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.