Spent the weekend stewarding at the Faithworks conference - an exhausting but enjoyable experience. It was really nice to spend time with people and enjoy the Oasis staff - I am always so impressed by how nice, warm, and friendly they are! Got to sit in on a couple of sessions - heard Brian McLaren and Jeff Lucas speak, which was interesting.
I've just been thinking on and off - in this gap year, and in this movement/Christian circle, we are really encouraged to grapple and to question. For as long as I can remember I have been a fan of grappling and questioning, and have always encouraged and stood by that as well. But I have recently just felt tired in it - I am actually tired of constantly thinking and analyzing, of questioning, of grappling. It is really tiring! I can't help it and it comes naturally to me, but there are times when it does get a bit much.
I am pretty tired of being confused and in my mind constantly being on the guard and being questioning of things that people say about God and Christianity and the church. I know that this way is better and I don't want to mindlessly absorb what someone else tells me, believing it just because they said it passionately. But in all honesty it really is draining, and it is tiring being so genuinely confused all the time. I have been telling God lately, sometimes I just want some rest from it, and I am so grateful that in God there is no confusion and He has all the answers, that He is there in all of it but not part of this sense of fractured uncertainty.
I have heard and read several things in the broad movement in which Faithworks belongs and I have found myself thinking about how limited our human perception is. What I mean is that God is big, and He is so much bigger than what we imagine Him to be. He is bigger than a moral example and a force against injustice and a saviour to the marginalized and needy. He is bigger than theology and the Bible and cultural conceptions of salvation and liberation and freedom. He is bigger than any of that. He is all of that but infinitely more.
Sometimes I worry about the way that some people talk and write about God, that they may be reducing God to human proportions - making Jesus all about politics or all about the Bible or all about two ways to live or all about community action or all about subverting social standards, when in reality He is all of those things and more, and we need to make sure that we are not simply reacting against one form of misbalance by replacing it with another. I have gotten a bit fed up of reductionist portrayals of God and Jesus and the Bible and Christianity. I yearn for a truly holistic approach and I yearn for a true truth and a true balance.
But the truth is that God is bigger than anything we can ever imagine or understand, and we will always be stuck in this quandary of human limitations. And so we grapple, and we will never be able to understand the complete truth. So rightly or unrightly, I am always a bit skeptical when someone puts forward their interpretation or views about a theme or passage or event in the Bible and doesn't disclaim it with uncertainty about whether their view is correct, whatever view that is, whether it is labelled conservative or liberal or whatever else, because I don't think that just because someone says it, we have to accept it as true. I think there are people in this movement in which I now find myself who would advocate this approach of grappling and questioning and searching, but there is sometimes something missing in the way that they deliver their views and interpretation to make that approach a reality. They speak as though what they say is truth, indispensable, assumed. But there are people who don't agree.
I believe that God is bigger than any reductionist interpretation of His nature and His message. And reductionist interpretations of God and the gospel are all over the show. So if you are reading this I want to say to you - keep your eyes and ears open. Do not passively accept what people say to you. Be aware of when people are fitting God into a box of their own interpretation, even if they say they aren't. And most people who do this will say they aren't. Always question, turn it over in your mind, even if it's hard and you feel it will drive you insane. Because it's worth it. I am tired from doing it but I really believe it is worth it. I believe you get closer to the truth the more you examine it and struggle with it and search for it.
I believe that God is big enough to speak to everyone - the theologians, the politicians, the beggars and homeless, the young people, the middle class businessmen, the children, the teenage mothers, those who are rich and those who are poor and those who are reflective and those who are activist, everyone from every race and cultural and creed and place in life and time. The gospel of God is not confined to the lost and marginalized and poor people, nor is it confined to the privileged and rich and elite classes of society. It is not confined to anyone. It is for everyone. And this is why I find it hard to accept any doctrine that boils the gospel down to one thing, one category and one type of person, one mission and one command, reducing the message of Jesus to one call - to preach the gospel, or to teach the Bible, or to serve the poor, or to work for social justice, and so on. Because I believe that the gospel is so much bigger than one thing, and it is not doing God justice to hold one thing up and insist that it explains everything about who He is and what His will is. It is a very human thing to do, and we all do it in our finitude and subjectivity and passion. But I don't think we should. I think it is dangerous and in the end doesn't really get us anywhere.
That's why I love S.M. Lockridge's speech "That's My King" so much. With amazing poetic power he goes on about all the things God is - the sinner's saviour, the loftiest idea in literature, the fundamental doctrine of true theology, deliverer of captives, wellspring of wisdom, he just goes on and on... And I just love it, because God is all these amazing things, but still S.M. Lockridge gets to a point where he stops and says, "I wish I could describe Him to you, but He's indescribable, He's incomprehensible, He's invincible, He's irresistible."
We need to remember the greatness of God in His manifold and infinite wisdom, how much bigger He is than we are, how all-encompassing the gospel is. And we must remember that it is not just about one thing - it is about everything.
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