DOUBT

 In theatre and often in literature, we’re obsessed with the human condition. It resonates deep within us. Its explanatory power is beyond words. It drives and gives arc to the stories we tell. It connects us.

I thought about this recently as a new religious historian was doing a lot of interviews about his new book on Jesus. More specifically than the broad category of history-writing, I’m fascinated by biography writing because it requires nothing less than empathy.

The act of writing a biography or of putting yourself in the shoes of another is a powerful, powerful exercise. This same act is something that helped to re-awaken Karen Armstrong who left her faith for years. If you ever encounter anyone you dislike or hate, simply begin to write his biography. Try to understand what motivated and motivates him, and the humanity--the very thing that runs in your veins--begins to fill the face of the other with colour . . .

As Lesley Hazleton, an award-winning, British-American writer, did just this while working on a biography of the life of Muhammad, she was amazed that, in Muhammad’s own words, at the moment of his revelatory vision, his first emotions were doubt. He didn’t believe what had happened and thought it was either a hallucination or a possession by an evil spirit that was trying to kill him. Afterwards, upon finding himself still alive, his first impulse was to finish the evil spirit’s job and kill himself and leap off the cliff. He came down that mountain in fear and doubt. And it was precisely this doubt that allowed Hazleton to afford him the integrity of the experience specifically because doubt is essential to faith. Strip doubt, and you’re possibly left with heartless conviction.

Hazleton has given a beautiful TED talk on doubt and her experience writing The First Muslim. You should watch it.

The BEGINNING

(a portion of this next section first appeared here)



A mystery is a problem that encroaches upon itself because the questioner becomes the object of the question. Getting to Mars is a problem. Falling in love is a mystery.

--Gabriel Marcel


I love that quote. It reminds me that getting to Mars is a problem, a science and engineering problem. Mysteries, however, are different. Whether it’s the science of spirituality, the afterlife and consciousness, or how man was birthed on this planet, science tries to solve mysteries, as well. Yet, mysteries may sometimes be more elusive. We don’t really solve mysteries, we resolve them. Solutions of problems may require active work, whereas resolutions often warrant an explanation that dissipates the tension. One of the biggest mysteries today is a simple question: How did we get here?

Often, this question has been housed within a theoscientific debate about evolution. The most recent micro-debate inside this dialogue is the question of Adam and Eve. Scientific evidence is pointing to confounding possibilities that challenge a literal understanding of Adam and Eve as recorded in the Torah and Old Testament.

First, the scientifically matrilineal tracking of our earliest traceable, female ancestor and the scientifically patrilineal tracking of our earliest traceable, male ancestor do not arrive at the same point in time. Science has found two ways to track our ancestors. We can use the DNA in the mitochondria (passed in tact from a mother to her offspring) of cells of a person to connect a person to her mother, then to the mother’s mother, and through this process eventually to the mother of all humans, a woman we will call mitochondrial Eve. Science dates this woman to about 200,000 years ago. There is another group of genetic anthropologists that use markers on the Y-chromosome (since it is passed in tact from father to son) to trace our patrilineal heritage to the first man, our forefather, someone we will call Y-chromosomal Adam. Science roughly dates this person living between 142,000 or 60,000 years ago, depending on which measurement you use.

So our first conundrum is that science has inferred an Adam and an Eve.

There’s only one problem.

They lived at least 60,000 years apart.


However, this doesn’t have to be a contradiction to the Adam and Eve story, yet, since mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam only represent the most recent common ancestors (MRCA) of living humans through unbroken lines. The emphasis on unbroken lines is important because it’s possible we have an earlier male ancestor who had sons and somewhere along the way, one generation of sons had no male children to pass his Y-chromosomal DNA intact to someone living today. The same could be true of mitochondrial Eve and her daughter’s daughters. Additionally, the age of Y-chromosomal Adam can change if increased Y-chromosomal sampling uncovers new, very different Y-chromosomes or Y-chromosomes with very different mutations requiring an older MRCA.

So, that may not be a problem, but what happens when you pick a couple that lived together, say 140,000 years ago, and name them our progenitors? That couple could not have produced all contemporary human beings on their own. Scientists say that we should have less genetic diversity than we actually have, if we came from only two people. The genetic diversity, today, leads scientists to infer that all contemporary humans probably came from a small group of first humans (around 10,000) in order to display the genetic diversity that we do.

