A Doubt About It – 2

“Our churches need to be safe places for people who wonder and for people who wander.” – Ed Stetzer

Unfortunately, many churches are seemingly the least safe places for “people who wonder.”  As a result, an entire generation of those who wonder about the nature of God, whether God exists at all, and whether religious communities are accurately representing who God is are fleeing churches. What are these folks wondering about that puts them on the outs with church people? Can the firmly held theological certainties of religious people alienate and even repulse people who doubt and wonder about God?  I think so.

To understand this phenomenon, I think we should reflect a little on how many God-believers think and feel about God and how those thoughts and feelings get played out in the lives of churches.  I am regularly struck by how many religious people speak about God with startling sureness – as though God readily lends God’s self to both comprehension and explanation.  The God of many Bible classes and church services is a God without nuance, without paradox, and who can be captured with categorically simplistic explanations.  Those who can’t quite grasp this simplicity are seen at best as unschooled neophytes in need of instruction, and at worst as weak and possibly dangerous unbelievers in need of ostracism. I’ve seen those pitying sidelong looks and heard those dismissively reassuring responses when someone asks, “Does God really care about us?” or “How can God allow that?”  I submit that these sorts of questions may not be coming from the naive or the faithless.  They are likely to come from thoughtful people, wounded people, people who have been exposed to diverse perspectives on life’s meaning, and people who are not well adapted to indoctrination.  Churches are running these folks off in droves.

There are many things needed to address this issue and engage with those questions.  I’d suggest a helpful first step is to apply that old-fashioned, philosophical (and biblical) virtue – humility.  Could we begin by stipulating that if God exists, God by definition is beyond human understanding?  The human mind is not capable of comprehending nor is human language adequate to describe the Ground of All Being.  Act accordingly… especially in church.  In his thought-provoking book, The Bible Tells Me So, Peter Enns says it this way: “… I’m going with mystery as an operative category for talking about God.” So, when we speak of God, we should speak with the deeply-held conviction and open admission that what we don’t know vastly outstrips what we know. Faith is not certainty.  Greater faith is not necessarily about fewer doubts, but about more faithful living.

The God of the Bible is a God of paradox.  Consider just a handful of the basic elements of biblical revelation about God: 

• God is omnipresent, but sometimes God is absent.  Sometimes God shows up.
• God is One.  God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – each a distinctive personality.
• God is immanent. God is transcendent.
• Jesus Christ is fully human. Jesus Christ is fully God.
• God is always the same and never changes. God “repents” of decisions and changes his mind.

Christian scripture is filled with tensions and paradoxes in describing God.  Interestingly, the Bible does not make much effort to resolve those tensions.  It’s as though even the best effort at description of which human language is capable can only get at presenting a set of ideas that make your head spin.

It’s normal and even laudatory to want to understand God more fully. But, the reality is, if my human mind could comprehend God, whatever God I would be comprehending is not the omnipotent, ineffable, all-sufficient, Ground of All Being. It would not be the God who exists beyond and independently of the universe or universes.  It would not be the God who is the reason why there is something rather than nothing at all.

Every now and then, I look into the eyes of a doubter and ask them to describe the God that they don’t think they believe in any more.  When I listen to their descriptions, I hear the faint echoes of glib, oversimplified, cocksure assertions that they’ve heard in church.  I typically tell them that I don’t believe in that God, either.

“Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”

So what can we say about God, about the questions and answers people share in church, and about the key elements of doubt?  More to come…