This marks my tenth little step along this wandering, wondering path and, though the theologians have winced and the traditionalists have shuddered, they haven’t thrown me out of the Presbyterian Church yet. Labouriously crafting 600 or so words twice a month has given me renewed appreciation for ministers who must write 2,500 word sermons every week.
The process has been a confession of, in old Maclean’s magazine columnist Allan Fotheringham’s immortal phrase, how muddified is my fuzzification.
Have I learned anything? Perhaps it’s a symptom of my generation that I lean to pop culture rather than the great thoughts of Calvin or Augustine. Like one of my wife’s favourite songs by the French chansonnier Jean Gabin, in rough, condensed translation:
All my youth I used to say “I know.”
Only, the more I sought the less I knew.
Fifty [and a few more] chimes have rung on the clock
And I am still at the window, watching, asking.
Now, I know. I know that we never know.
That’s all I know … but that I know!
It’s better in French, but you get the idea.
Then there’s Father Flynn in the Meryl Streep movie Doubt.
“Doubt,” he preached in his homily, “can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty.”
Maybe Jude, Jesus’ half-brother according to some, had me in mind when he wrote: “But you, beloved, build yourselves up on your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God; wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And convince some, who doubt.” Another translation is more comforting: “Be merciful to those who doubt.”
There’s part of the challenge faced by those who enter a church, seeking … something. Conflicting translations, centuries of interpretation and re-interpretation, millions of commentaries. How to find a path through all that stuff?
Paul, I think, understood. “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.” Of course, he wrote that to the always troublesome Corinthians. The list of his aggravations with them strikes uncomfortably close to home.
Troublesome and discomforting may not always be bad things. I have always found solace and identity in this quote from the controversial now-retired Episcopalian bishop, John Spong, who questioned many of the foundational tenets of what he called “literal” Christian interpretation.
“When my being is enhanced by love, called to a new reality by love, introduced through love to limitless freedom, then I believe that I have touched that which is timeless, eternal and real. My confidence in eternal life, life beyond the limits of finitude and death, is found in that experience, and my doorway into that experience is still the one who, for me, seems to have embodied it, Jesus whom I call Christ.”
If some of the pillars of my faith often wobble, the fabric of an eternal God of grace remains strong. And the Presbyterian Church in Canada’s Living Faith is helpful when the doubt clouds roll in. “Questioning may be a sign of growth. It may also be disobedience: we must be honest with ourselves. Since we are to love God with our minds, as well as our hearts, the working through of doubt is part of our growth in faith.”
And this I know. That, maybe like you, I search honestly with reverence and awe, but often feebly, for something that I too seldom sense near. This opportunity offered by the Presbyterian Record has provided both the time and the necessity to reflect. My faith in a God whose grace is a gift has been strengthened and I have become more appreciative of His extravagant miracles that surround us and more willing to offer myself in prayer.
In their wisdom, the Record editors have offered the opportunity to continue this series. The attentive reader will notice a space for comments at the bottom of this page and I invite, indeed implore you to share your experience and wisdom, blaze a trail to the right track, or slap me around theologically.
À la prochaine.
