The Closest Thing to Perfect
Car folks with money – that is, for whom “club sandwich” is something consumed between rounds of tennis and not ordered with curly fries and Arby-Q sauce – and who love SUVs really picked a good decade to be alive. There’s no shortage of options in the luxury performance SUV field.
A generation ago, though, their Ford Explorers wouldn’t have been luxurious enough, their Mercedes-Benz E-class Estate wagons wouldn’t have been rugged enough, and neither of those would have been sporty enough. This meant that buyers who already had a couple (or a couple dozen) European luxury cars but needed an SUV and/or a minivan had to settle for a domestic car. This raises lots of questions, like Did they pick up their new Mercury Monteros on FREE HOT DOG SATURDAY? or How many of these rich folks just bought two S-class sedans and kept a chauffeur on speed dial? or, more importantly, When European luxury SUVs started rolling onto showrooms in the late 90s, how many of them stayed faithful to domestic SUVs and minivans? And if so, why?
If a need exists in our life but we have not yet identified the thing to satisfy it, we sometimes choose a thing that doesn’t quite fit. Like millionaires driving first-generation Honda Odysseys because the Mercedes RL-class was still a few years off.
One of the most famous expressions of faith in the Bible is found in John 6:68: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” It is predicated, and put in context through, one of the most heartbreaking descriptions of apostasy, from verse 66: “From this time, many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.” See, there was a heated exchange between Jewish leaders inquiring about earning God’s approval, and seeing more of those cool miracles so they could get some of that heavenly, life-giving bread. To this, Jesus lavished them with the news of God’s unearned grace, reasserted God’s – not Moses’ – generosity to the hungry Israelites in the desert, and offered them free, everlasting life. It was a life full of not just contentment, but abundance, and yet so much more. To these followers, Jesus offered them the satisfaction to the greatest need in their lives, but they couldn’t see it. They were trying to use something else to fit, and this confused them, so they left Jesus.
So Jesus turned to his core twelve and asked if they would also leave. Simon Peter then confesses, “Lord, to whom shall we go?” Imagine him standing there, not fully understanding this whole “bread of life” thing, but being too stubborn to bail on the One who was offering it. Imagine him shrugging and sighing, and saying, “Where else am I supposed to go? This is the closest thing I’ve found to the satisfaction of my greatest need, and I’ll stick around until I find something better.”
(Biblical experts and theologians might disagree with this interpretation, and they’re probably right. The Greek verb tenses in the following verses suggest that Peter is actually articulating an active, ongoing belief and knowledge in Jesus as “the Holy one of God.” But we can imagine other followers sharing this hypothetical quasi-understanding, strong enough to keep them following Jesus but not developed enough to really understand what in the world it all meant.)
All followers of Jesus fall somewhere on this spectrum. By faith we know some things, but we cannot understand all things. We do not fully understand Creation’s beginning or ending, or the confines or expanse of the Universe, or the concept of the Trinity, or comparatively trivial things like whom we should marry or how we should spend our days. We all have to ask, “Who else has these answers?” And, when faced with scores of bad options and one infinite, all-knowing, and unfathomably loving good option, we all have to pick that one, the one that satisfies all our known and unknown needs, and with Peter and countless other believers confess, “We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
This side of eternity, we may not fully get it. That’s okay. We can keep following, asking, and believing.
As for you, Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio driver, pity your forefathers. They couldn’t know the satisfaction of sharing a bag of curly fries with your three best buds at 176 mph.
