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This Grey Faith: Prayer, Truth, The Bible, And Other Muddy Paths For Christian Pilgrims

 

I grew-up, as a child knowing Jesus.

For as long as I can remember, I knew God made me, that He loved me, and that He sent His son to die for my sins.

For those early years of my life, these truths were massive, and awe-inspiring, and comforting.

They were also vividly, starkly black and white.

My Christian beliefs were, it seemed for many years; clear, immutable, and beyond questioning.

It wasn’t until my teenage years, that I began, not only to ask tougher questions, but to grow weary of simple answers.

You see, not only was I taught these were unquestionable truths, but also taught that there was danger in the questioning itself.

I didn’t just get frustrated with the easy absolutes that I received from those representing God, I saw those absolutes as reasons that God wasn’t real, or wasn’t worth following if He was that simply and easily contained. “How could God,” I wondered, “be so small?”

“The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it.”, would be a familiar refrain I would overhear from Christians, when encountering conflict and questions.

And the more I would hear it, the greater and louder the response would rise-up within me: “Well, wait… what does it say?”.

Later, when I entered seminary, I did so with the singular desire to “know what The Bible says”, so that I could responsibly shepherd others into the right answers; out of the grey and into the black and the white.

And as I walked the road of knowing, the clear path of my childhood religion muddied further.

The Bible it turns out, says a lot of things; about prayer, and creation, and faith, and sin, and salvation, and love, and Heaven, and Hell, and the poor, and the wealthy, and life, and death.

The problem is, no two Christians can agree on everything that it says about everything, let alone millions upon millions of people, who comprise a faith doing so.

So who defines the black and the white? Who determines the Truth?

I’ll contend most of the time, we all think that we do.

We all believe we’ve cracked the code, and that we’ve got the inside scoop, or at least we act like we do.

And we get really comfortable with the idea of the black and the white, and really lazy as a result.

So many Christians effortlessly toss around words like “Truth” and “God’s Word”, as if everyone inherently knows what those things are and mean; as if they’re talking about some measurable, tangible ideas like hot and cold, or height and width.

Often these absolutes are simply conversation-stoppers Christians pull out; words we use to signal that an impasse has been reached.

And Heaven forbid another believer dares to question those answers; to admit the greyness they wrestle with.

It’s as if no one really wants to tap on the house of cards, for fear of the whole thing falling over.

Long ago, I began to reluctantly realize that this Christian journey, while originally sold to me as starkly black and white, was far greyer than most of us, (especially those of us in ministry), really want to admit.

It’s not that absolute Truth doesn’t exist; (I believe that it does), but the real truth about Truth is, is that no one has the market cornered on it. No one owns it in totality, and no one can deny that the grey isn’t there, even in areas of their own certainty.

We’re all seeking Truth, but we can admit to the depth of the questions and the elusiveness of the answers while we do, and we can offer grace to those whose conclusions are muddier than what we’re comfortable admitting.

Now, many decades removed from my childhood, I still believe that God made me, that He loves me, and that He sent His son to die for my sins, and maybe that’s all the black and white, I or any of us really needs.

When it comes to exactly how prayer works, or when to take the Bible literally and when to see it as metaphor, or just how Heaven’s going to be and whether dogs will be there or not, or precisely when Jesus is going to return and how it’ll all go down, well there’s just a lot we really don’t know.

There are real, meaningful, important questions whose answers will continue to evade us, and we’ll all keep asking them over and over, until the moment we see God’s brilliance fully, and all the muddy becomes clear.

Until then; seek the black and white, but embrace the greys.

 

 

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