Faith Must Come with Doubt -or- Can you Stomach Jesus?

If you remember, “Bob’s Stomach” was the handle for an online restaurant critic, whose advice I followed in choosing a restaurant.  Though I didn’t know him, I chose to trust his advice on where to eat.  

In a sense, I blindly followed Bob’s Stomach, because I didn’t know him and because I rejected the restaurants he rejected, sight-unseen.

In another sense, I wasn’t following blindly at all.

I chose to follow the advice of Bob’s Stomach with my eyes open to all of the reasons why I shouldn’t--in full knowledge of the risks of following B.S.’s advice:

Bob’s tastes are not my tastes.

The restaurant could have just been having an off day when Bob was there.

Bob could be ornery, crotchety and hard to please.

Bob could have chosen a dish that wasn’t the restaurant’s specialty.

The server could have been work-shy or new--hardly representative of the entire establishment.

The possibilities leading to Bob’s wrongness are endless, and yet I decided to follow his lead anyway.

We come to know about Jesus Christ--all we know about God--in the same way: through third party witnesses.  The Bible; the apostles from age to age; God’s people in our faith communities.

But the story they tell is harder to swallow than the accounting of Bob’s Stomach.

We don’t really think about it today--myself included--but belief in Jesus Christ is preposterous.

The Christian faith doesn’t make sense.  The Church asks us to consider that the infinite God, creator and ruler of the cosmos, had a ‘child’ as old as God, who was later born a human.  Sounds like the stories of Greek mythology, like Hercules or something--only in the Christian story, the son is fully human and fully God, a logical joke: the glass is not half full or half empty, the glass is entirely full and totally empty.

Any sensible person would find it laughable and offensive.

But there is more.  God is not only a human being, Jesus, but a human being that lived a life that fell far short of the glory of God.  Jesus lived on the fringes of society; he associated with the lowly and the sinful.  Jesus was rejected by most, and in the end was put on trial as a criminal...and died.  Who, today, would look for God on death row?

What God would come to earth in abasement?  If God were to come as the most powerful and just king, or the most beloved and conscientious celebrity, God would be terribly humiliated.  But to come as a rather normal person, a controversial person...

But almost no one in the churches is offended by Jesus.  Why not?

It is NOT a lack of common sense.  

Christians are not offended by Jesus because they really don’t think about how nuts it is.  And rightly so, I suppose, because a lot of people who think about it end up falling away from the faith.  

But True Faith always comes with doubt.

Not the throw-up-your-hands-and-forget-about-it kind of doubt.

The kind of doubt that you wrestle with...that you work on and that works on you.

The suspension of disbelief is a way to avoid the problem.  Mere acceptance--without thought or explanation.  It is the will not to disbelieve, a negative movement.  And we call this faith.  To me, this option is the most offensive of all.  Why?  Because this negative choice of “faith” is really ignoring God to bypass the onslaught against rational thought.  All of a sudden, faith becomes something in which the mind does not participate.  If it doesn’t make sense, or is hard to understand, then it simply must be “a matter of faith.”

I have gone to friends on a number of occasions to talk about problems in my life.  Sometimes these very well meaning friends listen as I lay out my dilemma, and right away they have some form of answer: “I understand.”  “The same thing happened to me.”  “Here is what you need to do....”  “Have faith.”  “It is what it is.”  My issue is swept away.  My problem may be pretty superficial and ridiculous, at least on the surface.  But if something “simple” is disturbing me, then it is likely that a deeper issue in my soul is at the root of it all.  And the deeper thing...the deeper understanding of myself that I am craving to lay hold of by freaking out...is never investigated, never touched upon.  

When we suspend our disbelief because an article of faith does not “make sense” we do the same thing.  We throw up our hands and say: “It is what it is.  Let’s not try to understand what cannot be understood.”  And we miss the deeper things that God is trying to impress upon us.

I hate most of all the answer: “You aren’t supposed to understand it.”

