Breaking the Silence

Hello all, sorry for the radio silence here! It's the end of the quarter which means papers, tests and other fun stuff. I have a long list of books to read this summer, and I am looking forward to studying what I want to study for at least 3 months, and catch up on some postmodern theological reading.

Here's a question that Jaime has posed to me often, especially as of late. What is it about Evangelicals/Conservatives that bothers me? At first I would reply that I don't have a problem with them, but the problem I have is that they would have a problem with me. Just because I ask "dangerous" questions or come down with some "unorthodox" answers, I must not believe in Jesus. Just because I read him differently or think Paul should be read as dealing with a specific situation and it would be wrong to push the application of that teaching beyond that specific instance. Just because I'm trying to find answers that make sense to me, I must lack faith.

I don't lack faith, I lack certainty and I'm fine with that. That doesn't mean I stop looking for answers, but I find that certainty is often the opposite of faith. We try to grab onto and hold to dogmas that we've made up and call that faith. So it's faithless if we say, "Wait a minute, where did that come from? Maybe we should do away with that."

If we look at the great people of faith in the Bible it wasn't an extreme certainty they had in spite of everything else, instead they trusted that God was good and would provide for them and that was that. (In fact faith was less belief than it was action). Abraham argued with God all the time, and yet today we see the idea of arguing with God as lacking faith. Isn't the willingness to dialogue with someone (be they human or divine) the greatest show of respect? So why can't we have faith that God wants us to argue? Why is certainty the ultimate expression of faith? Isn't moving forward even with doubt or questions the real statement of faith? I don't know where my current questioning and dialoguing with God will lead me, but I trust that it will be someplace good. So I keep moving forward...