Knowledge of the Future

I recently heard two back-to-back homilies in the course of a church service. I intend to summarize both and share my thoughts concerning them. Forgive a considerable amount of disorganization; this is a casual and impromptu articulation of the ideas that came to mind at the time.

The first homily began with the question, "how do we know we can trust God?" Taking as its text the pseudo-Pauline dictum, "in [Christ] all things hold together," the speech contended that Christ is the sustaining presence or force behind the physical regularities that we see daily and which are studied by the various sciences. The greater part of the homily consisted in a demonstration of trusting God: a hammer was placed upon a pendulum and held against one's face. In expectation that each swing of a pendulum necessarily rises lower than the previous, the hammer was released. Its back swing, of course, left the demonstrator's face intact.

"Trusting God," then, is in this case a matter of recognizing the absolute regularity of the physical laws He upholds. We need not be uncertain about what will happen; we have knowledge of the future on the basis of the dependability with which God sustains the world in being and causes it to operate in certain rigorously defined ways.

Note that the structure of the argument does not appeal to the perceived benefit that any one person receives from God's work -- we do not know God to be trustworthy because we are rich, or because we recovered from some illness, or even because hammers do not hit our face as they swing on a pendulum. After all, the demonstration would be equally effective in the case of a damaging example: we know we can trust God because, if we suspend an anvil over a person's head and drop it, it will indeed crush them. The basis of trust has principally to do with our certainty regarding what is to come, which is a function of the absolute regularity of God's action.

The second homily also discussed our knowledge of the future. Our principle posture with respect to what is to come, we were told, is that it is unknown; this was elaborated at great length. The homilist told a story of a drive along a narrow road in a heavy rainstorm, describing the pronounced feelings of discomfort and uncertainty he felt having no idea what the road might hold the next moment. This story was taken as an image of our lives in general -- we do not know what the future holds in store. The homily then proceeded to discuss how we can appropriately and profitably navigate this unknown (e.g., by equipping ourselves through studies in the Scriptures, etc.).

There were a number of things striking about this second homily, particularly placed in such close proximity to its predecessor. First, it takes precisely the opposite position with respect to our knowledge of the future: whereas in the first it is certain, in the second, it is unknown. In a certain trivial sense, of course, both are true: there are some things we know and some we do not. Nevertheless, both discourses framed the articulated stance toward the future as existentially typical.

Second, the example of uncomfortable driving conditions was striking. Though it was used as a metaphor for the general character of our lives, the memorable driving circumstances communicates fear of the future precisely because it is not representative of the general character of our lives. In normal driving conditions, we are able to see what lies ahead; it is because he found himself in a thoroughly unusual situation that he was so uncomfortable. It is here that the analogy works: it is precisely because we typically do know the future that extraordinary circumstances in which we do not cause us so much anxiety. The rain-buffeted trip is a proper metaphor only of atypical circumstances; it is the confidence in which we usually drive that is representative of the general character of our lives.

The second homilist invoked the parable of the rich man who, after storing up riches in barns, was called to give account of himself before God. The rich man, we are told, does not know the future, and his foolishness consists in acting as though he does. But does not the story work in precisely the opposite manner? The rich man does know the future. He knows that material goods and indeed his own life are destined to dissolution; he knows that he will ultimately answer to God. Nevertheless, he acts as though he does not know this -- he pretends as though these basic features of the universe and human life with respect to which the future is necessarily ordered are not sureties. His foolishness consists in a practical disavowal of his knowledge of the future -- he is like the man who drops the anvil, hoping that it does not crush the person standing beneath.

While there are certainly exceptional aspects of existent that remain opaque as far as the future is concerned, I think we must side with the argument advanced in the first homily: in the normal course of affairs, the future is indeed known to us. We have no uncertainty concerning the rising of the sun, the falling rate of dropped objects, the rate of radioactive decay, our planet's attachment to the sun, the wrongfulness of murder, our own death and those of our loved ones, and myriad other things that encompass the vast, overwhelming majority of our lives. Those rare exceptions that are uncertainties provoke significant existential anxiety precisely because they deviate so far from what is typical.

In what does trust in God consist? While the question is enormous, and attempting to establish the relationships between it and God's diversity of works, the various stances we can have toward the future and past, etc. would be a project for a book, not a blog, I find it tremendously comforting and profound to say that trusting in God partly consists in knowing that my chair will remain on the floor rather than floating about the room, that stars will continue their regular movements across the sky, that the molecules of my skin will remain bound together, and that it is a poor idea to let go of anvils if I happen to be holding one above someone's head.

All told, Sunday's homilies were, at least in these respects, much more fruitful and interesting than the ones I usually hear.

(Note that my comments only have bearing on the particular aspects of these homilies that I discuss. In both cases, there was a good deal more said; I am obviously neither praising nor criticizing these aspects.)