Maybe I will never understand.  I am prepared for that, believe it or not.

But to therefore refuse to try...to refuse to explore and consider...

I believe that the mind and the heart can learn something of use out of every inexplicable experience or situation.  There may not be complete understanding, there may not be a solution, but there is always an opportunity to grow in some way, if the attempt to resolve the unresolvable is made.

The number one thing I learn from the ridiculousness of the claim that Jesus is fully God and fully human is this: I must choose.  That is, I must passionately choose God.

A logically inconsistent claim (a paradox), destroys all possibility of proof.

Where there is no proof, where there is no certainty, humans must make a choice.

This is what it means to be human, in fact.  We very seldom have all the information we need, and yet we are constructed to make a choice anyway.  There are times that we must act, whether we know what to do or not.  And it is a very human thing to learn to live with that choice and its consequences.

That is the beauty of the Church’s Christological doctrine (doctrine about Jesus’ equal divinity and humanity): I will never learn enough in order to figure it out, but I will always be pushed to choose--Yes or No.  

I can try to understand it with my mind, but I will always fail.

I can try to understand it with my heart, but I will always fail.

My understanding will falter, my love will falter.

And so, I am left to choose...

I can only say “Yes” or “No” in bold confidence.

I can only will to believe--will to fear, trust and love God--with infinite resignation.

If Jesus is just God, then I can love God from a distance without any mess.  

If Jesus is just human, then my mind can understand.

No problem.  The will need not become involved.

But if Jesus is both, I am forced to a choice:

Believe it or Not.

The trouble is that there are plenty of reasons not to believe it.

And so, if I believe, I must choose to do so with passion.

We need the Biblical witness so that we know and feel what we are choosing when we choose Jesus Christ.

Faith is not blind.

Faith is stepping out into our blind-spots, in full confidence that God is already there.

How wonderful it is that faith must come with doubt, that our we can choose God without knowing everything.

Either try the restaurant--taste and see.

Or do not.

At the end of the day, the choice is still yours.

Ryan Howard

“FAITH ABORTED BY CHURCH”  -or-  “HOW WONDERFUL it is that GOD IS PRESENT IN THE CHOICE in order to be CHOSEN and not in Order to Judge”

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“The choice itself is crucial for the content of the personality: through the choice the personality submerges itself in that which is being chosen, and when it does not choose, it withers away in atrophy.”    

-Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or (Part II)

Dear Reader,

This post is an interlude in the discussion I started last time.  Yet, the point is germane.  My next post will take up again the relation between Bob’s Stomach and faith in Christ Jesus.  

I am a firm supporter of doctrine.  People look at me like an alien when they find this to be true.  People say, “How could you be so rigid and boring?”  But the incredulousness stems from a misunderstanding.  The confusion is rooted in the equivocation of law and doctrine.  

A law is always negative.  The Law always rewards the negative--only attends to you when you break the law.  The punishment is immediate, that is, directly connected to the action.  Furthermore, the law offers no choice, but must be followed.

Doctrine, on the other hand, is always positive.  Doctrine, unless it is a law in doctrine’s clothing, always--always--creates the occasion for the individual to choose.  What a rare and invaluable gift!  Doctrine offers the gift of free choice...the gift of true freedom.  Doctrine offers a statement, the form of which gives the opportunity for people to say “Yes” or “No.”  

Allow me to give a concrete example.  A heated debate rages in the Rockford Register Star, and across the nation.  The U.S. government has passed a new law concerning abortion and contraception.  

Governments are set up to provide law and not doctrine.  Every government is in the business of law...our government was set up to avoid doctrine.  The United States of America were established to protect the free choice of the individual when it comes to doctrine.  There are other nations in which doctrine is also the work of the government, but this only makes doctrine into law.  Governments have a Midas touch by which all is turned into law.  King and Congress only concern themselves with gold and law.  

