lucha con mi fe

[Alternate Title:] -- the only dumb question is the one you never ask at church

Being a product of the public school system and corporate america, I have heard this tired cliche used a bazillion times, “the only stupid question is the one you never ask...”

I am ashamed to admit it, but I may have even used it myself a few times (in corporate training settings). Over the years of course, I have learned that, as with most cliches/truisms, there is always an exception.

I recently smashed head-on into the exception to this most tired/famous cliche in the one place that you would think should be the most open to questions -- a church. Unfortunately for many, the church is not a safe place to bring questions/doubt. It seems that today, most people in the church do not want faith but instead desire surety.

In their case, experiencing God’s goodness is not enough, unless they can be sure of His continued goodness. So we formulate airtight arguments about why God is the way He is and how He can never change in order to give our selves some sense of stability before we commit to serving this God. The problem with this method of surety before faith is that we diminish God to a set of attributes (that we feel comfortable with) gleaned from the scriptures (that we feel comfortable with) and create a caricature of God that exaggerates the characteristics that will give us the most comfort.

Can we truly call this faith? In order for faith to exist there must be doubt, in fact there is a certain sense that the more doubts one has while still believing the stronger the faith of the individual.

In his book New Seeds of Contemplation Thomas Merton makes a statement about faith that is prophetic for our times:

The very obscurity of faith is an argument of its perfection. It is darkness to our minds because it so far transcends their weakness. The more perfect faith is, the darker it becomes. The closer we get to God, the less is our faith diluted with the half-light of created images and concepts. Our certainty increases with this obscurity, yet not without anguish and even material doubt, because we do not find it easy to subsist in a void in which our natural powers have nothing of their own to rely on. And it is in the deepest darkness that we most fully possess God on earth, because it is then that our minds are most truly liberated from the weak, created lights that are darkness in comparison to Him; it is then that we are filled with His infinite Light which seems pure darkness to our reason.

In other words, there is an inverse relationship between faith and surety. The deeper ones faith becomes the less likely we are to accept (be certain of) the “half light of created images and concepts” that many settle for in their understanding of God.

For me the most frightening thing about this, is not that I may continue to wrestle with doubts as I journey into deeper levels of faith -- but instead I fear that I may cause someone else to stop wrestling. This would be a tragedy indeed, because by stopping that person from doubting I am taking away their opportunity to move into deeper levels of faith.

I am ashamed to admit that I have done that in the past. Too many times I answered a persons doubt with some cliche/truism/interesting thing I heard from a sermon on KSLR -- that seemed to give an airtight answer and defeat their doubt. I confess and repent of that sin. In a spirit of repentance I pray that I will no longer do that, but rather allow/encourage those around me to wrestle with their faith.

Padre en cielo,

Forgive me for stifling the work of Your Holy Spirit in the lives of those that are wrestling with doubt. Use me to help them wrestle, not with easy Sunday morning answers, but with deeper levels of faith. Give me the strength to live in the darkness of true faith so that I can be more completely filled with Your True Light. En el nombre de Su Hijo, Jesus Christo, amen.

Comments

[Richard Diaz]

In the past I've been guilty of being Holy Spirit Jr. in the lives of others. Thinking I knew enough supposedly gave me just cause. I spewed every preconcieved notion in the christian commentary and all I did was cause more damage than good. I've learned that sharing spiritual things comes with relationship and time. You are right. There are no pat answers for an indivduals faith journey. That walk is exclusive to God's destiny in that individuals life.