The June 2011 issue of Christianity Today contained an article, “The Search for the Historical Adam” about this controversy. NPR also wrote a story on this topic, seemingly presenting only two sides. Since then there have been many responses and blogs to these stories which highlight the preponderance of complex and nuanced views in between the extremes.

Some people like Tim Keller, C. John Collins, and an editorial writer in Christianity Today, believe that if there is no historical Adam, then the gospel doesn’t exist or make sense. Though David Lose disagrees, I love a diversity of views. What has bothered me more is the number of men such as former and current seminary professors John Walton, Pete Enns, Bruce Waltke, and Tremper Longman III, who all resigned or were fired because of their interpretation of the Bible and Genesis 1-3. Karl Giberson, a former Physics professor at Eastern Nazarene College experienced a similar situation for his views, and Calvin college professor John Schneider took early retirement due to controversy related to his views on the lack of a historical Adam or Eve.

Doubt has many roles. Even if a scientist, in one instance, uses doubt to cast a shadow on a particular theory or another person’s conclusion, still, fundamental to science and the scientific method as it is practiced today, is not to sit comfortably in doubt, but to seek answers to questions, to uncover answers to doubts, to discover answers to conundrums. Faith is different, of course. So the firings and retirements and calls of “heretic” scare me. We sometimes forget that God is mystery and a life of faith is one that is lived in the tension of never fully knowing. We often do a disservice in our faith communities when we use a scientific approach, regarding answers, in issues of faith.


I was watching a Christian documentary called “Furious Love” which contained an interview of Dutch pastor/missionary Jan Sjoerd Pasterkamp who quoted a Dutch church historian as saying “We have dozens of Protestant denominations and Christian groups because, to the Dutch person, truth is more important than unity.” By truth he meant dogmatic views and doctrine, or more importantly “my” interpretation of scriptures. And I admit it’s hard; we’re not just divided about doctrinal issues, but we’re even divided about what is fundamental to being a Christian, Jew, or Muslim. That’s why people like Rob Bell can write a book like “Love Wins” and be labeled a non-Christian. Of course this dividing truth is the factual, scientific kind of truth because the truth to which the Judeo-Christian tradition points is not factual, scientific truth but transformative truth. In that way the truth of faith is love. So you can be divided and confused about scientific knowledge and yet have unity based on a different kind of knowledge—love.

I’ve experienced that science and faith have a commonality: what you believe is not as important as how you believe. There are climate scientists who do not believe global warming is caused by man. Though they are in the vast minority, they are scientists not because of what they believe, but rather because of how they believe or practice. They arrive at their conclusions based on the scientific method and their concluding judgment. Likewise, though in the minority, there are atheist scientists who do not support the theory of evolution. It’s not their belief that makes them scientists. No, they are scientists because they use the scientific method and judgment in arriving at their belief.

Faith is similar. A life of faith is not so much a set of beliefs. Rather, faith is the transformative experience that opens you up to belief. Faith isn’t really believing the right things, as it is more about an experience that allows you to breathe and believe in the right way—a belief predicated on love. Faith is the love-forming experience that allows you to believe and doubt in the aftermath of that experience. In this way, Peter Rollins would say that orthodoxy is (mis)understood no longer as right (ortho) belief (doxy), but, read from right to left, now as “believing in the right way.”

Though scientists may accuse another scientist of being a pseudo-scientist, in my small experience, such accusations tend to happen less in science than in faith. As long as you can defend your view, you’re still a scientist; you simply disagree, even if it is within a heated debate. What I long for is more of the same in faith circles. If faith is predicated on love, and unity is one aspect of love, we are failing in the love department. In my faith communities, I’ve seen growing unity across linguistic, national, and sociocultural differences, but where is the unity across theological differences? Are we not called to that, in love? Or in faith, is what you believe more important than how you believe?

As much as I describe faith a certain way theoretically, I am fully cognizant that I am simultaneously trying to push the practice of faith in that direction, for us to realize it as it is. Science seeks understanding. However, to use a word Brian McLaren coined, I long for the days when people of faith linger in mysteries instead of answers we don’t have and, in unity, seek “wonderstanding.”

LIVING QUESTIONS IN COMMUNITY

I saw this title (Living Questions in Community) in a book I’m reading, though I haven’t read that chapter yet. But I know a bit what he’s getting at. One of my book clubs read a book called “Love Wins” by Rob Bell. It’s supposed to be a controversial book in Western Christian circles because the pastor questions the doctrine of hell or the dominant interpretation of it. His questions and his current understanding of the answers to those questions have upset a lot of people. He’s being called a universalist (which Universalist/Unitarians like), a blasphemer, a heretic, etc. So I’ve been watching somewhat, and yet completely fascinated.


