“Faith does not mean certainty. It means the courage to live with uncertainty.
It does not mean having the answers, it means having the courage to ask the questions and not let go of God, as He does not let go of us.”
–Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
There was a day of youthful innocence when my faith was like a seamless garment, an armor with no missing chinks. But the passing of time eroded the mountains my childlike faith once had moved until I could scarcely budge molehills. As I became aware of a smorgasbord of life choices, the once-confident exclamation point of faith felt more like a question mark adrift in a sea of relativity. How could one be so certain amidst an ever-proliferating menu of options? Guilt gnawed on me as doubts rolled in and eclipsed the bright light of simple faith. I sought answers, I sought truth, I sought The Answer as a drowning man gasps for air. But doubt was stubborn and surprisingly adaptive and answers, even good answers, begat more questions. The more I learned, the less and less I seemed to comprehend.
Finally, it seems, the deluge of life’s questions stripped away my foolish pretensions of wisdom and I stood bare and Job-like before my Maker. That Awesome and Wonderful Mystery whom I had vainly tried to get my arms around through human wisdom then questioned me. And slowly, painfully, gratefully, I realized that God had never intended for me to master all the knowledge of creation but rather to be mastered by the Creator of all knowledge. I grudgingly relinquished my insatiable demands to have all questions answered and entrusted my life to the Answer for all questioners. The lonely drifting of doubt gave birth to a renewed faith, a deeper and more childlike trust, less ignorant of the world’s pain, yet more willing to surrender itself into the arms of an eternally merciful God. In the end, faith has been about full surrender, not of the intellect or the heart, but of the will. May all earnest seekers entrust their searching hearts and minds to the goodness of the Lord, embracing a mode of “faith seeking understanding.”
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