Friday, November 28, 2008
The ultimate answer button
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I just read this article from Relevant. Although it moves in a slightly different direction, it certainly hits upon that inner chaos I tried to explain in my previous post. Favorite quotes:
Whatever our approach to the Bible, wemust concede that God is big enough to handle our curiosity and ourquestions. In fact, God is calling out to us to ask the toughquestions! I often wonder if He doesn’t feel like a frustrated teacher:climbing on desks, shouting through verses of Shakespeare, dying for usto be curious.This is why I think God shows up in the unexpected places and, inversely, is hard to find in the very traditional and typical religious expressions - it keeps us seeking and asking the hard questions. This benediction of St. Francis has been on the surface of my consciousness for a few days now...and I'm almost afraid to continue to pray it, expect I know that I just have to:
Discouraging doubt, discouragingquestions, offering a perfect formula as the answer to all of ourGod-shaped questions simply does not reflect the immensity of the I AM.In fact, I believe it stunts our spiritual growth and places our God,yes our Jesus, in a very unattractive and limited human-size box.
May God bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that we may live deep within our hearts.
May God bless us with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that we may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war, so that we may reach out our hands tocomfort them and turn their pain into joy.
And may God bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in this world, so that we can do what others claim cannot be done.
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1 comment:
I'm not sure I'd ever heard/read that benediction; it is so beautiful.
I love that God makes Himself known in unexpected places and ways, but I'm not sure it's all that fair to discount the ability of "traditional" or "typical religious expressions" to function as similar conduits. After all, what could be more traditional than something like fixed-hour prayer?
I think it's true that many people are becoming weary of traditionally accepted notions of "church" and "religion", and perhaps those things really are on their way out (though after thousands of years, I kind of doubt it), but I am convinced that there remains a massive number of people who are still deeply touched by such traditional experiences.
My point is that we were all made differently and desire to experience God in myriad different ways, but it strikes me as unfair to God to say that certain formats or places are no longer ways in/through which He is welcome to make Himself known to us.
Honestly, most of the time, I'm pretty tired of the church routine, too, but the practice of going is important to me, because there are still Sundays God touches me deeply, though I am not ready or necessarily willing. Attending church, stale as it can seem, is good for my family, because the relationships we can develop there are unique to that place.
But, it doesn't mean I don't look forward to, even long for, deep discussions with friends that allow me to think freely and question God (because who, if not God, can really handle our doubts?) and wrestle with the Truth.
Yeah, sometimes church sucks, and quite frankly a lot of churches are going about things pretty stupidly, but sometimes, if we let it, such traditional modes can be a soft place to land when the questioning sucks, too.
God works in crazy ways, but He can work in tame, predictable ways, too. While acknowledging that He is bigger than our human-size box, we should probably be careful to make sure we allow room for Him to work also in ways that don't require intense doubt or questioning.
Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, that kind of thing. Ebb and flow.
That was much longer than necessary, I'm sorry. Also, I am supremely confident you have had this exact discussion many times before, and heard people smarter than me put this argument together in better ways, and I am equally confident you have a reply ready for everything I've said, so I apologize for the repetition. I'm relatively new to this discussion, at least in such frankness, so I imagine I've some catching up to do.
Good stuff, though, Jesse.
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