Keeping the Faith

I was talking with a former graduate school professor from the university where I did work in Religion. We are both retired now. He is one of my dearest friends, not just because he flunked me on my PhD qualifing exam, thus saving me from a miserable life for which I was not suited nor to which I was called, but because of the quality of his soul and mind. We were sitting in front of a nice fire.

I said, “I have been reading Romans. About the thousandth time I have read it, I guess. You know, this time I understand that I don’t understand a thing Paul is saying.”

He smiled and said, “I’ve never told anyone this before, but I don’t understand a thing he’s saying, either.”

He did more to help me hold onto my faith with that simple statement than he did in two years of class work.

It’s the people who are so certain that they understand the Bible, even the mind of God, who are trying to take away your faith.

There was an ancient bishop who used to claim, “I know God better than he knows himself.” Not many people say it out loud that way, but there are lots of people who think that way. Those are the people who are trying to take away your faith.

When I announced that I would attend Indiana University, people warned me about the godless state university. “They’ll try to take away your faith.” Instead, D.J. Bowden in Religion and Bob Ferrell in History and Joe Sutton in Political Science made me face the questions that required me to have faith.

When I was trying to decide what theological school to attend, more folks warned me against going to Perkins or Garrett because “they’ll try to take away your faith.” I went to both. H. Grady Hardin and Albert Outler and Philip Watson and Ernest Saunders didn’t take away my faith; they made me face the questions that required me to have faith.

The people who want to shield you from the real questions are the ones who are trying to take away your faith, because they want you to live by fact, by certainty, not by faith.

If we know anything about God for certain, if we are thus, by fact, because there is no possibility of doubt, required to love God, that is not love, that is rape. Love is never based on certainty. It is based only on… Love. Forced love, even if it is forced only by certainty, the impossibility of doubt, is rape.
There can be no faith without doubt. Anyone who tries to take away the possibility of doubt is trying to take away your faith.

Erik Erikson says there are eight stages of life. The final one is Integrity vs Despair. In these last years, are we able to look at what our life has been and accept it, or do we despair because it was a loss and it is too late to start over?

The way we deal with Integrity vs Despair is by working back through the first seven stages, in reverse order: Generativity vs Stagnation; Intimacy vs Isolation; Identity vs Identity Diffusion; Industry vs Inferiority; Initiative vs Guilt; Autonomy vs Shame and Doubt; Trust vs Mistrust.

Ah, there’s the key… Trust. We have to get to trust, because we’re too old for anything else. We can’t trust in the facts we have about what comes after this life, because we have none, regardless of how many people tell us there is a heaven and that its streets are paved with gold and that “it’s a land where we never grow old,” or even where “the circle is not broken.”

We don’t know any of those things, nor are they objects even of faith. The faith that is trust is only in God.

Don’t let anyone take away your faith.