Hello friends,
This is Mark Gladman,
Also known as Brother Frederick James,
Your friendly neighbourhood monk in dogs.
Welcome to another.
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Episode in our series,
Look Again,
And today… Is it controversial or is it that.
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Maybe there's some people listening to this who need to hear this one today.
And what is that?
Doubt isn't the opposite of faith,
And doubt doesn't mean you're losing your faith.
And I would even go as far as to say sometimes it means you're taking your faith really seriously.
I guess the problem is that for a lot of us,
Doubt feels dangerous.
Maybe because we're taught that faith means certainty.
So when we have questions come up,
When something stops making sense,
When the old answers we have to things just don't cut it anymore,
We can panic a bit.
We think,
Oh,
There's something wrong with me.
Maybe I'm losing God,
Maybe I'm losing my belief.
What if I don't believe anymore?
And so quite often.
.
.
We push it away.
Sometimes the community that we're in.
Might also question us,
And that can hurt too.
So we ask the question,
I say,
What are you thinking like that for?
Or.
.
.
No,
No,
Don't go there.
That's not what we believe.
We believe this.
Just go with that.
And so we bury the questions.
Or if we don't bury the questions,
We go for the quick and easy answer.
Or we go and listen to someone who we think sounds like they've got it together.
Sometimes we dig through the Bible till we find a verse that can support what it is we're trying to avoid,
Or throw the thing that we should be staying to that we don't think we should be moving away from.
Um.
.
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And this is all because we've really confused the life of faith with a life without questions.
That's not possible.
I mean,
Come on,
Have you ever read the Bible?
Because it's full of people asking really hard questions,
Really hard questions.
Job asks God,
Why am I suffering?
I mean,
Right to God's face.
All through the Psalms,
You see things like,
How long?
Where are you hidden?
Why have you hidden yourself?
You know,
Why God?
What's going on?
The prophet Habakkuk,
Or Habakkuk,
However you want to pronounce it,
Looks at all the violence going on around him and basically says,
God,
What the heck are you doing?
And then.
.
.
You have Jacob.
Who spends a whole night wrestling with God.
You have prophets complaining and you have disciples misunderstanding.
Thomas!
Thomas doesn't even play into this,
He refuses.
To pretend.
He says,
Oh,
No,
No,
Unless I put my finger in the nail prints and my hand on his side.
But even Jesus from the cross.
Look at the Garden of Gethsemane,
And then look at Jesus crying out,
My God,
My God,
Why have you forsaken me?
So I would tell you quite openly that I don't think the Christian tradition is a tradition that is or should be afraid of questions.
It's in our tradition.
All the way back even when it wasn't our own tradition.
Um.
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And it's a tradition full of people who.
.
.
Refuse to stop talking to God when they don't understand.
I think that's important too.
That's the one side where we start to doubt or question we don't feel like we can talk to God and we want to stay in.
And then there's the people who go,
Well,
I'm not going to talk to God.
Walk away.
I think that's a bit of the difference,
Because doubt says something like,
I don't understand.
It's indifference that says,
I don't care.
And they're not the same.
Sometimes doubt is a form of faith because the person who doubts is doubting because they're still quite engaged with everything.
They're still searching and asking.
Hoping that there's something new and something more.
You don't wrestle with things that don't matter to you.
You don't get into a fight if it's not going to have some sort of effect on you.
You walk away.
But you wrestle because it does matter.
I think,
Generally speaking.
Christianity particularly has done a great disservice to people when it's talked about certainty as being sort of the end game.
Because I think in the end,
Certainty is kind of more of a way to protect ourselves from reality than anything else.
Because the truth is,
The reality is,
Life is complicated and people suffer.
Sometimes prayers look like they're going unanswered and good things.
.
.
Happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people and some of those bad things happen for no apparent or obvious reason.
And eventually.
.
.
Life asks questions that our nice,
Comfortable,
Cosy box-op answers just can't hold.
So what do we do?
Well,
Sometimes we double down and we get louder and we try and make it out that we're more certain and more defensive and we protect.
Yeah,
We protect the theology or the belief or the doctrine or whatever it is because of fear.
We're afraid that if one little piece falls out of this,
Then the whole thing is going to come apart like that house of cards or Jenga,
You know.
Will I pull this block out?
Because what if the whole thing falls over?
But I think there's another way.
I think you can allow a question to remain a question.
And you can say,
I don't know.
And maybe that isn't the end of faith at all.
But maybe it's the beginning of humility.
Because here's something worth thinking about.
If God is truly God and God's infinite,
And if God's the source and the ground of all things,
Then why would we imagine that our understanding could ever.
.
.
Be complete about who God is.
A god.
Who you can completely explain.
Well,
Is that God?
I mean,
It's small enough to fit inside your head,
But if God fits neatly inside your head,
Are you talking about God anymore or are you talking about you or an idea?
And so not knowing is kind of good mystery.
Is not the enemy of faith.
Mystery is what happens when you see that reality is larger than the ability to comprehend it.
A great example of that is love.
I don't understand love completely and neither do you.
You can't.
And I know I've had people try and tell me all the science behind love and it still doesn't make sense.
It can explain what happens to our body when we feel love,
But it doesn't explain what love is or how it occurs.
And consciousness too.
I mean,
People are still trying to explain that.
But you're conscious.
And you can love.
And while you're standing inside the universe,
We are still working out what this universe actually even is,
Let alone what it looks like and how far it goes.
