Peter Enns, an American Bible professor, has written a book called The Sin of Certainty. It is a book about his spiritual journey from a closed system to a more open understanding of his faith and the Bible. I have thought about some of the ideas he has in his book for a long time as well.
There is a reading in the back of a hymnal, Sing The Journey, that says something about taking away our certainties .That might sound like it is inviting us to move away from faith, but it is a call to have more faith .The opposite of faith is not doubt or uncertainty , but it is apathy. So, I will tell you about my non-apathetic spiritual trip throughout my life.
I grew up Mennonite. In the church I attended with my family, there was the traditional Christian story of salvation. It included the story of Jesus’ death on the cross, and that God extended grace if we made a public declaration of faith. We needed to say yes to this, and then we were baptized into the church and the Kingdom of God. We were to follow the ways of Jesus found in the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5. If you are a Mennonite Christian this is our traditional belief.
The negative part of the story, for me, was the threat of hell, if you did not say yes to the grace and forgiveness of God. You had to be certain that you were saved from hell. For a young person this was very scary. How could you ever be certain, if you knew that you sinned, or did not do what you knew was right. I played basketball in high school, and so I had to miss many church youth events. I struggled to know or think if I was tipping the scales into hell rather than heaven. There was this idea that you would be judged on your actions ( Somehow grace got sidelined in this theology. ) in this world. If I missed three events during the year , what would I have to do to balance the scales in my favour ?
And did I have enough right beliefs about the Bible, about grace, about the cross and just about everything else I could think of in my life ? It is not that the right beliefs are not important, but it is as if I am creating my own faith. This kind of thinking comes from rational argument to try and say what is in important in my belief. This is why we have so many denominations and sub-denominations. I created my own belief system in God that I could act in, and it worked for me.
Then, I began to read the Bible. This is right; I had the right beliefs even before I really opened the Bible. There are so many different stories of people’s experience and relationship with God. These were real people trying to make sense of their experience of life. How did God fit into it ? There was no one story for life, and so I was left lost . What did I actually believe ?
Then I was born again. Actually, I think I am every day, and this is a good thing. I am learning to trust in the mystery of God. I look for God in silence, and nature and people. God is not a set of right beliefs in creation, salvation or ethics. I do not have to decide who is in or out of the Kingdom of God. This is not my problem. I must have a deeper faith in God, where I trust God to be in a good and right relationship with me, and me with God. There are no right beliefs or right theologies that can save me from myself. I must trust in God. This means I am open to change in myself and God. I do not have all the answers, and do not need to find all the answers to have them line up straight. This is where my story is right now. Where is your story of trust in God ?
Ponder Anew 