What’s fascinating is not that he’s saying anything new (he’s not), but many of the people in Western Christianity aren’t exposed to the wide diversity of Christian thought and perspectives because only certain dominant ones are presented. Most people who see the entire spectrum are professors or seminarians, but not lay people. So what’s fascinating is that there is a man who wrote a set of books called “The Chronicles of Narnia.” He was a friend of J.R. Tolkien and his name is C. S. Lewis. Now C. S. Lewis is rather interesting to me because he is quoted by a lot of people in mainstream Christianity or who promote the dominant versions of it. Because of this, I was never eager to read him because I pretty much knew what he would say (I’ve read fiction works by him). So I decided to read him last year, and I was glad I did. He’s very different than I thought, and he thinks a lot of unconventional things, one among them is his understanding of hell. Lewis’s understanding of hell is very similar to Bell’s but Lewis never received (and doesn’t receive) a backlash like Bell received. That’s fascinating to me. It’s fascinating to me that people quote Lewis in some passages but ignore other parts of the same work or other works in which he may something quite controversial (to dominant forms of Western Christianity).

Now I don’t believe you can only quote someone if you agree with everything they said. That’s not a good policy. But I do think you should only quote someone if you agree with everything they said that is central to who they were and if the centrality of her message births the passage you’re quoting. Let me give an example. There have been a few conservative news commentators who have quoted Martin Luther King Jr. or have said they support his dream; however, at the same time they supported the war in Iraq. Now this is complete conjecture, but I’m going to make an educated conjecture. I think it’s quite fair to say that Martin Luther King Jr. would have opposed the war in Iraq giving his writings, his speeches, even his opposition to the Vietnam War. In fact, the strange thing about supporting part of his message (like the “Dream” speech) is that the dream speech is completely connected to his views about going to war in Vietnam, and I posit, Iraq, as well. Martin Luther King Jr. was a peace man, and he was a man who practiced the way of love. It was from that sensibility, and even more, that way of life that the “I have a dream” speech flowed and from that same understanding that I believe he would have opposed the war in Iraq (and probably Afghanistan).

So those occurrences in the news reminded me that I left out one characteristic about a church I would create or found. I want a place that understands how to live questions in community, a church with questions. I have thought about what that looks like. At first I thought it would be nice to have a board of judges who would review cases in which understandings of God would be challenged and that would make decisions on doctrinal amendments or clarifications (like the constitution; this process happens clumsily and inadvertently in religious groups like the Mormons). Such a board reminds me of the Supreme Court, but with the potential for abuse it reminded me of the Spanish Inquisition.

The main point is that some people have said that I am against institutions. That’s not true. I have worked to institutionalize good movements. That’s our hope. You start or join a social movement that seeks to create change to old institutions. Then one day the social movement is institutionalized and becomes the new institution. The new institution is celebrated because it is an improvement to the old institution. The new institution corrects the wrongs of the previous institution. But then what happens? Well, the new institution hasn’t arrived itself. But it thinks it has. So gradually it becomes more and more resistant to change, to the change that it initially institutionalized; thus, it becomes like the very institution it replaced, not in content but in how it manages the content, allows thought, and decides rules and doctrine. I wonder if you see what I’m saying.

I’m deathly afraid of this happening to me, that I grow up and run some organization or group that I started or that corrected or solved a problem in society. Then one day people in my organization want to make it better but I resist it and then I become the very person I used to fight against, but now, in a new generation. I saw this when I was a teacher at my innovative school, and I hated it. I hated that process, and I didn’t understand why it happens. I wonder if it has to do with the increasing distance that happens with institutionalization. One loses one’s “feet on the ground.” The ground perspective is always crucial.

So my dream is a system in which social movements become institutions that continue to meld and mold according to corrective social movements that show where the institution is lacking. Instead new institution after new institution, I want an ever-changing, never-complacent institution that continually births, promotes, educates, and questions itself through social movements and then answers, incorporates, and grows with those social movements birthing a new stage for a higher point of awareness and consciousness. That’s my hope.

Sometimes people think they you remain conservative is to cling to the message (the content) of the social movement that became institutionalized. In reality, to be conservative in the truest sense of the word (conserving the spirit of the institutionalized social movement) you must be willing to make the resulting institution better and respectfully question the new place you are at. In other words, you conserve the spirit of the movement; you remain faithful by betraying it, questioning it. It’s the fidelity of betrayal all over again. That’s my hope.

