Faith in the Mystery: Part One of a Response

Last week, I sat down and wrote the previous blog entry, "Leaving the Runway," in an effort to express the anxiety that I believe every Christian carries to some extent - that anxiety being the opposing forces of proof vs. faith. I was surprised to receive so many comments from people I did not know. Most of the people I know that read this blog rarely leave comments, so it is always a treat to be able to converse further over my thoughts and the feelings of others.

However, these comments were so varied in their critiques of what I wrote that, in one respect, I feel as if I am standing upon the crux of two see-sawing polar opposites when it comes to religious understanding. I hesitated at first to address these comments, but realizing they all came from thoughtful, intelligent people bringing, in their views, their own unique life experience, I feel now that to not address them would be a cop out. So, let me begin with the anonymous commenter on this, my Blogspot blog.

In order to conserve space and prevent this entry from stretching on too long, I will not include the entirety of "Anonymous'" quote, so if you would like to read it all, simply go to the entry just before this one and read the comments.

Anonymous (and even though there were two, I'm assuming it is the same person writing twice - even if I am mistaken, the sentiment in both is the same) came to my blog entry and was seemingly affected by a wishy-washiness he or she perceived in my reflection. What is more, Anonymous expressed concern that such an inability to cast away my anxiety and uneasiness of faith vs. proof might "infect" the youth group that I lead. Anonymous seemed upset that I would refer to the gospels as ambiguous, though, in reality, no matter how tightly one clings to the truth of the Gospels, only the naive would insist that there is no lack of information, that everything holds up perfectly and there is no reason to question anything. Unfortunately, many people cannot bring themselves to question the perspectives given to us in the gospels, let alone the validity of some of the details, even when one gospel differs slightly from other accounts. They simply cough out the "camera-angle" explanation, and bring into question the faith of the person calling parts of the gospels ambiguous.

Unfortunately for these people (and I'm not labeling Anonymous as one, though his sentiment reminded me of such people), the gospels, let alone the entire canon of Scripture, is ambiguous. It does not give us all the facts, and it does not answer every question and erase every doubt. For example, Genesis does not provide us with hard and fast proof of when and even how the earth was created. The Creation account is not a scientific dissertation. It is a narrative - a story - that delves beyond mere physical reasoning to the heart of the problem, that of human rebellion. In the same way, as I've told so many students in the youth group who have asked similar questions, Genesis is not an account of how the world began; it is an account of how God's relationship with man began, and that doesn't really start until chapter twelve with Abram.

The second thing that bothered Anonymous about my last entry was my closing metaphor, in which I try to paint a picture of what a life lived by faith is like, as opposed to a life lived solely by proof. Proof and certainty do not necessarily have to go together, as Hebrews 11:1 reminds us (and Anonymous attempted to remind me). However, faith and proof cannot go together, at least for a Christian. I was simply trying to illustrate that eventually, faith must stretch beyond proof. Anonymous wrote, referring to my metaphor, "I don’t believe that boarding the plane and leaving the runway is leaving something grounded, solid, or sure – if it was, no one would fly. In the same way, based on God’s promises, His real, historical, physical, incarnational provision of Christ, and His daily working in, through, and around us, we are convinced, sure, confident – full of faith, that what we hope for will happen. It isn’t a wishy-washy hope of uncertainty."

Quite true, and perhaps my use of the word "uncertainty" was a poor choice, but there are indeed two kinds of certainty. There is the certainty of proof, and there is the certainty of faith. These are not the same, as much as some of the "faithful" would like to insist they are. The certainty of proof is certain because it is "grounded," "sure," and scientifically provable. But faith has its own certainty, and it is not based on what is grounded or sure, no matter how true you believe the Bible to be (and I believe it to be quite true indeed despite it's ambiguous moments). The certainty of faith is found in our ability to hold to what we hope for no matter what goes on around us, what wars against our faith, and what challenges or shakes us to our core. Faith is a struggle, and as Paul Tillich intimated, it is not the opposite of doubt. Rather, doubt is one of the things that faith wraps itself around and redeems. Frederick Buechner writes of faith that it is "a journey without maps." So, ultimately, to those who dwell merely in the certainty of proof, the certainty of faith is not certainty at all, but uncertainty. However, for the faithful, as Anonymous is indeed one, faith is certainty. However, what we must all remember is that it is not the same as the world's view of what is and is not certain.

