The Bible Offers A Reliable Map of Reality That Leads To An Expected End

I think God deliberately put in us the undying desire to know the future.

We wonder about life, taking each step with the hope that somehow, we will become better at predicting the future.

A lot of us don’t realize or notice this subtle tendency.

Our parents “forced” us to go to school because doing so will ‘guarantee’ a future. We strive for a first class in school because having it will ‘guarantee’ us a good job.

We optimize for a good job because having one means we have a good income and a somewhat easy life in the future and now.

We do all these in the present with the hope of an expected outcome in the future. And we are not wrong to do that. How else can we make sense of this highly bumpy world and exist in it without the sense of control?

And when we act in those ways, we do so because we could see it all around that those who did “x” get “y” as an outcome. So we also work to do x because we want a “y’ outcome. Sometimes as we journey on in life though, we quickly learn that doing x is often not enough to guarantee a “y” outcome.

At this point, we get confused and wonder what the heck is going on with us.

Are we wrong in our forecast? Did we miss a step while doing x or why on earth will I graduate with a first-class and someone with a 2:2 will be moving far ahead of me in life?

Simply, we have been exposed to live’s cruel reality. Life is saying I am not linear. You can’t write an equation of Y = a + bX to predict me.

The desire to know the future is innate in us. We crave it. We want to know what tomorrow will be like for us.

Unfortunately, despite all of our attempts at that, we have been grossly deprived of such knowledge. Although that hasn’t stopped us from searching. Our AI systems are so advanced today that some aspects of them can be deemed a god. Yes, god. Because it knows “tomorrow”.

We know the future, the path to the future is what we don’t know

The future is not as hidden from us as it seems. What’s mainly hidden from us is the path to the future. But we confused both to mean the same.

There’s a difference between knowing with certainty that you will earn $10,000 in a month and knowing what you have to do to earn the sum. One is comforting and the other leaves us with a lot of unknowns.

Not knowing the latter puts us in disarray and blinds us to the fact that we know the former.

Why I rely on the Bible for directions

And that brings us to the Bible.

The Bible is full of abstractions, a map of reality and principles. Following its map could reliably lead us to an expected end. In so doing, we would have solved one of humanity’s greatest challenges. 

From the beginning of the Bible to the end of it, God through various means attempted to show us the end of different paths. In other words, He showed us the outcome of the predictions. “This is the end, I know it”, He said. And the pages of the Bible are full of it.

The thing about relying on the maps of reality in the Bible is that they have been tested across space and time. And in all of those test areas, the maps have reliably led faithful followers to their desired end. That is to say, the map is reliable.

The alternative to following such maps (in the Bible) is what I call following your “worldly wisdom”.

Worldly wisdom is good. I don’t use the word “worldly” here to mean something anti-bible.

Rather, it is the wisdom that you have gotten in your short existence on earth that is yet to be tested in the fire of time and across space.

And to that I’d like to say, “lean not on your understanding, it has not been tested across space and time.”

Worldly wisdom makes us look smart about ourselves, we think we have figured it out, it gives us the illusion of control and we like that. But the illusion is not what we want. An assured future is what we crave deep within us.

Because our worldly wisdom is not tested yet, they cannot reliably predict the end, let alone the path that leads to the end. That’s why the Bible admonished us not to lean mainly on our understanding. But trust in the Lord (his words that are time tested).

However, it is not forced. It’s a choice you have to make.

The Bible offers maps of reality that you can rely on to lead you to a promised destination. You just need to search for the map relevant to you. And your worldly wisdom can’t reliably promise that.

Note that the main reason the Bible is superior is that its map has been tested again and again. So if you can acquire such map(s) from other sources, with equal features, then you can expect it to also lead you to a known end.

The choice, in the end, is yours. You can lean on your understanding (your map of reality) which is so far short-lived or you can lean on the map of reality provided by the Bible that has been tested across space and time.

I’ve grown to know that it is great folly for me to lean on my short-lived map. So I’ve sorted wisdom from the Bible. It’s a reliable map.