So, the government has passed a new law requiring every employer and insurance company to provide medical coverage for abortions and contraception.  U.S. Christians, particularly Catholics, have responded loudly.  These Christians claim that the government is encroaching on the freedom of religious belief, a freedom that is protected under the law of this nation.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.

These Christians are looking at things upside-down.  This law is giving people more freedom, and not less.  In fact, this very law concerning abortion is protecting the doctrine of the Catholic church--by keeping it a doctrine...by preventing the church from making it a law to be followed.  This new law is creating room for faith.  Of a sudden, it is the government forcing the issue to be a matter of choice, a matter of doctrine, a matter of belief.  

If abortion is a matter of law within the church, then faith is annulled.  The church rips from the individual the opportunity to agree with church doctrine...because there is no longer a choice, but only law and constraint.  But faith always frees, and one always lays hold of faith freely, for there is no other way.  God does not want it otherwise, because God wants, above all, to be chosen (just has God has chosen us freely).

Were it not so sad and pitiable, it would be rather comic that the Catholic Church does not trust its own people to choose doctrine.  

Let us examine what the law is asking of the church.  The church is required to pay for abortion and contraception if its employees, individually, decide to abort or to contracept.  The church has an out, because they no longer have a choice under the law.  But the choice is placed in precisely the spot, the only spot, where faith exists: in the individual believer.  Catholics (and others) claim that the biblical witness speaks against these actions, and yet they do not have faith in the effectiveness of that witness.  They do not have faith that the biblical witness has the power to (in)form believers.  Or, more precisely, the church has no faith that it is doing a good enough job teaching, loving and informing people to make decisions on their own from the standpoint of faith.  But this is the church’s only role in the world.  If the church does not empower people to decide things in faith, then it is useless.  Making doctrine into law is a move of desperation, and it reveals the church’s inability to fulfill its task.

The big argument is that the law destroys the church’s integrity.  Church doctrine says one thing and the church is forced to do quite another.  I will not comment on the church’s integrity in other matters, I leave that up to you, dear reader, in the confines of your own minds and hearts.  But I will speak generally.  

A recent opinion column in the Rkfd Register Star claimed that the government was giving the Catholic Church (this denomination was named specifically) a choice: either the loss of integrity or death.  Disintegration or death.  

A rather melodramatic statement, but let us suppose it is true.  

The opinion column could have just as easily put it this way, for this is the positive statement of that apocalyptic response: the church is being given the opportunity to die for what it believes in.  

Has not the church, throughout history, asked--even required--individuals to die for the sake of integrity--to die for belief, doctrine and faith?  The Catholic Church in America is in a bit of a pickle.  Either way, the integrity of the institution is forfeit.  Unless, of course, the institution chooses disintegration (death).  And to that I say, “Church: welcome to the crisis of faith, welcome to the experience that every individual faces in this life.”  

Existence is not for the weak of stomach.  Humans are faced with hard choices.  And when we make a choice, we live either with the guilt or with the consequences...or both (often both).  Jesus Christ appears at this point.  Jesus frees us from guilt, or frees us to face consequences, secure in the promise that we are justified and loved and supported.  

In my estimation, faith is something beyond integrity.  That is, integrity is a perfection that I, myself, cannot attain in every situation.  I thank God that faith is something different, that faith is more, is deeper.  I thank God that faith is wrestling with possibilities, with the choice.

Thus, this new law concerning abortion and contraception protects the faith, paradoxically enough.  This law forces the crisis of faith upon believers.  Either the individual will throw her- or himself upon Jesus, our Rock, and be empowered to refuse abortion and contraception.  Or the individual will--whether in good conscience or bold confidence--choose abortion/contraception and throw her- or himself upon Jesus Christ to receive grace and justification.  All roads still lead to Jesus Christ.    

