I can only get so far in my faith and I am frustrated by it. Time and time again, I want to believe - truly believe like no doubt, mind is convinced, can see it clearly as if it happened yestereday, can feel the heat of Jerusalem, and smell the sweat of the centurions as they raise Christ's cross. But I can't. My brain always gets in the way.
I'll be reading along in scripture and I'll see something that says, Jerusalem was destroyed in 584BC and I'll think to myself, "How do they know it happened like it says in the Bible? Where are the other sources? Do they agree about the specifics or disagree? And how come there hasn't been an addition to the Bible in almost 2000 years? Where's God? Or did He get out of the publishing business?" Talk about some serious issues. Its like I'm using my faith as a dam to hold back a flood of questions for which I know there are not any answers. I know its creepy, Thomas, but I want to put my finger in His side too.
Languages evolve. We like to think of them as static. We like to embrace them as unchanging, but we can see the changes in our lifetime. We know words that are no longer used. We know that certain words have changed meanings or spellings or flaunted a direct disregard for grammar. But go out another 100 years and you'll discover that language has changed even more. 200 years and its even greater. 400 years and you've got Shakespeare. Etc... Languages borrow words and are influenced by outside events like mass migrations or forced isolations or slavery. Unexpected things that happen can create new words - and words are what we use for a shared understanding, so that if I say 911, you know what I mean without my having to describe it. So meanings change as well, and understandings. We see the world differently now than we did even ten years ago.
Religions evolve too. Even in Christianity, we know that there is no church today that is the same as the ones that existed right after Christ died. It would be impossible to create such a church. We have documented evidence of religions that have been modified by outside events - so called Cargo Cult religions. These religions were vastly influenced by an unexpected and otherworldly event. In the original case, an aboriginal tribe on a Polynesian Island was stunned one day when a cargo containing ship docked in their harbor and began setting up an advanced scouting base for watching the Japanese. The natives had never seen such technology and the Americans existence there was unexplained by their religion, so they modified it to include worship of the Cargo People. But if a religion like this can evolve, how can we not say that other religions weren't influenced by outside events?
We might say that we can trace pretty much all development of Christianity back, but not the original tenets of faith. Judaism goes back thousands of years. And that whole parting the Red Sea? Talk about miracles that are impossible to even imagine - no matter what you do, it will always look like a movie special effect.
So, here are these thousand doubts and questions floating in my head arguing with me every time I profess a belief in Christ. ("Sure you believe, buddy... but you still can't explain to me how the trinity works!") I can't get rid of them. I find it increasingly hard to ignore them. And I know in my heart that I'm never going to be sitting in church and hear a sermon entitled, "How Moses Parted The Red Sea, by the Scientific Journal." They can't even agree how the pyramids were built.
So I'm left with a choice. Do I decide to believe or do I think the whole thing is nutty and ignore it?
We may have to come up with a new definition of belief. Is there a way to believe and not believe 100%? Is that the essence of faith? Believing even when you don't believe? Following thoughts and feelings in your heart that you can't explain, crying over words to a song you've sung 100 times, feeling comforted by prayer - even though you can't make out how Daniel survived in the lion's den?
I believe! But I don't believe! Let's not tell the brain!
3 comments:
Hey...did Donald Miller crawl up inside your head last night? Talk about providence dude...
During the lockin on Friday night I was talking with one of the youth who isn't a member of my church - he was having issues of faith, not unlike yours, and I gave him an extra copy of Blue Like Jazz. Before doing it, I read him the passage where Miller describes the friendship with Christ as like having an imaginary friend.
He quickly understood, and it is one of the things he grapples with.
It doesn't make any logical sense. But I like how CS Lewis puts it in Mere Christianity, that either Jesus is truly the son of God...or He's a madman.
Yeah, let's keep our brain out of it and follow our hearts.
Will, I have been there, am often there, and expect to be there again. I cling to the story of the father in Mark 9 with the (presumably) epileptic son who was desperate for a solution to his son’s self-destructive condition. Jesus seems almost to taunt the father. “What’s the big deal? All you have to do is believe.” [Lamb paraphrase] The father’s response is crushing in its honesty. “I believe! Help my unbelief!”
Ultimately I come back to Psalm 139. There is no escape from this God who has laid hold of us. Even if we tried to flee, we could never get away. As one of my seminary professors liked to say, "I am hopelessly and helplessly a Christian." Yet, even as we are "hemmed in" by God, it is also comforting to feel that embrace. The arms that constrain us also protect us.
If you read 139 in a certian way (The NRSV or NASB probably give the best sense of it), it’s almost bitter. Yet it ends, unquestioningly, with a prayer of devotion. “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me [, for I know there is], and [,in spite of it,] lead me in the way everlasting.”
Andy, Dave - thanks for the words of encouragement. I know that my blog could have sounded like a crisis in faith, but it wasn't really. Maybe an ongoing frustration, but not a crisis. It is just something I can't reconcile in my head. I feel a strong need to understand before I can believe. And yet, in my heart, I know I believe. I can feel God and His presence in my life. I can see where He is leading me. On a personal level, I do not doubt. But it is hard for me to see God on a macro level. It is hard for me to see God in the actions of others, unless they have some impact on me. It is hard for me to see God in history or in books.
I guess this is where I have to leave the books behind and find God in experience.
Hmm... that gives me an idea for a Youth Group theme this year. Finding God through experience... I'll have to mull on that a while.
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