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.
A Jazz Shaped Faith
On Sunday we were talking Jazz. Well, Ian was talking Jazz. Specifically, about the intersection of Jazz and faith. How is it possible that jazz and faith intersect? Ian shared with us Finding the Groove: Composing a Jazz-Shaped Faith
In the video above there’s a drum solo that begins at about the 5:00 minute mark and lasts about 2 and half minutes. It’s really quite elegant. The drummer goes someplace all his own but never loses the feel of the song and, when the time is right, Dave Brubeck turns around, puts his fingers on the keyboard, and the band comes together again beautifully.
For years I tried to like jazz but just couldn’t understand it. There didn’t seem to be any melody, no tune to follow along with. One day I heard that the secret to listening to jazz is to hear each individual instrument but hear them all, together, at the same time. The moment I was able to do this it suddenly just opened up for me. That seems like a perfect description of community, also - a place where each individual voice is heard but where all our voices, together, create something really beautiful.