We took the week off from Brews & Hebrews this week, so instead, here’s this reflection:
There is a lot about God and the world that doesn’t make sense, and I often find myself bouncing between three worldviews. I may not vocalize these —they’re often just passing feelings as I process a situation unfolding in front of me—, but when it comes to faith in God, I’m usually in one of three places:
Option 1: “I don’t understand, but You’re here, and I trust You.”
Looking at the good and evil in the world,
God’s power must be somehow limited
—that is, whether due to free will or powers and principalities or whatever other highfalutin’ theological concept we want to insert, God has granted other forces some temporary dominion in the here and now, but God will eventually restore order and put these forces in their proper places, righting the wrongs and making all things new—,
and since God’s power is temporarily limited,
we have to take care of each other,
so that is where I will focus my energy.
Option 2: “Um… are You here?”
Looking at the good and evil in the world,
God might just not exist
—that is, we’ve all been praying to imaginary friends for a few millennia now, making all of our holy wars and violent religious schisms that much more pointless since all of reality is really just particles and probability—,
and since there’s no God to intervene,
we have to take care of each other,
so that is where I will focus my energy.
Option 3: “You’re here, and I don’t like You, but there’s nothing I can do about it, and I don’t have any better options, so I guess I have to trust You.”
Looking at the good and evil in the world,
God’s goodness must be somehow limited,
—that is, “goodness” in human terms of course since everything still ultimately spirals together into some sort of grander “cosmic good” beyond our comprehension, but by our standards, it looks an awful lot like God is either evil, permissive of evil, or just wholly indifferent toward humanity and concerned only with His own glory, making us all minimally consequential pieces of some bigger plan we can’t appreciate in the here and now—,
and since God doesn’t seem to care,
we have to take care of each other,
so that is where I will focus my energy.
On a slight majority of days, I lean strongly into the first option.
On some bad days, I might slip into the second option.
On truly awful days, I wrestle with the third option.
To me, this is what doubt means: I have the freedom to step between these viewpoints as I question and explore and try to make sense of the world. Sometimes I may spend whole days, months, or years in one worldview only to find myself jumping to the next in one profound moment. Crossing between these worldviews is not a lack of faith; rather, I find it requires more faith to willingly wrestle with them.
At the end of the day, I also acknowledge I’m working with limited hardware. The human brain can only comprehend so much, and human logic can only extend so far, so the truth probably lies in some fourth option beyond my understanding. After all, philosophers and theologians have been exploring these ideas for centuries, and no one has ever truly cracked the puzzle in a satisfying way. Even with the greats like Augustine and Aquinas, it always seems like their versions of God are somehow compromised— not powerful enough, not compassionate enough, always too small in some way. There are always some logical leaps in the middle that just don’t add up and don’t quite make sense, and they probably never will on this side of eternity, but I find one thing consistent across the board:
Looking at the good and evil in the world,
we have to take care of each other,
so that is where I will focus my energy.