Um,
So maybe you just don't need to understand God completely to know God either.
If you know love and you know consciousness and you know the universe,
Even though you don't know all of what love or consciousness or the universe is,
Then likewise with God,
You can know God.
Knowing completely.
About God and understanding everything about God.
And I think that's because when we really get down to it,
Knowing God is more like knowing a person,
It's not like a problem-solving issue.
You never know.
A person completely.
You never finish knowing them.
You can be with someone for decades and you still don't know everything about them.
They probably don't even know everything about themselves either.
They surprise you.
People change.
You Discover things that you hadn't noticed that might have been there all along.
You see them differently.
And love doesn't make the demand that you possess that complete knowledge about the person.
Love is the thing that keeps you curious.
Love is what keeps you there with that person despite the things that are emerging.
And discovering the things that are emerging and loving them for those things too.
So I think mature faith is a bit like that.
It's not so much I've got all the correct conclusions nice and neatly in a box on a file,
But I think mature faith is being able to say,
I'm still I'm still seeing,
I'm still paying attention,
I'm still looking.
And the thing that I find incredibly beautiful about that is that I think God seems really comfortable with the questions people ask.
Thomas,
Thomas doubts and Jesus doesn't go,
Get out and you can sort yourself out.
Jesus comes closer.
He walks closer to Thomas,
Holds out his hand and say,
Go on.
Get into it.
Jacob raffles all night with God and walks away with a limp,
But he's blessed,
Job demanding his answers,
And when God finally speaks,
I don't know if you've ever read God's response to Job.
But it's not an explanation about why Job lost everything.
It's not a nice explanation he can take back to his three mates and say,
Well,
This is what God told me.
And they go,
All right,
Good.
Um,
Not that at all.
God gives Job a bigger vision and a wider horizon of who God actually is,
And it's almost as though Um.
.
.
The answer to Job's question isn't information that will help him answer the question.
He actually feeds the question with oar.
And wonder.
About who God is.
Why God is,
And I think Maybe we need some of that.
Don't need another answer,
Even those.
.
.
Much as we'd like another answer.
We want a bigger question.
We don't want a smaller God.
I know I don't want a smaller God who just explains everything and everything's hunky-dory.
But I think I'd much prefer a big.
.
.
A gold is big enough.
Hold the things that we can't explain.
So what do you do when doubt comes up?
How do you manage that?
How do you handle that?
Well,
A few things.
First of all,
Don't panic.
And you don't need to think that you're broken in some way.
Rather,
Maybe ask the question,
What is this doubt trying to tell me?
And so maybe an old understanding of God isn't big enough.
For your expanding understanding of God to have anymore.
Maybe a belief that you inherited from someone,
Family member,
Pastor,
Sunday school,
Maybe that needs to be re-examined.
Maybe you've confused someone else's certainty with your own faith.
Maybe you're being invited to go from having borrowed answers to an honest relationship.
Or maybe you're just human.
And you're encountering mystery.
That's okay.
You don't have to turn every question.
Into some sort of crisis of faith.
I think a lot of questions are doors,
And sometimes you have to walk through those doors.
Now,
It's really important that I say that not every doubt is going to lead us to an answer that we want.
Some questions are going to stay unanswered and there are going to be some things that we just cannot understand.
But let's remember that faith is never a guarantee that we'll understand everything.
Faith rather is the decision to remain open.
To keep seeking and loving.
And walking and I think that's why.
One of the most powerful prayers that you could ever pray is,
God,
I don't understand.
And then the important thing,
Once you've prayed that prayer,
Is don't finish it.
Just sit with it.
Because I think there are times when honesty and vulnerability is way more valuable and way more growing than certainty.
Maybe God.
Would want us to have real questions.
Than fake answers.
And I don't think God's threatened by our doubts.
I don't think God's standing on the other side of our questions,
Just waiting for us to solve it correctly till God can tick the box.
I think God's with us inside our doubts.
So if you're doubting right now,
If something you've always believed is feeling uncertain and unclear,
And you're asking questions that you never thought you'd ask,
Don't call it failure,
Because you probably aren't moving away from faith,
But you might be moving beyond a version of your faith that was too small to hold your life.
And let's be honest,
If that's the case,
It could be painful because growing always involves letting go.
And growing always means we're going to get a little bit bigger than the container that we're in and that can feel tight.
But don't think that what you're losing and letting go of and growing out of is God.
Because I like to think that you're growing into an image of God that's more the God than the one that was inside the image you had before.
So sometimes faith has to be less certain before it can become more real.
So what do you do with that?
I'd encourage you to take a question that you've been afraid to ask.
One that you've pushed down.
Maybe you've been told not to think about it.
Bring it out into the light,
But not to solve.
Just say it to God and to yourself.
Write it down if you need to and then notice what happens to you.
Forget about the question.
Put the question out there honestly before God and yourself and see what happens.
Does naming it make you feel further away from God?
Or does naming it,
That simple act of honesty,
Make you realize that you're still here,
You're still asking,
You're still seeking,
You're still turning towards the mystery?
Because I think that's what faith looks like.
Not a life without doubts,
But a life which can doubt.
And in that doubt will never stop you from looking.
That's why we need to look again.
Until next time,
May grace,
Peace and love.
Hold you and remain with you.
Amen.
Talk to you tomorrow my friend.
Bye for now.