CORRECTIONS

I forgot that when I send these updates people often see inaccuracies with what I write, take offense or issue, or don’t like it. Now this isn’t the case with every remark I remember below. But since I made the marks publicly I want to correct them publicly.
Last update I wrote this top 10:

10 Reasons You Know You’re Serving the Homeless in the United States

10. When serving a plate of food, a homeless man says to you “Would YOU eat that?”

9. When offering food to a homeless, hungry man he says to you “Is it cold? I don’t eat cold food.”

8. When offering salad to a homeless woman, she says “No crunchy pieces. Only salad with no croutons.”

7. When offering salad to a homeless person, he says “I don’t eat salad.”

6. A homeless man looks at the food I’m offering him and says, “Hey, even homeless people have standards! You know what I mean?”

5. A homeless man sees you without a phone and offers you one of his two cell phones.

4. A homeless woman in a soup kitchen turns down your Moroccan chicken soup saying, “No, thanks. I’m a vegetarian.”

3. A homeless person offers you a job.

2. A homeless man pats his tummy and says to you “I’ve decided I need to lose a few pounds.”

1. A homeless man complains about rising prices and backs it up by showing you his energy bills.


Now someone pointed out that it’s offensive or seemingly offensive. In fact at least one of the readers was homeless for a while and it’s not a good place to be. I want to acknowledge the plight of homelessness in the U.S. and the often subtle bias against them that shows up in our actions in conscious and subconscious ways. This was not meant to poke fun at homeless people. I didn’t make up any of the items. They’re all true. And yet they are things that I can smile and laugh about with homeless people (not at them). I took each item from true happenings between homeless people and me. They each had names, though, I didn’t name them. For instance, one man, my first homeless friend in DC, really did offer me a cell phone. I’ve really been shown bills. True story, comedy-filled, but true. I think the funniest aspects of life are true. It’s like truth is somehow embedded into the fabric of that mysterious quality that makes us smile and laugh. And that is what is in these stories.

Secondly, someone pointed out that they have experienced this abroad. My friend experienced it abroad and this does happen outside the U.S. The point isn’t so much that it is a US phenomenon, but it’s a phenomenon that happens in places that are relatively more affluent or wealthy than other places. In other words, in any situation in which homeless people are steadily or regularly receiving food through whatever source, they have an option of being particular or picky. This can happen in developed or developing countries. And I was highlighting the cases I experienced in D.C. However, I have yet to experience this in a region of hyper-dire need and hunger, seeing people reject my food due to taste, for instance. This may happen but it’s outside my experience.

Next, someone wrote to explain to me that the Jewish prisoners at the camp in Terezin did not sing Verdi’s requiem because they somehow believed Jesus was God or were converting to Christianity. I asked some others about this to see if this is the message others received. So far, I think only one person seemed to have sensed this in the words I wrote, so I hope it was just one. My point was that the tension was beautiful—the tension of a group of Jewish prisoners singing a Catholic mass and the greater tension of the prisoners singing a mass for the dead in order to both inspire and retain life. I find life doesn’t exist without tensions. If we see none, it’s probably because we’re not yet awake.

I don’t remember all the comments I was to correct from the various response emails, but I do remember one last one deals with sharing what others say. I’ve shared what many people said about me anonymously, never with any problems. But an anonymous story breaks fiduciary trust (confidence) according to some or one. So please excuse me for sharing anything you might have said about me in an email to a few people. Please feel free not to share with me answers to questions such as when I ask “what do you think I want.” I don’t interpret anonymous stories as breaking trust so that was probably the difference in ethical behavior there. My guess is that the feeling of betrayal committed by me is worsened if the story I share is one that is critical of me (making the person feel bad) versus a story when someone is praising me (I don’t think every story would elicit a response).

