certainty Archives - Made SacredMade Sacred

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

Why are we so defensive on God’s behalf?

Why do we become so frightened of hard questions?

Do we think the Bible asks us to defend God’s character, or is it deeper than that?

Not all of the time, but all of us do harbor a bit of the recurring agnostic inside. A tiny voice that says, what if it isn’t true?

What will become of me if it isn’t true?

This flicker of fear lingers so insidiously that when someone asks a questions to which we don’t know the answer, when someone expresses a doubt we ourselves have thought, we tend to lash out, to push away, to shame.

If this piece of what I believe turns out not to be true, perhaps none of it is true.

Is God so fragile?

Is the God who flung the stars into space, who has the power to overcome sin and death so uncertain that one piece of the puzzle can bring the entire edifice crashing down?

Is our God a house of cards?

If your God is a house of cards, you need a new God.

You need a God who is big enough to cradle all our questions, deep enough to hold all our doubts.

You need the God who shows His power through the universe we see, who reveals Himself through His Son in Scripture, who speaks to us through His Spirit within us.

When you know this God, you can let go of your need to defend. You can rest easy with, even welcome the doubts and questions of others.

When you are safe and secure in the LORD Almighty, you become a place for others to find rest. You become a safe place where people can sit with their questions and doubts without feeling shamed or guilty.

What if we as a Church became a place where people could question and yet trust, where people could doubt and yet worship, where people could wonder and yet love.

What if we welcomed the not-so-sure rather than driving them away?

What if we could be comfortable with the hard spaces, acknowledging that not everything has an answer we can know right now?

It starts with you and with me. Can we let go of our fear and trust that our faith is not a house of cards?

Imagine a church where people could worship even when they don’t have it all figured out.

Imagine a church where people could love and serve even in the times when they aren’t quite sure about it all.

Imagine a church full of people like…

Well, full of people like us.

There sometimes comes into the heart of all of us a desire to be sure. A sudden longing for certainty about that which we profess to believe.

We wish to be able to say I believe with no niggling of doubt that causes us to draw back from the ringing shout we had wanted to pronounce.

Doubt is that persistent shadow that startles us now and again just when we’d thought we’d left it behind for good. It is that small voice that sometimes lingers and sometimes only whispers and is gone.

We want it to disappear for always. We long to be certain, to be troubled no longer by questions.

Yet I am beginning to discover that certainty is not faith. Certainty is based on evidence, on proof, on concrete and unassailable fact. Faith, however, is relationship. It is risk and it is vulnerability.

Certainty is about control, about predicting behavior. Faith is a gift from me to you, a gift of myself placed into your hands.

I have read about certainty and faith in the context of a marriage. Certainty in marriage is secretly reading all of your spouse’s emails and texts and journals. Certainty in marriage is hiring a detective to follow your spouse to be sure he is being faithful. Certainty in marriage is tapping the phones to be sure of the trustworthiness of your spouse.

Faith in marriage is a gift. It is an offering of myself, of my vulnerability and my heart, to you as one whom I believe to be faithful.

When I trust you, I take a little piece of myself…and put it into your hands. And then I’m vulnerable. Then you respond, and I find out whether you are trustworthy…I give you the gift of my trust, and you give me the gift of your faithfulness. ~ John Ortberg in Faith and Doubt

Perhaps, after all, certainty is not what we truly long for.

If by it (the intellect) we could prove there is a God, it would be of small avail indeed. We must see Him and know Him. ~ George MacDonald in The Curate’s Awakening

Perhaps, after all, certainty is not such a prize to be pursued. Perhaps, after all, God is more pleased with the vulnerable gift of faith than He is by the chasing after an elusive proof of His existence.

May He be pleased by my trust.

Art Credit: Photographs of light by Kirk Sewell

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

Why are we so defensive on God’s behalf?

Why do we become so frightened of hard questions?

Do we think the Bible asks us to defend God’s character, or is it deeper than that?

Not all of the time, but all of us do harbor a bit of the recurring agnostic inside. A tiny voice that says, what if it isn’t true?

What will become of me if it isn’t true?

This flicker of fear lingers so insidiously that when someone asks a questions to which we don’t know the answer, when someone expresses a doubt we ourselves have thought, we tend to lash out, to push away, to shame.

If this piece of what I believe turns out not to be true, perhaps none of it is true.

Is God so fragile?

Is the God who flung the stars into space, who has the power to overcome sin and death so uncertain that one piece of the puzzle can bring the entire edifice crashing down?

Is our God a house of cards?

If your God is a house of cards, you need a new God.

You need a God who is big enough to cradle all our questions, deep enough to hold all our doubts.

You need the God who shows His power through the universe we see, who reveals Himself through His Son in Scripture, who speaks to us through His Spirit within us.

When you know this God, you can let go of your need to defend. You can rest easy with, even welcome the doubts and questions of others.

When you are safe and secure in the LORD Almighty, you become a place for others to find rest. You become a safe place where people can sit with their questions and doubts without feeling shamed or guilty.

What if we as a Church became a place where people could question and yet trust, where people could doubt and yet worship, where people could wonder and yet love.

What if we welcomed the not-so-sure rather than driving them away?

What if we could be comfortable with the hard spaces, acknowledging that not everything has an answer we can know right now?

It starts with you and with me. Can we let go of our fear and trust that our faith is not a house of cards?

Imagine a church where people could worship even when they don’t have it all figured out.

Imagine a church where people could love and serve even in the times when they aren’t quite sure about it all.

Imagine a church full of people like…

Well, full of people like us.

There sometimes comes into the heart of all of us a desire to be sure. A sudden longing for certainty about that which we profess to believe.

We wish to be able to say I believe with no niggling of doubt that causes us to draw back from the ringing shout we had wanted to pronounce.

Doubt is that persistent shadow that startles us now and again just when we’d thought we’d left it behind for good. It is that small voice that sometimes lingers and sometimes only whispers and is gone.

We want it to disappear for always. We long to be certain, to be troubled no longer by questions.

Yet I am beginning to discover that certainty is not faith. Certainty is based on evidence, on proof, on concrete and unassailable fact. Faith, however, is relationship. It is risk and it is vulnerability.

Certainty is about control, about predicting behavior. Faith is a gift from me to you, a gift of myself placed into your hands.

Faith in marriage is a gift. It is an offering of myself, of my vulnerability and my heart, to you as one whom I believe to be faithful.

When I trust you, I take a little piece of myself…and put it into your hands. And then I’m vulnerable. Then you respond, and I find out whether you are trustworthy…I give you the gift of my trust, and you give me the gift of your faithfulness. ~ John Ortberg in Faith and Doubt

Perhaps, after all, certainty is not what we truly long for.

If by it (the intellect) we could prove there is a God, it would be of small avail indeed. We must see Him and know Him. ~ George MacDonald in The Curate’s Awakening

Perhaps, after all, certainty is not such a prize to be pursued. Perhaps, after all, God is more pleased with the vulnerable gift of faith than He is by the chasing after an elusive proof of His existence.

May He be pleased by my trust.