“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Road to Daybreak: A Spiritual Journey
I’m taking a few minutes tonight even while watching primary returns and political punditry from Michigan and Arizona to muse a bit on faith during Lent. I’ll post my analysis of tonight’s results tomorrow.
I have found over the past couple of years that there are many people that grew up in some kind of Christian home that for a host of reasons are struggling with faith, God and the church. It is something that I find interesting from more than a theoretical premise because I went through a period after returning from Iraq where I struggled and could best be described as an agnostic struggling to recover faith. Faith for me is still a work in progress, I can fully relate to father of the child Jesus healing in Mark 9:24 saying “I believe help my unbelief” and Thomas who after the Resurrection that he would not believe without being able to put his hands in the wounds of Christ. Saint Anselm of Canterbury talked about faith seeking understanding and I think that is the mark of theological honesty. I believe but seek understanding but even if I don’t understand I can have faith even if it is imperfect and plagued with doubts as well as frustration about things I see done in the church and in the name of Jesus.
When people come to me and admit their struggles I simply try to listen and let them be honest about their doubts and to know that even if they struggle that God still cares about them. I think that people, at least from what I hear are tired of the lack of honesty that characterizes much of what is being sold as Christianity in America. What they struggle with is that “faith” marketed by the health, wealth and political power preachers, pundits and politicians that make up the Unholy Trinity of American religious life.
Lent is one of those times of reflection where hopefully those that call on the name of Jesus can deepen faith or in the case of many that struggle, return to faith. I really believe that honesty with God, each other and the world is one of the keys to faith and for those of us that struggle absolutely vital.
Part of that honesty to recover faith is to realize that God does love the real and very imperfect world that we live in. God loves wounded, doubting and imperfect people. Dietrich Bonhoeffer the German pastor, theologian and martyr said it this way “God loves human beings. God loves the world. Not an ideal human, but human beings as they are; not an ideal world, but the real world. What we find repulsive in their opposition to God, what we shrink back from with pain and hostility, namely, real human beings, the real world, this is for God the ground of unfathomable love.”
Peace
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