Faith Without Understanding

I can't think of a good subtitle.

I sat in Vicki’s living room with her and four other spiritual siblings. We were discussing how pain and trauma have shaped our spirituality. After a couple people shared, Vicki turned to me and asked, with some hesitancy in her voice, “And what about you? You’ve gone through more trauma than any of us.”

I let the question hang in the air for a bit, not sure how to answer. This group was safe; I did not fear their judgment. But neither did I want to steal the focus by saying too much. This was a group discussion, not an individual counseling session.

So I kept it honest, but brief:

“The biggest change is that I am less confident that I understand God or His ways. I don’t doubt God’s existence; but I doubt my comprehension of God. My theology is more tentative. And yet, I feel like I am closer to Him than I was before Joe’ s death”.

The answer surprised me. It put words to feelings that I had been subconsciously wrestling with. And perhaps this is a good place to expand upon those words.

My spiritual birth and upbringing were in a church and tradition that emphasized correct belief and correct living. I have written before about how Joe’s death yanked out the last trace of one spiritually poisonous idea: that we earn God’s favor by our choices and work.

But another spiritual dynamic from my formative church tradition was the idea that you could have certainty about most any theological issue. Uncertainty may not be a sin, but it is a fault, or at least a grave weakness. Uncertainty about theology or how to interpret a scriptural passage meant you simply did not study hard enough or believe deeply enough.

Going to a fundamentalist Bible College only reinforced this understanding in my mind. The seminary I attended after college was not fundamentalist, but reinforced the idea just as much, for almost all my professors were reformed. In my experience, few Christian traditions overestimate their ability to understand God and His ways than Calvinism. This faculty boasted many of the leading lights in evangelical theology. Getting a master’s degree in systematic theology from these professors did not help me to be intellectually humble.

To be frank, serving for many decades as a pastor also reinforced the need for certitude. Most people expect to hear answers from a pastor, not questions. And it felt good to remember my years of schooling and survey my office full of books and to think, “yes, I have the answers. I know Greek and Hebrew! I’ve read all the commentaries and the best theology books! I know the difference between imputation and justification, and between Pelagianism and Manicheism! I have the answers!”

But I don’t. I have some answers, of course. If you asked me to sum up Galatians or Luther’s theology I could do it.

But if you asked me to explain God my words falter. To say something like “God is an eternal spiritual being, creator of all things, and perfect in holiness, wisdom and power” now comes across to me as something like saying “The Pacific ocean is wet”.

More to the point, if you asked me why God “allowed” (if that is even the right word) my dear son to die so horribly, I would feel it an utter insult to God (and to my son) to try to give an answer.

I don’t know. It makes no sense to me. And I will not dishonestly try to force sense onto it.

God is good. And my son died horribly. If there is a formula for putting those two sentences together then it goes far beyond my ability to understand.

And I guess that is what I am getting to. I don’t understand. But I still believe. I believe in God. I believe in the goodness of God.

I suspect some people might think that is irrational. I don’t care. Rationality is one tool for understanding and living life; it’s not the whole toolbox. Faith is a subjective choice, not an intellectual conclusion. True, I cannot have faith in what I know is false or irrational; but I can have faith that there is a truth and reason that goes beyond what I can rationally understand.

That is where I stand now. And, as I pointed out in Vicki’s living room, I now feel closer to God than I did before. I spend more time in prayer and scripture than I did before. I am more thankful than I am before.

Why? Well, that’s another thing I don’t understand. But I suspect it has something to do with simply letting God be God. What I mean by that is that God is no longer in a box of my intellectual understanding. My goal, even as a pastor, is not to understand Him (for myself or for my preaching) but to be with Him in any way that I can. Of course that means I believe certain truths about Him. But believing is different from knowing or understanding. It transcends them.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, “I would not give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” In the same way, I would not give a fig for a simple faith on this side of doubt and questioning and struggle. But I will give my life for a simple faith that has transcended those things.

God can be part of an argument, something you write books about. Or God can be a person you trust, like a small child with a wise parent. Ideally, He is both. But at this stage of my life He is much more the latter than the former.

I want to close this ramble by plagiarizing myself. Last year I wrote a post called The Sin of the Orthodox, based on the book of Job. The book of Job has proven a comfort to me, not because I am like the Job but because of the humbling lesson of the book.

“And this is the heart of the book of Job: God’s ways are, in the final analysis, not able to be fully understood by man, simply because we are never in the position that He is in. Even the most godly (like Job) and the most orthodox and cerebral (like Job’s friends) can never understand God in the same way they understand the things of this world. In fact, God describes the words of the orthodox friends, who felt they were speaking godly wisdom and true theology as “folly”.

Now, here is where the rubber hits the road. I have always taken pride in holding correct, orthodox views of God and theology. And I still feel that the biblical viewpoint is the best way to understand the world in which we find ourselves in. Yet, books like Job warn me to be very humble about my understanding. In the end, I have little doubt that my orthodox, evangelical theology will be like the fig leaves Adam and Eve used to clothe themselves: wholly inadequate, and replaced by something else by God’s grace.”