“...what is important in choosing is not so much to choose the right thing as the energy, the earnestness, and the pathos with which one chooses.  In the choosing the personality declares itself in its inner infinity and in turn the personality is thereby consolidated.  Therefore, even though a person chose the wrong thing, he nevertheless, by virtue of the energy with which he chose, will discover that he chose the wrong thing.  In other words, since the choice has been made with all the inwardness of his personality, his inner being is purified and he himself is brought into an immediate relationship with the eternal power that omnipresently pervades all existence.”

-Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or (Part II)

If the church is more concerned about faith, instead of integrity, then it will follow the law of government, and rejoice that it can focus on equipping disciples in the art of choosing.  

I thank God that I live in a nation, and am a member of a church, that protects my ability to choose faith freely.  God never forsakes me amidst the consequences--never forsakes you, either.  Thanks be to God!  

I pray that your church is one that gives you the freedom to choose...gives you the opportunity for faith.  

-Ryan Howard   

P.S.--Beloved Reader, 

Interested in the Lutheran perspective(s) on contraception and abortion?  Post a comment and I will put it in my blog queue.

Beloved of God, 

Are you wrestling with the matter of abortion/contraception in your own life?  I invite you to contact me, and we can talk together about Christ’s presence in the midst of hard decisions, in the midst of your life.  My email contact: ryan@oslcrockford.com  

At least I implore you to speak with some you trust--someone who will focus on Christ's presence above all else.

rha

Informed Dissent
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Our time has been labeled the Information Age.

