laudable for its transparency. (Likewise, “you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want.” News flash to my fellow liberals: no military, government, corporation or individual ever has all the resources they want or all that they could use. Bill Gates comes close, but I don’t know that he’s ever tried his hand at regime change.) Unfortunately, people seem to expect more substantive answers when someone comes clean like that.

I’m weird–I spend a lot of time thinking about questions where the span of time between “I don’t know” and “Now I know” is at least longer than my own probable lifetime. What are those lights in the sky? I don’t know. But to some, the only possible answer is alien spacecraft. What made that sound? I don’t know. But to some, it’s a latent imprinted energy pattern left by a person who is now dead. How do Quantum Theory and General Relativity reconcile with each other? I don’t know. People smarter than me are working on it. Who was Jesus of Nazareth? I don’t know. But apparently all we have to go on is this bundle of outlandish stories, so of course they must be true. To paraphrase Kevin Smith, what I don’t know I could just about squeeze into the Grand freakin’ Canyon. I’d love to find out, and I’m glad people out there make careers out of inquiry, but I don’t lose sleep in the meantime.

So on days like today, I’m actually surprised at how a little thing like a missing paycheck disrupts my equanimity. It got me thinking about the things that really do grind my gears, because from time to time I can and do get so ticked off I can’t see straight. I think it often involves arrogant certainty on the part of someone who doesn’t know a burro from a burrow.

I spent a couple of weeks recently, arguing with a Christian blogger about the court decision that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional, and in the end it got pretty heated. What drove me nuts was his stubborn refusal to even discuss the matter intelligently–he hadn’t read the judge’s decision, he didn’t understand the constitutional issues, and didn’t revise his arguments when corrected on baseline facts. He described the case as some horrible blasphemy on the part of the Obama administration and Congress, seemingly (and later, stubbornly) ignorant of the facts that the case came out of Wisconsin, not Washington DC, with the Obama administration defending the NDOP. “Constitutional” seemed to mean “whatever does or doesn’t offend his Christian sensibilities” and that everything was permissible so long as nobody was actually forced to pray.

Substitution of one’s own belief for knowledge, I think, is even worse than not knowing. As Thomas Jefferson said, “ignorance is preferable to error, and he is closer to the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.” Put simply, if I don’t know, and you believe something false, neither of us is correct, but I’m less wrong than you are. And there’s usually more ways to be wrong than to be right–how sure are you, and why? Me, knowing I can be happy with “I don’t know” makes me a happier person–there’s certainly enough opportunity for it.

I placed my faith in Jesus when I was 8 years old and gave my life to His service when I was 14.  These decisions of faith had a huge life-changing impact on my life and others around me.  There is no question to me that my life has been positively impacted in many, many ways by placing my faith in Jesus.  Because I believed in His purpose for my life, His plan for my life, His great wisdom in how my life should be lived, I became a better person in many ways.  I’ve never been drunk (because I didn’t drink alcohol), haven’t been arrested or even had a speeding ticket until recently, and I’ve lived a responsible, caring life.

I’m not claiming that I lived an ascetic live but I was willing to live sacrificially for the good of others in many ways.  I renounced materialism to a great extent, bypassed good-paying jobs to teach in Christian church schools.  I put in many long hours, giving up normal pleasurable activities, to teach for Jesus (and work other jobs to put food on the table).  My wife and I had family devotional time with our children to train them to follow Jesus.  Even though I had a family of 7 and made $13,500 at teaching I still gave the tithe of 10% plus 2% more to the church.  I could give many other examples of sacrificing, the point being that I gave of myself to train young people and serve Jesus because of my faith in Him.

I’ve seen faith in Jesus change others.  I’ve been to the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago and heard the testimonies of changed lives from men and women who had been homeless drunks, felons, but who now were living useful, caring lives helping others find faith in Jesus.  I’ve seen the great joy and peace on their faces as they told of their love for Jesus and how He has changed them.  I’ve heard from gang members who’s lives were transformed by faith.  I’ve read Chuck Colson’s book “Born Again” telling how his life was transformed from being a Watergate convict to being in ministry.  My father quit smoking cold-turkey because of his faith in Jesus.  John Newton went from being a drunken slave trader to the writer of  “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me”.  I could go on and on for days with examples of positive changes in lives from faith.

Faith in God has caused people to risk or give their lives to fight oppression.  It has changed the course of history by winning battles, spreading knowledge, building nations, bringing order to society and much of what we consider civilization.

The positive power of faith in God, to me, is undeniable.

But I hope you’ve noticed a distinction in what I’ve been writing.  Faith in God can be a very powerful thing in a life (by the way, for both good and bad).  But I have not said that God is a powerful thing.  I believe that the power of faith comes from the individual, not from some outside force.  My believing in god changed my life, whether or not there really is a god.  Muslims, Catholics, Hindus, Mormons, Lutherans, Jainists, Baptists, etc. all have a power in their faith even though they obviously don’t believe in a common god.  The power comes from within them, not from a supernatural force.  This is a very important distinction that religious people should understand.

Yes, their faith gives them hope, peace, love.  It comforts them about death, it gives purpose to their lives, in many instances it makes them a better person.  But it is not based on truth.  The power they have comes from within them.  Faith in _(fill in the blank)_ is a powerful thing!  For ‘good’ or ‘evil’.  I could give a very long list here of how faith in god has been extremely harmful to humanity and has caused much sorrow and strife.

My faith now is in my own desire to be happy and help those around me to be happy.  My faith is in humankind, our innate desire to survive and help each other.

Which brings me to the need to clarify something I wrote in last month’s blog.  I wrote that faith is the fault.  While faith in a god can produce in some instances what most would agree are positive results, it also keeps us from understanding the reality of our existence, and creates some of the greatest evils in history.  These are some of it’s faults.  For me, life without faith has helped me to concentrate on enjoying THIS life, to see this life for what it is, all that I have, and I don’t want to waste it by living for some unseen future afterlife.  By faith.