4 min. read
Certainty may have little to do with the life of faith. Maybe that’s why it’s called “faith” and not “absolutely sure beliefs.”
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If you are traveling in a place you’ve never been, do you always have your map app of choice open to show you where to go?
We tend to want to get an overview of where we are going, the route to take, how long it will be, and if there will be traffic, construction, etc. In many ways, we want the whole travel path scripted so we know what to expect.
Though this process is good and helpful for a trip, it is defeating to the life of faith.
Faith Is Not Scripted
Those of us who find ourselves outsiders or on the fringes of Western institutionalized religious systems are outliers for a myriad of reasons.
One common cause I’m finding with fellow outsiders is this: we embrace the uncertainty of faith.
Systemic religion offers lots of boundaries, restrictions, sureties, guidelines, and so forth. Are any of these things actually necessary for the individual or community that seeks to live in the way of Jesus?
The reasoning behind all the trappings of institutional faith speaks to our very basic need to want certainty. We like to get what we expect to get. We like to experience what we’re told will happen. But outsiders know all of these things are illusions. Outsiders have experienced that the refusal to question is the path to ignorance.
It seems that over the centuries since Jesus walked the earth, we have tried to organize faith around principles. There are so many iterations of Christian faith, because we are at least doing the rigorous work of rethinking some of the things we think we know. So we come up with new principles that don’t fit in one institution or another, and a new organization is birthed.
We’ve moved from simply the Church to the Eastern and Western churches. From catholic unity to protestant uprising. From state churches to many denominations. And on and on and on.
It seems we look at faith as some giant wall that is in a constant state of decay. When some mortar is cracked, or a stone in the wall falls out of place, we do all we can to return the wall to an earlier state by replacing the stone or setting some fresh mortar. If we get fed up with the constant attempt to keep the wall intact, like Sisyphus forever pushing the boulder up the hill, we take some stones that have been displaced, move somewhere far down the wall, and begin to reconstruct a new section of the institutional wall.
What if the wall was a bad idea in the first place? What if the life of following Jesus has nothing to do with the wall?
Holding On
Whether a particular flavor of organized faith tells us our certainty exists in the Bible, or a specific doctrine, or a certain denomination, or a figurehead, or membership, what we are being told in all of these is that certainty is found in holding on to something definite and distinct.
And so we spend a lot of time and effort trying to keep a firm grasp on that particular truth, or belief, or claim. All the while our grip is slipping, and so we readjust to regain a tighter grip.
What if the life of faith were more like holding something with our hands wide open, palms pointed upward?
In this way, we might hold something for a time. The specific something may move on from our supportive hands; we might even drop it. And yet we would be maintaining a posture ready to receive and relinquish without angst and without certainty.
The Uncertainty of the Universal Christ
The Universal Christ that we outsiders follow is way bigger than the Small Jesus of a particular doctrine, denomination, or belief. This Christ cannot be forced into scripted narratives.
This Christ is not predictable, is not manipulatable, is not safe. So if we follow the Jesus who is the Universal Christ, our path will be unpredictable, uncertain, even dangerous.
We must always be re-evaluating what we think is certain.
The authentic life of faith makes lots of space for doubt and questioning.
The Faithfulness of Doubt
A tension exists between a system that needs to be protected and exploratory doubt that questions such protection. Maybe Jesus doesn’t need our protection. Maybe God doesn’t need our systems. Maybe much of what we’ve been told is required in faith is more about what we think we need.
If you find yourself on the fringes of organized religion, I suggest you are in the epicenter of faith. The life of faith is much broader than our systems. Faith is not a prospect of certainty, and so is wide and expansive.
If you have no idea what your next step forward might be, let me suggest the following. Do the brave work of redefining what “church” or “religion” is to you in a narrower way. Lower your expectations of this behemoth we humans have created. Whatever falls into that narrow definition will focus you on how to be part of it moving forward. Like many outsiders, you might find that church or organized religion is really only 10-15% of your faith life. Then the possibilities for the other 85-90% become almost endless.
If you find yourself in a season of doubt and questioning, embrace it! Such is the way of faith, the way of Jesus, the way of the Universal Christ.
This season may last a few months or years. That’s ok. And doubts and questions may arise again and often. In fact, the cyclical nature of questioning means that a life of faith is being faced transparently and honestly.
Throw the script away. It wasn’t the map we thought it was in the first place. Walk closely with the Universal Christ and get ready for the unexpected and unscripted.