Here’s a quote I came across by David Dark, author of The Sacredness of Questioning Everything (which I am hoping to get to read soon), which seems to be in line with the idea behind my post on the base prayer from the other day.
If we think we have faith, because we faithfully protect ourselves from anything that might call it into question– as if God is counting on us to keep ourselves stupid, closed off to the complexity of the world we’re in – I’d like to argue that we don’t have faith in God at all. We have faith in our own faith rather than the God who transcends it, faith in a faith that will somehow save us. Not faith in God, but faith in a false god of our own conceptions, a god too afraid to entertain a question or a doubt.
I find Dark’s idea of a faith that can’t deal with questions as being faith in faith and not faith in God to be an interesting clarifier about how we view our faith.
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That is an awesome quote. Thanks for sharing.
Book sounds a bit like In Praise of Doubt. “Dark” is an appropriate name for an author of a book of that title, although as we learn to re-think our assumptions in a God-ward path we shall see the “light” (Jesus).
I believe the book is along a similar line as the quote. Pretty much that a faith that doesn’t allow for questioning becomes faith in faith instead of faith in God.
I think there are a number of Psalms, Lamentations etc, which are of this same sort of questioning. It’s one of those things that I see, which is that scripture doesn’t have as much of a problem with wrestling and questioning that we usually think of it being bad.
I’m gonna have to think about that one, nice post!