Saturday 5 March 2016

Crisis of Faith

The Christian author and humourist Adrian Plass once defined a Christian Speaker as someone 'Whose problems only exist in the past tense'. On reading this I immediately identified. I am a speaker as well as a writer, but no distinction is necessary between the two. It is suffice to say, I believe, that there is often a desire when communicating a message (whatever medium is used to present it) to come across as someone who has, at least in part, got it together. That is sort of implicit in the idea that we consider ourselves and our words worthy of some of your attention.

That is not to say that showing some vulnerability is not a part of that, as Mr Plass hinted at. We are happy to speak of weakness. Indeed, if you have heard my sermons then you will know that my weakness is a recurring theme.... Illustrations of this however seem to often exist only  in those types that say 'This is a lesson I have learned'.

Very conscious of this, I often now try and own on-going weaknesses in both my blogs and my sermons. But that isn't to say that I am not selective....both in what I reveal.....and in how much I reveal.

This preamble is really just to bring you to this point. This is a blog in which I will speak about an ongoing issue for which I definitely do not have answers. I am in the middle of this right now, but part of me is hoping that, in the writing, I will perhaps resolve some of those things as I write.

Allow me to tell you of an incident that occurred during my children's last weekend visit with me. My youngest son is a simmering cauldron of unspent energy right now. He is only 9 and he almost cant sit still at present. So on the Sunday in question he had grown bored with the lethargy of his old man and announces that he is off to the garden to play football.

I continue with whatever lazy activity I am indulged in and breathe a sigh of relief that he is at least occupied. But then I am interrupted by my niece (who lives with me) saying that My boy is crying and wants me to go to him.

I go out into the garden and find Noah rolling on the grass, clutching his knee and clearly in pain. I ask him what happened and if he is okay, to which he says he tripped over and hurt his knee on the edge of a concrete paving slab on the pathway.

And then he says something which I don't quite catch at first, so I ask him to repeat it.

"It didn't work Daddy!"
"Uhm, what didn't work?"
"I prayed and it didn't work!", He says.
"Oh?!"
"And now I have doubts" He looks very sternly at me.
"Right, I see", I say rather pathetically.
"Serious doubts!"

And a little later, once indoors, the discussion continues along the lines of 'Why, if God can do anything, won't he answer my prayers?'. And then , in response to my rather inadequate answer, "why would God allow any suffering?" And "why would he create a world where bad things happen?" And so we get into free will and everything, which is ironic, as I don't technically believe in free will myself (or at least my viewpoint on this is influenced by Calvinist thinking) but it seems like the best way to meet his avalanching scepticism. And all the while I am offering him answers.....I am conscious that they are answers I have chosen to settle for, because I can never know completely. There are apparent contradictions and tensions which I hold gingerly. But how do I explain mystery and paradox to a very black and white nine year old. And I am even fighting doubt in myself as I try to explain it.

My nine year old, when he was an eight year old, had a very visceral and tangible experience of God at Soul survivor, two summers ago. He has always astounded me with his spiritual interest and perceptive questions....and on occasion his answers too. But now, gone were his memories of the feeling he had experienced at Soul Survivor. Forgotten was the certainty the he expressed when wide eyed and breathless he had announced to me that summer night, "It's real, Daddy. It's really real!"
But I knew what was in his mind. It wasn't that he was thinking 'God exists and he is a different God to the one I thought him to be'. The doubt I sensed was about God's very existence at all, because (and I can only assume here) He knew God to be all loving and all powerful. So that his 'failure' to answer this call for help may well indicate that this God simply does not exist.

And there are many others on this planet who have come to that exact conclusion.

I do my best to address it, and I even chuckle to myself. It is a moment of identification. He hurts his knee.....and his entire belief system crumbles and dissolves in a matter of minutes. This seems to be a microcosm  that, for many an adult, contains the elements of the unravelling of many a faith in a time of crisis.  And I think, in that moment, 'There must be a blog in this'.

Now, as for Noah's knee? Well, there is a happy ending to this tale. After all my theologising and explaining.....and seeing that this explanation (the one I haven't really given you!) wasn't really cutting the euphemistic mustard with him, I felt a 'twinge' of what I call the 'Holy Spirit'. Ok, it was the Holy Spirit, by my best gifts of discernment. And that twinge was telling me to pray again. And all my better instincts were telling me not to set God up for further failure. What if, in his sovereignty he refuses again to convince my son of his love by relieving him of his pain? God does that quite a lot in my experience. If I was God I would go about all over the place proving the living daylights out of my existence and love. But I am most certainly not God.

So I pray a prayer of half hearted faith but with some authority, it feels. And ask that Noah's knee will get better, and within an hour he would forget that it had even been hurt. I move on quickly, being careful not to ask how he feels. We have come to a theological stalemate but the discussion seems to have completed itself. So after I pray I send him on his way, still looking rather doubtful.

About ten minutes later the boy who could hardly walk and was hobbling around....was jumping up and down on the trampoline without any discomfort at all.

And of course some of the things I should have said to him came flooding back, about perseverance in prayer, and  praying according to your faith.

And I do laugh a little at myself, and the doubt I was masking while trying to solve his dilemma. How easily we forget when the trials come. And I think I have got it. that God is teaching me not to lose it over what appears to be a minor blip but to hold fast to the eternal things like his Love and his Promise.

And I think about how I can use this illustration to write a blog to encourage others (as well as myself) to not panic at the waves and wind, but to trust the apparently sleeping Jesus, who is, I am reassured, in the boat with me.

And then, a few days later, I get a phone call, and it's one I have been dreading for a while.....and all my good intentions to stand fast whatever the storm, dissolve before my very eyes.

God has a sense of humour. Of that I have very little doubt.

I will tell you all about that phone call in my next blog and of my on-going crisis of faith.






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