Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Proverbs 3:5
The most dangerous mistakes aren’t made by people who know they’re wrong. They’re made by people who are certain they’re right.
When scientists warned Harry R. Truman that the volcano beside his home was about to erupt, he couldn’t reconcile their predictions with what he thought he knew about the mountain. He’d lived in its shadow for 50 years. Certain he was safe, Harry dismissed their warnings. When the volcano erupted, Harry and his home were buried beneath volcanic debris. His body was never found.[1]
We have the desire to understand—to find explanations that make sense to us. When something doesn’t fit our understanding, we’re tempted to reject it and trust our judgment instead. For Harry, it proved fatal. “There is a way that seems right to a man,” says the Bible book of Proverbs, “but its end is the way to death” (Proverbs 14:12 ESV).
Harry rejected a reality that defied his understanding. We face the temptation in our spiritual lives to reject God when He doesn’t fit our understanding of how He should act. That poses a danger to our souls. The Bible tells us, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5). We’re required to admit that God is God and we are not; to trust God’s unchanging character and His proven faithfulness, even when His ways are beyond our understanding.
If we insist that God must always make sense to us, we’re no longer allowing Him to be God. As one wise pastor put it, “If your god never disagrees with you, you might just be worshiping an idealized version of yourself.” [2] When you reject God because He doesn’t make sense to you, you haven’t gotten rid of God. You’ve just made yourself one.
[1] “Harry R. Truman,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, last modified March 27, 2025, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Harry-R-Truman.
[2] Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (New York: Dutton, 2008), 121.