Lastly, someone asked why I would not have more questions or fight more when told he was not into God anymore. My guess is that my point in the last update was completely missed. So to repeat, I said something like this. It is evident more and more to me that there is an undercurrent of atheism that runs central to the Judeo-Christian tradition. There is a dual tradition of the priest (who works in the service of God) and the prophet (who speaks out for God against God (the god being served by the people)). There is a strong tradition of religious people who fall into rituals of serving God in their image rather than one greater than their conception. And so a multitude of voices (usually a prophet) usually speak out revealing glimpses of a greater understanding. Through the arc of the Torah and New Testament Bible one can find a pattern of people coming into a deeper understanding of God and trading in old images of God for better ones. You can see this developmental understanding of God through the trajectory of the Bible regarding people’s understanding of God’s uniqueness, God’s agency, God’s character, etc. This list goes on. This is a process I, myself, have engaged in throughout my life whether I knew it or not. And I still do it today. It occurred with Jesus’s disciples after he was crucified, with the Christian church through Luther and Calvin, with the church during the movement from slavery to abolition, etc.
So it is evident then that we can engage in certain dialogues that, though seemingly subversive, lead us into a deeper meaning such as

“God, rid me of God” Peter Rollins
“Forsaking God for the sake of God” Meister Ekhart
“Before God and with God we live without God.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer

It is always difficult to stuff ideas and lessons that have taken years to learn or ideas I’ve picked up from others and share them in a short email or blog, but think of it like this. I’m not surprised when a friend has left the faith or questions God. First, the act of questioning God and this crazy world is a very godly act, one I feel is desired by the God of Judeo-Christian tradition. Think of the one name that was given to the people who would be God’s chosen people (remember; they were chosen not at the exclusion of others [old understanding], but chosen to be a blessing, for the inclusion of others—one example of a developmental understanding through the arc of the stories of the people of faith)—Israel. The one, singular, defining name given to the people of God means “wrestles with God. . .” Really? Wrestles with God? Not holy or sanctified or righteous or good or perfect or better-than-you or best or anything else that is perfect? Really? Really. It seems to be the nature of God to allow the tension that is humanity to find beauty in the mess, the quagmire of questions.

The story of Job is probably the oldest dated writing of the Torah and Bible. In the story a man named Job loses everything (business, money, etc.) and his friends come around to comfort him with. Job has even lost his children; his wife tells him to curse God and die. His friends come one by one and reason with him. They tell him this and that (for example, “you must have committed some sin in order to be dealt a blow like this”). The perfect cookie-cutter answers, given to me by church people for why God was happy with Job and unhappy with the visiting friends, never made sense to me. The friends said reasonable things (according to some wisdom). Job just struggled and questioned God. And therein lies the answer. The friends offered . . . theology. Theology isn’t bad in and of itself. It’s quite natural in the after math of the event of God to have thoughts about what happened. We form beliefs. But it’s what happens when those provisional, inadequate thoughts take the place of final authority that a problem arises. And here Job didn’t deal with theology. He wrestled with God. He questioned, he pleaded his case. And I honestly think, at the end of the story, when God shows up in a huge whirlwind and asks all these impossible questions about “Who put the stars in the heaven? And who put the sun in the sky?” God doesn’t answer Job’s questions because it’s not about the set answers or understanding or . . . theology. It’s not central. Rather, it’s about a conversation and the growth that happens in that engagement with God. God then honors Job and not his friends because Job didn’t cling to theology; Job clung to God by wrestling with God (just like the name Israel would come to mean when given as a new name to Jacob). It’s the same reason David was so close to God. David wasn’t close to God because he felt close to God all the time. No; he was close to God because even when he felt distant from God he expressed his feelings of distance directly to God thereby maintaining the closeness and connectedness even in the center of feelings of isolation (I may have to reread that a few times to let that sink in). He struggled.

And the most mature of us realizes that our images or pictures of our God are provisional. That’s why we trade them up. That’s why when I question God I realize and understand that I’m never questioning God but I’m questioning my understanding of God. So when someone becomes an atheist, I’ve learned that they are not rejecting God but they are rejecting their understanding of God. And if that is the definition of atheism then I’m a type of Christian atheist because I reject my understanding of God all the time as I learn to hold a better and more accurate (closer to who God actually is) image of the increasing mystery that is God.

So in a sense because I understand the tensions, the wound, the rupture that is in the scripture (a recent book called the “Encyclopedia of Biblical Difficulties” tries to resolve every single problem; unfortunately it creates more problems than it solves due to the inadequacy of the unsatisfactory answers), I understand that at the same time I name God, I must engage in a process of de-naming God so as not to create a conceptual idol (think of the contrast between “our father who art in heaven”—the familiarity of a dad to “Hallowed be they name”—actually God’s not like a dad, he’s also wholly other). Does that make sense? So fundamentalism can be looked at as a particular way to believe rather than referring to the content of beliefs.

