Sitting In The Mystery
Sitting In The Mystery
Why I no longer care to have all the answers.
When I created this blog I spent a lot of time thinking about what to name it. I didn’t want to be too specific as I knew I wanted to cover a lot of different topics: from spiritual life, relationships, church vision, leadership, and pretty much anything else my weirdly wired brain could come up with. I landed on “Messy Thoughts From Your Messy Pastor” because… well… I am messy. Not necessarily in terms of cleanliness (although my family could probably write a whole blog on that topic… but let’s not talk about that here). I am messy in that I am very much a work in progress as a pastor, a follower of Jesus, a husband, a father… and a person. I am on a journey… and I consider myself blessed to be on that journey with you.
I can remember when I first became a Christian… everything was so black and white. It all had to make sense. I had a simplistic view of faith. If the Bible said it than that was it. No need to dig deeper than that. My faith was one dimensional.
The problem is… one dimensional faith doesn’t hold up. Turns out the Bible is far more nuanced and complex that my black and white faith allowed it to be. There is a reason there are a reported (according to one source I found) 34,000 different Christian denominations in the USA alone. I bet there are more. If the Bible were as black and white as we often assume it is… I would imagine that number would be significantly smaller.
Take something as simple as the creation account found in Genesis 1. My simple faith viewed that whole thing and said “good enough!” 7 literal days. Sure. Why not? Yet… the older I got and the more I studied… I had to admit that it wasn’t as clear as I thought. Something just didn’t add up. What if that story was never meant to be taken literally? Does it really matter?
Not only is the Bible far more complicated that I wanted it to be… but the experiences I kept having challenged my assumptions. I believed we served a loving God who loved creation… that His people in turn would also be loving towards those they encountered. Yet… The world is a violent place. People do unspeakable things to one another… and that includes people who profess to have this same life altering relationship with Jesus that I myself proclaimed. Not to mention the disasters of unspeakable proportions that keep occuring.
Just this week we saw one of the most devastating Earthquakes within recent memory devastate Turkey and Syria… leading (at the time of my writing this) over 11,000 dead and countless homeless. Innocent people, children included, living their lives when out of nowhere… it just ends. Where is the love in that? Where is the justice?
Look, here is the thing. There are countless cliche arguments we could use to sweep all of that under the rug and move on. Christians have become professionals at keeping things the same. Don’t rock the boat! What if instead of excusing the tension… we sit in the mystery that is God? We are finite creatures sitting at the feet of an infinite God… there are things we will not understand. And that is ok. I don’t feel the pressure to make sense of it all.
That doesn’t mean we enter into faith with apathy. Nor does it give us the excuse we need to not think about our faith intellectually. Scripture talks a great deal about the transformation of the mind (Romans 12:1-2). Part of our journey towards Christ-likeness includes disciples like study. We shouldn’t allow the mystery of God to reduce us to stupidity.
Let’s study our faith… but do so in a way that leaves us open to the mystery! I remember something a friend once told me. We should view our faith like palm trees and not like oak trees. Palm trees are designed to bend with the wind… whenever a hurricane hits you always see the news footage of these tall skinny trees bending in the massive winds. Oak trees have a tendency to completely topple over… roots in all. When the storms of life hit… is our faith going to bend with the wind and stay firmly rooted in the ground? Or will the wind completely unroot us… leaving us dying in the rain?
Let’s work towards a flexible faith that finds its nutrients from the God who sustains. Let’s sit in the mystery. If you are wrestling with aspects of your faith… know that you are not alone. One of the fun parts of this mystery is the freedom we have to explore in the ambiguity. It is in these moments of dissonance that we grow.
While I have you, consider donating to IDES as they work with people on the ground in Turkey/Syria as they recover from the devastating events of this week.