Faith and Doubt

It is important to remember that faith and doubt are not polar opposites. In fact, doubt and faith are really part of the same movement of heart. For faith, you see, is not certitude; faith involves risk. "I have faith, but I could be wrong,"or, "Can I still have faith when thus and such has happened?"

Said another way, the opposite of faith is not doubt, rather it is unbelief. Unbelief says, "I no longer have faith; I no longer believe."

So, if you sometimes struggle with doubt, do not despair. What you are experiencing is the struggle of faith, and this is a good thing because to struggle with your convictions actually displays their importance and value.

Offering Grace

I spoke today to a friend who struggles with the ongoing pain in their own heart, as well as the heavy pain that afflicts the world. It's always refreshing to meet a tender-hearted person, one whose life-scars informs them how to care and love other scarred ones. For, it is with this type of person that one feels free to be oneself because we do not feel judged.

The Lectionary Gospel reading for this Sunday concerns the Pharisee and the sinner woman (Luke 7:36-8:3). She sobs before Jesus because of her sin while the Pharisee judges Jesus for failing to notice that the woman before him was actually "unclean" (even more judgment).

It is sad how the religious sometimes refuse -- or are for some reason unable -- to see their own sin, which allows them therefore to cut others deep and wide. Let this not be said of us. Let us be ones who offer grace.

When thinking in this direction I am always reminded of a poem
by Evangeline Paterson called LAMENT:

Weep, weep for those
Who do the work of the Lord
with a high look
And a proud heart.
Their voice is lifted up
In the streets, and their cry is heard.
The bruised reed they break
By their great strength, and the smoking flax
They trample.

Weep not for the quenched
(For their God will hear their cry
And the Lord will come to save them)
But weep, weep for the quenchers

For when the Day of the Lord
Is come, and the vales sing
And the hills clap their hands
And the light shines
Then their eyes will be opened
On a waste place,
Smoldering,
The smoke of the flax bitter
In their nostrils,
Their feet pierced
By broken reed stems...
Wood, hay, stubble,
And no grass springing,
And all the birds flown.

Weep, weep for those
Who made a desert
In the name of the Lord.

Rejoice in the LORD always?

"Rejoice in the LORD always, and again I say rejoice," says St. Paul, but we ask, "How?" In this world of continued trouble and heartache, how can we afford to rejoice? It hurts too badly. It costs too much.

In reality, the only way we can rejoice is to rejoice together because rejoicing together means that, while we are part of the same chaos that surrounds us all -- a chaos that when taken together is taken even more seriously -- we are also part of a community who has a different final and finite view of the chaos. That is, because we know the living, risen Christ, we know chaos does not have the final word. No, that word is reserved for the Christ himself. And what is His final word to us? "My peace I leave with you..."