Esther's 80 percent certainty

"For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" (Esther 4:14)

This is how it is for me too. The stakes are more modest in my case (not typically the rescue of an entire race from annihilation by jealous Amalekite prime ministers), but the ambiguity is a dead ringer. Why doesn't God drop postcards? Why doesn't He eliminate all doubt and spare us agonizing by saying, "Yes, Esther, I placed you in Persia for just such a time as this. Now go to King Ahasuerus and say such and such."

Because He wants the agonizing, evidently. It's in the ambiguity that we engage as whole human beings in the story that God is weaving of our lives. It's in the ambiguity that we make little self-discoveries too. We are always to be in a dynamic relationship. Well trained dogs are obedient but not terribly introspective. God wants our bodies, minds, and souls. He wants us to take an idea for action and do a few things with it. First, examine the situation and get the facts. Second, search the Scriptures to see there is anything unethical about our proposed response to the situation. Third, examine our hearts for motive.

Having done all that, I still often am left with no better than a 50 percent, or 65 percent, or 80 percent certainty that the action I am contemplating is the right one. ("Should I speak at that retreat or not?" "Should I spend that money to go to Michigan or give it to a missionary?" "Should I write an essay today or hang out with Aimee?") Nevertheless, I have to say that the deeper I look, the more I usually notice that one course of action has a slightly greater claim to faith than another. The struggle can get fierce at that level.

Eighty percent is a pretty good mandate, actually. A Quixotic quest for 100 percent certainty in anything may be the refuge of many a coward who lives a life of inaction. And look at it this way: If you don't go with the 80 percent, that means you're going with the 20 percent.

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