I am indebted to Anonymous for his or her comments, even if my metaphor was taken to some serious extremes to which no metaphor should ever be taken, and my ability to properly direct the youth under my charge was called into question. What Anonymous has helped me do is rethink my words and move even farther along this shadowy path we call earthly life.

There is still another pole which I need to address - a comment on my Xanga counterpart from a young man named Eric - before I can be finished with my response, but I will do this in another entry to come very soon. I think what I have written above is enough for us all - including me - to chew on.

The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It's our handle on what we can't see. The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd. By faith, we see the world called into existence by God's word, what we see created by what we don't see. - Eugene Peterson's "The Message" translation of Hebrews 11:1-3

Leaving the Runway

Last night, I spoke with some of the youth at the church about "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," the docu-drama that has created an incessantly annoying buzz in the worlds between the media and academia, especially archaeological, scriptural, and theological studies. To read more about this ridiculous documentary, go here, or here, or, for more scholarly information and links, go here.

What was interesting to me is what has been going on inside me, in my mind and my spirit, while I debate and refute this documentary and the claims it makes. I explained last night to the youth that when stuff like this pops up in the news and culture, Christians will normally react in three different ways. 1) They will spiral into a pissed-off realm of reactivity and begin lambasting Hollywood, Jews, skeptics, science, and whatever and whomever else they feel has done the cultural and media equivalent of stalking down the aisles of our churches and slapping our pastor in the face. 2) They will become increasingly paranoid, whether because they worry that something discovered might shatter their faith, or that their weak faith won't be able to stand up to the pressure that some discovery, valid or not, will do when it invokes its own defendants hungry for a debate of the facts. 3) They will embrace the dialogue, excited for the chance that some people will take themselves and their religious interest serious enough for a while in which a calm, collected Christian might be able to persuade them to tweak their worldview to include faith in a mystery.

Inside, while I'm explaining all this, I feel uneasy, because I suspect I am undulating somewhat between the latter two. I feel as if I am bouncing back and forth sometimes. It is hard not to be paranoid. Belief built on faith and not proof has a tendency, at times, to cause trepidation in a person if someone claims to have proof to the contrary. As much as I believe this whole "discovery" is, in reality, completely incorrect in what its proponents are claiming it is, I still cannot shake some of the residual paranoia that finds its way into my bones, and, uniting with my love of dialogue and debate, threatens to make me like the first kind of Christians mentioned above.

Why is it so difficult to leave behind this desire for proof? Why does faith in the mystery sometimes feel like a burden rather than a blessing? The ambiguity of the gospels, the selectivity of the New Testament writers, the odd faith of it all, can be hard to maintain at times, and even harder to live convincingly before those who feel that they need more, who feel that they need proof.

As I spoke with some of the confused youth last night (that seems to be a pattern most Wednesdays, that I leave some of them more confused than when they came in), I tried to illustrate the purpose of faith beyond proof to them, as it is central to the Christian life. "It's like a plane taxiing down a runway," I explained. "The runway is proof. It's grounded. It's solid. It's sure. You're almost certainly safe on the runway. But, if you're going to get from here to your true destination- if your faith in God is going to fly - then, eventually, you have to take off. You have to leave the solidity of the ground for the freedom, and hopeful uncertainty, of the wide open sky. Otherwise, you'll just taxi around in circles and never get anywhere."

If we are to fly, the proof must fade into hope. In both is faith, but the goal of faith is found somewhere on the other side of the horizon.