Confidence is hard thing to measure. You cannot measure it or weigh it. You can sense it. When a doctor walks into your room you can tell rather quickly if they are confident. How she stands, how she speaks, how she leans, when she pauses, how she pauses. All of these give clues to her confidence of your situation. We pick up on that confidence or lack of confidence and are influenced by it. If we have a doctor who we feel is confident then we have greater faith in that doctor.
If you are on the examining table and the doctor walks in, listens to your symptoms, hears your concerns, checks out your vitals, and then looks you dead in the eye and says, “you have rutilus macula” (which is Latin for “red spots”). Instantly you feel a little better because the confidant doctor has named your ailment. And when the confident doctor knows, you, in turn, know you will be okay.
Because when you feel terrible what you want to do is hand over the authority of your situation to someone else who has information. We want someone who knows to tell us that everything will be fine. We cling to that confident doctor and her ability to make you feel better about your situation. And perhaps this is a reaction we learned from childhood.
When we hurt ourselves when we are kids, there is nothing better feeling than a kiss from mom. We give mom the authority of our situation because we know that mom knows something that we do not know. And a kiss from mom heals.
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I wonder if this above paraphrased excerpt taken from RaidoLabs episode on “Placebo” connects with our relationship with God. We sometimes find ourselves in a position where we are hurt. Christianity teaches that humanity is in a state of Sin. We are broken Eikons of God (Greek for ‘image’). The world is sick and Jesus is the Great Physician.
My questions surround the idea of confidence in God. If we do not feel God is 100% in control and knows 100% of all things then our confidence in this god is shaken. If our confidence in this god is shaken than this god does not provide comfort to us in our broken/sick situation.
For me, I am weary of a doctor who has all the answers and is 100% confident. However, where I see overconfidence and a lack of humility, others see the best doctor and trust her over any other. I see a confident doctor as one who doesn’t have all the answers or is 100% confident but as one who has the humble ability to be honest and say, “I may not know the answer but I will walk with you through the healing process.” But this doctor’s lack of 100% certainty could come off to others as incompetent or just plain not good.
When I consider God I do not see a god what is 100% in control and knows 100% of all things. When I encounter this god, I keep looking. I look for a god who is humble to be honest and say “I may not know the answer but I will walk with you through the healing process.”
