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Don’t Feed the Animals, Episode 5: Certainty Who doesn’t want to be sure? Especially about big decisions. Sure you are getting a good deal on your house. Sure the food you are eating is safe. But as sure as you may be, isn’t there some twinge of not-sure? What about choosing the right career, or person to marry? No matter how you talk about it, how sure can you be? Certainty is a tempting goal, but it seldom comes. Yet we act as if we have it a lot. Folks, Certainty is an animal on the loose. Look out and listen in on this podcast.

The last ‘virtue’ listed in the Fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5.22-23) is different from all the others. It is Self-Control. Self-Control is not only an alternative to the animals that rage within us, it is also what we need to feed.

Self-Control is self-awareness and determination married to True Self.

The animal we are dealing with in this episode is Certainty. Something that is respected and encouraged in our culture, but that is destructive to our lives, relationships and world when we let it play a role in that it shouldn’t.

Greg’s Theory: The amount of certainty you can have in anything is inversely proportionate to the amount of meaning in it. That means the more meaning, the less certainty. The more certainty, the less meaning.

The Way of Certainty:

Certainty ⇒ Coercion ⇒ Conformity

An Alternative:

Conviction ⇒ Compelling ⇒ Conversation

Certainty is an illusion. The truth about something isn’t something we can make up, but it is dependent on your perspective, how you are looking and what you are applying it to.

An Experiment - watch the YouTube video illustrating this here. Or click the image to the right. 

I pray that you…might have the power to comprehend…the breadth, length, height and depth of the love of Christ. Ephesians 3.18

Something to consider: We are taught that certainty is the outcome of learning. Here Greg claims that certainty is the end of learning. How do you understand the relationship between certainty, learning and growth?

“We think that certainty is smart, but it is really only convenient. What is smart is to have the humility, openness and curiosity to know that there is still more to learn, and while you are grateful for what you do know, your appetite for what you do not yet know is not dulled.”

Something to consider: Greg talks about how Certainty in public discourse has become destructive. Certainty needs to win, and winning to this animal doesn’t mean learning and expanding, it means getting its way, even if that requires lying, deception, misleading or half-truths. How do you see this in politics and social movements today? Do you think the ends justify the means? Why or why not?

Greg ended the podcast with this reading from the prophet Jeremiah, and these thoughts. What do you think?

“The days are surely coming,” says the LORD, Yahweh, I Am Who I Am, “when I will make a new covenant with Israel. It will not be like the covenant I made when I took them by the hand out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke… “But this is the covenant that I will make. I will put my law within them, and I will engrave it on their hearts…their hearts…and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”      Jeremiah 31.31-33

I believe that prophecy has been fulfilled. I believe it has always been fulfilled. The meaning, the purpose, the hope, the ways of God are written in our hearts. We have all heard them and know their voices. It is time to do what is perhaps the hardest: that which we know we should do. 

It matters what you let in your heart. Don’t feed the animals.

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