Fundamentalism can be said to be a particular way of believing such that you exclude all other people who believe differently in accordance to the amount that their beliefs differ than yours. Rather, I try (key word is try, I also fail) to include everyone especially those that differ the most from what I believe understanding the belief isn’t central. To put it another way, fundamentalism is believing in what you believe. Because I know the current picture I have of God is wrong (though I don’t know what will improve in the future), I, rather, disbelieve in what I believe. I love that, and I thank Rollins for that thought. It’s so true.

So no, I don’t get mad at a friend becoming an atheist. I understand many of those friends were driven there by reinforced hurtful images of God manifested in us. Rather, I try to love those especially and increasingly in correspondence to how much the beliefs of others differ from me.

FAITH

I recently held a doubt night with a group of men I was in charge of helping to lead. They wanted to discuss the topic and I was to facilitate the discussion on doubts. I started a few weeks earlier and had them write down all their doubts about God, Christ, religion, this life, this world. They looked something like this.

I don’t get the Trinity. Is it even real?
How can God have done all those miracles in old times but I don’t see any now?

To this. . .

If it’s as it says in the Bible, how come scientific evidence points to the earth being much older than how I read Genesis through the appearance of Christ in the New Testament?

If evolution is wrong, why is there scientific evidence pointing towards the probability of evolution?

And this. . .

How can a Good God send people to hell?
Why doesn’t God step in and stop the suffering in this world—the violence, wars, diseases, natural disasters, hate, etc.? Why? It doesn’t make sense. What kind of God is that?

To this. . .

Why did my aunt die? She was a good woman, and she died. Why?
Why would she leave me if I gave her everything? Where is the God in that?
Will I ever find a job?

So we sat down and I prepared some worksheets to allow them to work through some thoughts and study on their own, then in small groups, then in a bigger group and then altogether as one group. It was interesting especially because the previous meeting I was preceded by a facilitator (famous guy who runs a large church out of Seattle) who argued that it was important to have a right belief in order to have truth faith.

Well, you know me . . . not that I like to challenge, but . . . perhaps it comes naturally. We explored the role of doubt and we found that doubt was central. Far from being something that was removed by faith, it was mixed with faith, necessitated faith and wasn’t diminished in the presence of it. We first looked at the refrigerator.

If I have an unreasonable phobia preventing me from opening refrigerators I seek counseling to get help because it prevents me from eating and I go out a lot (thankfully I have roommate). Bobby on the other hand, has no fear of opening the refrigerator. Now, does it take courage for me to open the refrigerator? For me, the person with the phobia? Everyone agreed it did. Does it take courage for Bobby to open it? People thought for a moment (they were in small groups), but everyone agreed it really took no courage for Bobby to open the refrigerator. I asked them (through the worksheet to come up with a definition of courage using the word fear). They had different versions, but the definition was something like “courage isn’t the absence of fear; courage is the triumph over fear.” Later on in the worksheet I had them write an analogous definition of faith using the word doubt. Faith isn’t the absence of doubt; it’s the triumph over doubt. It’s not the best definition, but it works. :-)
We then talked about relationships. I gave an example of a couple, a man and a woman, who were thoroughly and utterly convinced and convicted that they were perfect for each other in every way and would have a long and lasting marriage. In the context of their conviction and belief, there was no decision to be made at all. It was clear; they needed to continue their loving by being married. Now I mentioned another couple. Imagine a second couple. This couple facing family opposition, various challenges, and is plagued by an uncertainty future not sure of where they will be or if this will work out in the end. Now it’s here that a real decision has to be made. Far from doubt taking away the chance for faith, doubt is the very place and sacred site where faith is forged.

It’s in this situation that the couple must decide to 1) not get married or 2) go forward and get married. Now I have sympathy for people who fall into #1 because it’s a hard decision and scary. I understand, though (for a good woman) I may not have chosen that option. But I admire and am more like people in #2. Those are they who took a chance in the context of doubt and allowed faith to be forged (assuming it was a relationship in which faith was implicit, infused, and inspired and which inspired faith in all those around them). That’s a real decision, that’s real faith. And it’s hard to find that these days.

Strangely but honestly enough, many of the guys disagreed when I asked the question of which situation requires a decision. Some said both situations, both couples had to make a decision. It was hard for them to understand the subtle point of what I was suggesting, that a real decision (and therefore a real choice and therefore real faith and therefore real LOVE) was only required in the second. A REAL decision that required faith.

I’ve been working on faith for a bit, but it’s been working on me for much longer.