The
One of the most pervasive myths about faith is that it requires certainty and rigidity. But this idea doesn’t work all the way down.
Faith isn’t founded on certainty, but on belief in light of uncertainty.
So for example, what am I saying when I say to one of my children “I believe in you!”?
Of course, I do literally believe you exist. That’s a given. But I’m also not actually communicating that notion at all. I’m saying I trust in what you can do.
Full stop.
Now here are some other things I’m not saying.
- I know for a fact that you are about to hit a home run.
- You are always great at all the things — absolute perfection!
- All of the outcomes are predetermined by your greatness.
- I can claim with authority every aspect of your being.
When a parent tells her children that she believes in them, she is making a specific kind of truth claim—not all of the truth claims. Or he is claiming a specific kind of insight into the wealth of truth that is his child.
This is the true foundation of faith: trust.
The Christians
Recently I saw a production of The Christians by Lucas Hnath at the Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis.
The Christians wrestles with the charismatic challenge of being the church as a people with fidelity to the movement of the Holy Spirit and building a physical church with physical people.
Told through the ongoing struggle over whether or not hell exists and the economic forces of megachurch culture, the play attempts to reveal the complexity of wrestling with this interconnected reality of trust in the intangible and trust in the people.
The production was incredible and deeply effecting. And I said afterward, the play itself is exactly what I would have written 10 years ago.
But I wouldn’t write it now.
What the play captures brilliantly is the diversity of thought and the intense confusion of belief. It questions the altruism behind our motivations and breathes deep resonance into the challenge of keeping a church together. It shows the dangerous reality of holding firm to belief when the Spirit of God seems to be pulling us apart.
But the thing it never tries to do is measure the difference in the pain its characters experience or truly wrestle with its most dangerous element: reactionary anger. In sharing the individual pain of its five main characters, it humanizes them all. But it also equalizes them.
The precipitating action of the play is a pastor’s sermon. One in which he speaks to a traditional theological position—but it runs counter to
It is a familiar posture. From Luther’s “Here I stand, I can do no other” to the sincerely-held belief of today’s religious exclusionism, we easily render the drawing and crossing of a line. But then what? What great witness to the certainty of Christ is found in retaliation?
Unfortunately, the play doesn’t wrestle with the narrowness of trust or the hermeneutic which justifies this division.
In this way, it captures our very present.
“Real Christians”
Christians have never had a singular belief, but we’ve made a common confession broad enough to include the wide variety of belief systems.
From the beginning, we’ve fought about what it means to be a “real” Christian. In a way, there’s nothing new with this formulation. But it isn’t a terribly helpful one, either. Most efforts to exclude members of the faithful tend to backfire and create new problems.
But underneath the division is that fundamental tension between the desire for a rigid clarity and the messy reality of belief. That it is far more like that sense of believing in your kids than it is belief that your kids exist.
Belief, at its
What it looks like is community.
Over and over, getting together in a spirit of love to eat, to pray, to learn. With people like us and not like us; those in prison and those free to walk the earth; those who are sick, disabled, poor, immigrant or in any need. This is the divine community.
And this is at the root of how we have continuously defined Christianity.
Our favorite heresy
This struggle isn’t new. From the beginning, Christians have tried to figure out what to do with putting our faith into practice in light of what we believe about God.
The most pervasive heresy, isn’t the one we talk about the most. It isn’t Arianism and it has nothing to do with the nature of Christ.
Our favorite heresy is Donatism: the belief that Christian clergy must be perfect for the sacrament to count.
Donatists believed they couldn’t take communion from anyone they thought wasn’t good enough. Of course, they could choose who was good and who wasn’t.
While this practice was condemned as heresy by Augustine, it is totally our favorite option. He’s too political. I’m gone! or She may cite historical precedent but that just sounds stupid. Real Christians hate those people.
Since the Reformation and its counter-protest, Christians can’t get enough of this self-validation by exclusion. It’s our new crusade to protect the faith in purity, certainty, and fierce divisiveness. It justifies our protection through destruction.
We needn’t wonder why Donatism is so popular. We need to better recognize why it’s so dangerous.
It is dangerous because it deputizes every individual to serve as judge, jury, and executioner serving a selfish and self-authorized faith.
Faith in Practice
If we take seriously what belief truly is, then we must recognize the one thing it can’t do.
It can’t solve unsolvable problems.
In one of the “gotcha” lines in The Christians, the pastor is asked if the need to be tolerant means we have to be intolerant to the intolerant. And he has to say “Yes!”
It comes off as hypocritical, illogical, and immoral. But the question isn’t actually fair! It is a paradox. It presupposes true tolerance is impossible. But it’s even worse in the asking.
Asking this question doesn’t only prove the need for intolerance of a sort. It equalizes it all! Being kicked out of the church becomes equal to walking out. Preaching exclusion becomes the same material as preaching inclusion. In seconds, an open invitation to everyone is treated
Before we’ve blinked we’ve come to allow “welcome!” to mean “get out!”
In such a world, how can we even speak?
This is not the simple manifestation of a literal reading of scripture or the adherence to a historic faith. It is intentional and specific: another front in a war declared on our neighbors.
This divisiveness is exposed as a new invention and the contrivance of a people refusing to see the practice of faith as a necessary part of possessing faith.
Thank God literalism and division isn’t our only option. Nor is it what counts as THE Christian option.
An Imperfect path
A more constructive option is to build community together across divisions and disagreements. It has the authority of scripture and tradition. And more than anything, it has historically and logically been the greater norm for centuries.
Because Christianity isn’t only defined by a belief that God exists or in the saving grace of Christ. It is reflected in how we address the complexity and paradox of life. Not simply with a certainty that we have the right answers. But trusting that everyone, even those with whom we disagree, are graced by God.
Believing in a Christ who can make that happen takes way more guts and faith than the condescending rants of political hacks. It’s actually the harder road to walk. But it’s one my faith compels me to walk because I’ve seen the grace found only on this path.
The grace in the eyes of saints and sinners, imperfectly seeking God and practicing an imperfect faith.