Offering Uncertainty

[image error]Photo by Jakub Kriz on Unsplash

Two conversations in the past week reminded me of something we care deeply about at Mission Church. We care about being a community known for its depth. We often phrase this in the positive: we want to think deeply and dig deep into the meaning of our Scriptures. But depth has another side. We also want to know one another deeply. We want others to see the depths of our hearts. When we do this — when we really go there — what we see is not always pretty, simple, or certain.

The first conversation was one I didn’t actually have. I did talk with Daniel — in fact, I spent an entire evening watching a blowout basketball game with him — but in the back of my mind I kept returning to the conversation he’d shared on his podcast a few days earlier. After a grueling month, my very faith-inclined and passionate friend reflected on where his mind wandered during a flurry of trials. He asked his audience, “If faith is the answer, what was your question?” He went on to ask what we hand to those who watch and participate in our lives as Christians. Do we exhibit faith or certainty? He added,

“We show them our intense, perfect confidence in the goodness of God. We show them the clarity of the truth that we hold. We show them the postures of the heart that come from living in and through the gospel in a community of believers, and we miss the part where we show them the fear, the doubts, and the uncertainty that the faith is an answer to. If you aren’t uncertain, then what exactly do you need faith for? Faith is a verb. It is a verb that answers the weakness of our heart.”

Earlier in the week, I sat down to some incredible locally brewed beers with my friend Porter. He is on a quest — a quest to find what feels like a missing part of who he is through artistic exercises. For him, this quest has a lot to do with faith, faith that once characterized generations of his family and feels buried, though deeply, in his identity. His quest brings questions, concerns, and predicaments. His feelings of inner conflict and curiosity excite and overwhelm him at the same time.

At one point he paused and said that few people he knows feel able to have these conversations with Christians, even though they want to. I asked what gets in the way. He told me that many times there is no room to be unsure. Christians often come across as if they have it all figured out, and that’s really, really hard to relate to. It just feels like there’s no room for those of us who aren’t sure.

I rarely read Young’s Literal Translation, but its rendering of Hebrews 11:1 feels both clunky and beautiful. It follows the Greek closely and invites more reflection than translations that smooth out the meaning. It reads: “And faith is of things hoped for a confidence, of matters not seen a conviction…”

“Of things hoped for…a confidence.”

“Of matters not seen…a conviction.”

Anytime you hope for something or acknowledge that you cannot see, you step into uncertainty by definition. But when faith enters the equation, it grants conviction and confidence right in the middle of that uncertainty. I think both of my friends long for that kind of faith — faith that meets them in their weakness at the ends of their quests, where the questions still linger.

Are we people who carry faith yet acknowledge that being unsure is OK? Do we have the depth of faith that lets us sit with people who live in uncertainty and look across the table and say, “I am too?”

These two friends encouraged me. Christians who show up in their uncertainty will find plenty of people who want to explore faith across the table with them.

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