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Defenders of the Faith? The process leading up to the birth had been long and stressful. Telling family members, preparing for a first baby, worrying that she wouldn't know what to do, making living arrangements for the baby's father, planning to finish school part-time… Then the worry as the due date came and went, and the days afterward stacked up, and the first attempt at inducing failed. Labour came suddenly and without the chance for any painkillers. The baby's father rushed in just in time, and in a moment of that one day at 4 in the morning, all past concerns vanished. 8lb 11oz, healthy, happy, gurgling and with a little head full of black hair. Relatives rallied around to help the young mother out. The church made up a roster and cooked dinner for the new family, every night of the first two weeks. I abandoned my classes and drove straight back home to the coast to see my new nephew. Flowers, baby clothes and cards came from everywhere, except for one great-aunt. Conversing seriously with other family members, she tut-tutted and expressed her inability to 'congratulate' the new parents for their sinful act and the ensuing mistake, which bore emotional and financial consequences for both them and those close to them. Have you ever met anyone like this? A most pious individual, so sure of what is right and wrong, and completely unequipped to handle 'wrongness'. This aunt is one of a great number of people I have come across in my life, whose acute sense of morality allows them to construct a little moral world set utterly apart from the 'secular' and 'sinful' one outside. They are so sure of how things should be that they content themselves with a hermetically sealed environment within which they can endure the arduous wait for their heavenly rewards. Reflections of this 'protected' life can be seen everywhere - among the middle and upper classes, within the frantic rhetoric of 'family values' politics, and most evidently among the devoutly 'religious'. I am fortunate enough to meet weekly with a group of people who represent the alternative to these pitiful characters. My friends are also undeniably 'religious', but in a profoundly different way. They pour their hearts into the age-old attempt to reach for something higher, grasping blindly and hoping that whatever is up there is reaching back down. But somehow, their faith strikes my heart and offers a relevance and desirability that is rarely found these days within the bounds of 'organised religion'. Because their faith is truly like that of a child - not stupid… just not yet informed. Isn't that what faith should be? What is 'faith' if it has all the answers? Church these days, like my unfortunate aunt, seems to have an answer for everything. And they seem so neat and correct, until they are brought out into the harsh light of the real world. 'Don't have sex before marriage' is so much clearer and simpler than 'act responsibly and love others', but only one of them can be of any help when considering how to deal with a pregnant 15-year-old. The 'answer' was simple but useless: she shouldn't have had sex. The question - what should be done in such a world of mistakes and imperfection - is more difficult but so much more important. Why has the church, which deals with the greatest mystery in the world, stopped asking questions? It tells us that God is a trinity. It tells us that there is a Heaven and a Hell. It tells us that the Bible is the perfect and infallible word of God, despite the fact that the scriptures themselves make no such claim. And it tells us how to act. We have a 'road-map for life', according to the popular evangelical phrase. Let me be honest with you - it is the only 'map' that I can pore through for hours and hours without becoming any less lost. It's the most confusing and ambiguous book I have ever read. And God's character is the least obvious thing I have ever pondered. God barely tells us or shows us anything. I can think of a billion questions to ask him. I can pick a billion holes in religious dogmas and doctrines. I can spend weeks naming inconsistencies and contradictions in life, the world, and people. I was born into a Christian home, and my faith journey has been a steady unravelling of everything I believed and held secure. And now, finally, I feel as if I'm getting there. For the first time in my life, I feel as though I can kneel at God's feet and say, 'I'm trying. I'm seeking. I'm ready.' I didn't even realise it, but God had been making me less 'religious' and forced me to realise the true state of our faith: that we are like children. We know nothing. It's hasn't been laid out for us at all. Dogma is simply presumptuous. It tells us a million things about God that God doesn't care to tell us himself. We are inevitably wrong about them all; and after much questioning I think I have finally figured out why. It's because God doesn't want us to waste our energy trying to decode him and package him for others. God doesn't want us to become sure of our faith, because that makes us protective of it. When we have the Truth, we become defenders of the Truth. We persecute those who don't believe it. We start wars. Or we just alienate people who don't live up to the expectations borne of it. And most of all, we are apt to lose our humility. From birth, we feel that we have to know everything. We need quick answers, and when we have them, we are all too willing to pass them on to others. But God is no slave to human wants, and he has a higher and more demanding call for us than to be mere 'defenders of the faith'. He tells us what we need to know, and leaves the rest unknown. He wants us to be like children and inspire others not by spreading answers outward but by directing our questions upward. The church is not here to lead by instruction; it is here to lead by example. We don't have to give them all the answers. We just need them to see us asking the questions.
Daniel Robinson |