The week Declan questioned God
and the up/down up/down of my own faith journey
Parents, what do you call it when your kid bursts out of their room a minute after you’ve tucked them in? Over and over again? And again? We call it “up/down up/down” over here. Please, no more up/down up/down. Go to bed. Declan. Now Maeve’s awake. Ugh. Please. We’ve talked about this.
“But, just one more hug!” :)
One night this week, our conversation took a theological turn. Where is God? with rapid fire follow ups Does God have a head? Where does He live? Does He live in my heart? Can I talk to Him? Where is heaven? Is heaven in my heart? Can I go there with you? Before I could attempt divinity jiu-jit-su to get a handle on his line of questioning, he was off to wondering about the eating habits of an Albertosaurus and needing another drink from his water bottle.
I told Kelly who confirmed that she also got similar questions, such as Does God have a heartbeat? And Is God alive or dead? and we got a good laugh that of course it is these moments where you are supposed to give some sort of coherent answer about the big things in life – when you are frustrated and thinking that if you have to have to do up/down up/down one more time after you just sat down (again!), you are going to lose it.
In the second chapter of Paul’s letter to the Colossians, he says:
As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so continue to live in him. Keep your roots deep in him and have your lives built on him. Be strong in the faith, just as you were taught, and always be thankful. Be sure that no one leads you away with false and empty teaching that is only human, which comes from the ruling spirits of this world, and not from Christ. All of God lives fully in Christ (even when Christ was on earth), and you have a full and true life in Christ, who is ruler over all rulers and powers.
Paul gives us a clear orientation for our lives; a foundation to build upon, a cosmic reality to trust.
Walter Brueggemann, an American theologian, says that human beings tend to find themselves in three places in life: Orientation, Disorientation, and Reorientation; and he thinks you can find this sort of three-beat-rhythm in the Psalms. So when David sings in Psalm 138:
On the day I called to you, you answered me.
You made me strong and brave.
Lord, let all the kings of the earth praise you
when they hear the words you speak.
They will sing about what the Lord has done,
because the Lord’s glory is great.
He’s in a season of reorientation where he is thankful for what God has done in his life. There was a theological up/down/up/down of sorts, but God answered him.
I’ve spent long seasons of my life not sure about my religious beliefs. Even while I was working in churches I had these doubts. It’s one of the things that took me to seminary in the first place. There are three pieces of advice from my mentor that helped flip a switch for me:
There’s no understanding without standing under. There is an organizing and life-giving force to the cosmos and your brain is not it. You have to exercise humility and stand under something, somewhere or you are going to end up with no understanding, nowhere.
Bird in the pan versus bird in the bush. Is the best way to understand a bird dissecting it in a pan and learning each of its individual parts? Or is it better understood when observed in creation, as a part of the wonderful world we live in? There is value in the knowledge acquired through the first approach, but meaning and wonder are bound up in the second.
Everybody follows somebody. Can you find anyone better to follow than Jesus?
At some point – and in no real dramatic way (much to the disappointment of my Pentecostal heritage) – I realized that my faith in Jesus had returned. And to the point about standing under something, that would be (for better or worse, like it or not as Peter Enns once said) the Bible in the tradition I’ve been taught.
Recently, one of my favorite people to get a beer with told me that he thinks everything is just made up and fake. Nothing is true. To the victors go the categories, histories, and power structures. A lot of my friends have given in to that kind of a worldview. I did, too, for a long time. But, a couple of years ago, I re-watched a movie from the 80’s that cut through the nothingness of that worldview.
I think The NeverEnding Story is one of the most important movies anyone with doubts or disbelief could watch. The fantasy world of Fantasia is slowly consumed by an ominous force known as The Nothing. A young warrior is tasked with finding a cure, and, to make a long (NeverEnding) story short, we learn the only way to bring Fantasia back is through childlike imagination.
If The NeverEnding Story is a wonder-filled critique of the meaninglessness of nihilism – and I think it is – I realized the important takeaway for me wasn’t that they needed to develop the right theology to combat The Nothing, but rather they needed to embrace a child-like faith and imagination; a rekindled sense of wonder. A child-like imagination of Is heaven in my heart and can I go there with you?
Guided by the wisdom of the Scriptures, life became meaningful again.
So, the next time Declan asks me about God, maybe I’ll be ready. Or maybe I’ll just love him as he has his own up/down up/down journey and tell him he should ask God about that.
I love point number one, “there is no understanding without standing under.” That’s exactly what I needed recently when I tried to explain why I’m comfortable believing what I do. It’s mostly because I’m not qualified to come up with something different or better than what’s already laid out in scripture. Even if I wish some of it were different, who am I to find fault with it? I’m going to stand under it anyway.