Christian Agnostics?
Kent Hayden, M.Div (Princeton) on The Case for Christian Agnosticism:
There is no poetry in the accumulation of answers. Poetry, and truth along with it, comes from an encounter with those corners of life which have not yet been filled with language. It comes from entering into our ignorance with the honest courage to question. It comes from a willingness to shake up the mental sediment in which we have hidden our secrets.
On the cross, Jesus was an agnostic. He was willing to face death with a why on his lips. Sometimes, in the comfort of a sunny afternoon, when much less is at stake, I have found the strength to entertain such questions myself. And when my belief is stirred by the gusts of doubt, and my knowledge is silhouetted against the beauty of mystery, I feel the uneasy presence of something beyond my capacity to speak, and I am grateful for all I don’t know.
People are often surprised to learn that Mother Theresa secretly harbored significant doubt. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising. The most difficult questions we ask of God are those that arise out of suffering and in the face of evil - precisely the intersection in which Mother Theresa lived and worked and prayed. It was in the face of unimaginable suffering, personal and intimate and real, that Jesus asked, “My God, my God - why have you forsaken me?”
I don’t think we can ever know God in the same way that we can ‘know’ a formula, a definition, a specification or measurement. We can, however, experience God. This is a very different way of ‘knowing’. The first way - the way of measurement and observation - suggests God exists wholly outside of ourselves. The second - the way of personal experience - suggests he exists within us. Jesus’ words in Luke 17 are ambiguous; various translations state that the kingdom of God is ‘within’ and ‘among’ you. ‘Within’ indicates a personal and individual experience of the Kingdom of God while ‘among’ can refer only to an experience shared in community. In either case, Jesus’ reply to the Pharisees is unequivocal: it can’t be identified through a rational process. The Kingdom of God can only be experienced and part of that experience might include doubt, questioning and uncertainty.
Press in to God. Do not give up, do not despair, do not walk away. Press in. P.U.S.H - Pray Until Something Happens. This requires considerable effort. It means clearing the decks of all that is irrelevant, time wasting, distracting to our search. No, you probably can’t quit your job, but you can not watch television for two or three hours a day, you can take time from other activities, you can open time in your schedule. You can pray for three or four hours a day - you just have to figure out how. Get up in God’s grill. Hang on. Do not let go. Holler, bellow and wail, plead, beg and cajole. But press in, and keep pressing in, until you hear from God.
To live in the mystery of God is one thing. To reconcile yourself to the questions that cannot be answered is another, and Dr. Hayden suggests he has found a way of living with both. To live in abject doubt, though, is to aimlessly wander the corridors of a peculiar kind of living hell. Trust me on this, it’s awful. I hate it.
Press in. P.U.S.H. My experience has been that I’ve never received the answer I was looking for. Almost inevitably God bypasses the question altogether. But I have always gotten the answer I needed.
P.U.S.H.
Questions
From Relevant Magazine - Cameron Conant on Why We Need Unanswered Questions:
And so as I sleep in a queen-sized bed by myself tonight—the same bed my wife and I once shared—simply knowing that God is there is enough for me, too. It has to be. Of course, I still have questions for God, but I’ve become comfortable with the tension of not knowing, the tension that comes from embracing a faith that cannot be fully deciphered, parsed, chopped up and dissected. Some things are mysterious—especially God. Yes, He can be known, but how can an infinite being who has no beginning and no end ever fully be known by us: clumsy humans who stumble along in the dark, groping for meaning and truth and answers?
I have questions, too. The older I get - and the more I search for answers - the more questions I have. But I’m not comfortable with ‘the tension of not knowing’. In fact, my faith journey over the last five to ten years has been characterized by a slowly increasing discomfort. Very few Christians can comprehend the possibility that God has led me into doubt, into questioning, into this wilderness. For most people, it simply does not compute. But I believe God has done just that. Sometimes I hate where I’m at. Sometimes I get tired of waking up every morning and searching for belief. Mostly, though, I can’t imagine living any other way. It’s the most honest, truthful way of life I know. But it’s incredibly difficult and soul-tiring.
Without doubt faith cannot grow. There is no other way - we must go through doubt, fear and uncertainty in order to experience the faithfulness of God. We cannot learn to trust until we have first learned to doubt. Sometimes this is doubt is purely an intellectual and emotional state, arising out of meditation on God’s word, on God, life, the universe and everything. Sometimes, as in Conan’s case, it is the result of an external crisis that is thrust upon us. The end result is the same - all our sheltering beliefs are broken, pulled down and hauled away. Sometimes all we’re left with is God - and sometimes, in the midst of an almost unbearable crisis, God is absent, silent, distant.
I feel so privileged to be able to open the bible and guide this faith community deeper into its truths each Sunday morning. But I also believe that one of the reasons why Third Space matters is because this is the one place where Christians can say - where I can say - ‘I don’t know, I don’t understand, I don’t have that figured out yet…’ There are times when it takes a great deal of courage to be able to say that. But - take it from me - those words are like life itself when someone is struggling with doubt, fear, uncertainty and deep, painful questions. Most people in the midst of such struggles aren’t looking for answers. They’re looking for someone who hears the cry of their hearts.
Questioning Faith, Accepting Doubt
I’ve got questions about God, about Jesus, the Holy Spirit. I’ve got questions about the bible, about how we got it, about what it says and doesn’t say. They’re real questions. They’re not going away.
Over the last year or so I’ve found myself increasingly disturbed as I pursue these questions. What unsettles me, far more than the questions themselves, is the way Christians seem to respond to them. No one ever says, ‘yes, I’ve wondered about that too,” or, ‘I’ve really struggled with that issue as well’. No-one has ever said to me, ‘I don’t know’. Instead? Simple, one-size-fits-all answers. I’m so sick of that kind of Christianity. I hate it.
Let me be clear that it’s not the mind-numbingly simple answers to complex questions that bothers me. Not so much. Not any more. What bothers me most is that the struggle isn’t acknowledged or understood. For most Christians, they’ve never wrestled through their beliefs; they been handed a list of pre-approved doctrines and accepted them wholesale. I know this is the case, because I used to be one of those Christians. I have an atheist friend who says that if you haven’t come to your faith without some kind of struggle then what you have isn’t faith. Most of us, however, treat doubt as the spiritual equivalent of a small fire in the kitchen. Kill it - fast, clean up the mess, make damn sure it doesn’t happen again.
That’s just wrong.
This week we’re looking at the testimony of John the Baptist about Jesus. “I must decrease,” he said, “so that He can increase”. So let me ask - how is it that Jesus increases and we decrease? How does that happen? You know what i think? I think if you’ve never heard that question before, and you can answer it in less than three days, you haven’t thought about it. No, really. Three days.
Here’s another possibility - because that’s what thinking for three days does, it opens possibilities. What if it’s just something John said? It meant to apply to him, in his role as a prophet, that he was talking about his ministry fading into the background as Jesus’ fame grew? Nothing more than that. Most of us evangelical types have been taught - our whole lives - that being a Christian means growing to be more and more like Christ and less and less like us. He increases. We decrease. If that’s not what John’s talking about - at all - then a tantalizing vision for a new way of life emerges. What if we’re not supposed to submerge our humanity below the surface of Christ, but to fully live out our humanity? Is it possible that we might be fully human, fully alive in this world and fully present in Christ at the same time? Is this not the ultimate triumph over sin and death entering into the world - the ultimate redemption of humanity in the redemption of our humanness?
How do we live like that - fully human and fully present in Christ, as he is present in us? What does that mean for our everyday lives?
Wait - don’t answer that.