     We are certainly a far cry from the Stone Age, just look at the tools you use at work and around the house.  We no longer ride chariots of iron or "iron horses"...it is clearly not the Iron Age.  Our time is much too great to be described as a Silver Age, and we are much too young and hip to be graying.  Yet, our present is simply not as good as that Golden Age of myth and memory--so that is out.
     I think that even if these titles did describe our Age, we wouldn't use them.  We reject the cultural and social rigidity these minerals and metals might evoke, metaphorically.  We are all together too free-thinking, too original.  So Information Age it is...or is it?
     In our post-modern age, we have gone beyond information.  Recently, I was searching the internet for restaurant ideas.  Beneath the "official" descriptions of each food emporium were volumes of posts rating everything from the quality of the food, to the service, to the atmosphere and location.  I found myself focused on these ratings more than anything else...and judging what I did not know for myself by them.  Sure, I couldn't trust the "official" description--it was written with a conflict of interest, the bias was to advertise--so instead I was putting my trust in "Gastrolust" and "Bob's Stomach."  My gastronomical lusts are not theirs, nor is my stomach Bob's stomach.  But I took to heart what they said.
     We live in an age when anyone can comment on anything.  Online news articles with long threads; twitter; facebook; blogs--they are all opinions (without authority) and yet we give them authority.  We willingly bow to the oppression of opinion.  Feedback, comments, ratings, polls are prevalent, these prevail.  I am afraid that we treat these opinions as truth instead of experiencing and/or reflecting for ourselves.  We have transcended information and now live in the age of "insider knowledge," which is nothing more than the Opinion Age.
      The same is occurring in our churches.  Dogma is the devil and ethical principles are fusty.  Many churches put it this way, "We are about faith formation, not information."  The idea is that information, which is equated with doctrine (and perhaps rightly), is stuffy and boring, that formation is less oppressive.  But let us examine these words.
      "Information" is anything that informs.  "Inform" comes from the Latin informare: "to shape, fashion, describe."  Let's break it down: in- "into" + forma "a form."  Information, then, is something that is put into a form.  Unless an idea takes some form, it cannot be shared.  Unless an idea takes some form, we cannot interact with it.  That is, I can have no opinion for myself on something that is formless, but as soon as it takes form, I have the traction to come down one way or another in regard to it.
       Information goes still deeper, however.  We say, "She is informed" or "I was not informed."  What "takes form" in this usage?  I would say, poetically, that it is one's inward self (one's heart, soul, mind--however you wish to describe or shape the idea) which is formed.  Information is that which "forms us inwardly."  It is not knowledge per se, but knowledge to which we relate by mediating reality and our ideas.  Information is knowledge that we know by heart...knowledge that has the potential to change the way we act by changing the way we think and feel about a thing.  We are outwardly molded not by something external to us, but by our inward life...since it was we ourselves that interacted with information (we wrestled with it) and we were formed inwardly.  The outward changes, therefore, come from within.  This is the only genuine change and this is what Christians call conversion.
        Formation is something different, is entirely external.  It changes behavior without changing the inward life.  Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and Asia formed citizens and did not inform them.  These governments control what information is available and modify what information is broadcast according to certain aims.  This friends, is formation without information.
       In democracies the world over, where freedom is an ideal, free speech is that mechanism that gives the people the right to be informed, the right to information.  It is this passion for freedom that has given us news shows, blogs, polls, discussion threads, facebook, twitter, etc.  We passionately defend our freedom of speech, and rightly so.  But we forget that our freedom of speech is merely the freedom to give our opinion.  News sources are not objective, but have biases.  Facts always come with opinion.  Information always comes to us in the form of opinion.  Because only opinion is a form in which we can be informed.  Opinion has no authority, and so we have the freedom to interact with it--to agree or to disagree.  [Notice I do not say react.]  Speech feeds and empowers a greater and more fundamental freedom, the freedom of thought.
       So, we are not in the Opinion Age, for that is synonymous with information, which we have transcended (though not to the effect for which most intend and hope).  Should we try, then, the "Age of Thoughtless Assent?"  Is this not what I do when I allow Bob's Stomach undue influence upon my choice of restaurants?  Now this is a small matter, but what if I am watching the news, instead of reading a food critic?  What if I am reading the Bible?  What if I do not think about the things I hear and see?
        Opinions don't hurt people.  Thoughtlessness hurts people.  Thoughtless assent to the the most random and untested of opinions...hurts humanity.  Biblical literalists read the Scriptures and follow what is written without question.  They are formed, not informed by the Bible.  There is no interaction there.  Meanwhile, scientists have tested the hypothesis of evolution so much that they have deemed to call it a Theory (the highest title of "proof" that the scientific method allows).  Scientists have interacted with the information, with the world, so much that they know it intimately enough to have a well-tested opinion and belief about how creatures have come to be in all their diversity.  Who gives more honor to the information before them?  Who loves the truth more?  Who is better informed--the source does not matter, for has not God set before us creation, just as the Bible is set before us?  Should we interact with one to the exclusion of the other?  But to deny Evolution is to refuse to interact with both scientific truth and with Biblical witness.  If your science comes from the Bible, you haven't been listening to the point that the Bible is trying to get across.  You haven't spent enough time letting the Bible inform you.
        But I digress.  Back to the task at hand.
        Our Information Age is full of opinions, and rightly so.  We have the freedom of speech, but let us not neglect that prior freedom: the freedom of thought.  Let us keep to an age in which we remain steadfast to informed dissent (or assent)
        How wonderful it is to be a human being, to be given such an inherent freedom!
        Information presents us with a choice.  We can either doubt or believe.  God has given us the ability to choose.  And so let us always remember that if we doubt, it is a choice...and if we believe, it is a choice.  Truth changes my inward being and my outward behavior, if--and only if--I will to believe it.
        Therefore, I will follow the advice of Bob's Stomach and not try the restaurant he disliked, but I have chosen to do so in freedom, aware of the risks.  It is a leap of faith that goes against all of the other glowing recommendations for that particular restaurant.
         NEXT TIME:
"Who Can Stomach Dogma?"  or  "How Doctrine is the Only Opportunity for Faith to Grow"
Bob's Stomach has given me a wonderful advantage.  In my next blog-post, I will explore how Bob's Stomach relates to the doctrine of the Church--and even how Bob's Stomach is connected to faith in Jesus Christ!  (The answer is not the Lord's Supper, but is much more exciting...I'll keep you posted.)