I don’t like to defend my own certainty anymore. I’ve come to believe the notion of certainty is not the point.

Recently a friend named Chad posted a note in Facebook defending certainty.  Chad explores it based on  Hebrews 11.

Hebrews 11:1 – Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

And I completely get the point he was trying to make.  At some point we need to have faith in something, to be certain to an extent.  If we lose the idea that we have faith in something, we have faith in nothing.  But the dialog that followed though illustrated to me why I don’t defend the notion of certainty.  It never comes out the way I had hoped it would.  It usually ends up with hurt feelings and misunderstandings.  Two ships continue to pass in the night.

If I defend it, it misses what the certainty is actually for, which is the fruit of love.  If I really believe it doesn’t really matter what anyone else thinks.  It only matters that I actually believe it.  The person I’m really trying to convince is myself.  And in regards to my faith, the best way for me to be certain that I am certain of my faith is made real in the act of love.  Is my certainty producing love in a way that is life giving, hope-filled, and draws people in, as opposed to pushes them away if they don’t agree with my certainty.

The truest defense of the faith is not a defense of the faith but the act of love. It’s the fulfillment of the Great Commandment.  Its a life lived in a way that actually reveals the Gospel.  Because I can say I believe anything.  But if my life doesn’t reveal it, well then its BS.  This is what I love about the cross.  It’s the truest measure of love.  Are we willing to love in such a way that people cannot help but be profoundly touched, even in a way that requires our own suffering?

I’m going to begin a new series on Sunday’s called a Question To Ponder.  It will ask something of you the reader to think, process and post a comment on.  Please add your thoughts to the mix.

Today’s Question To Ponder: How is your faith different than when you were a child?

Looking for your thoughts.

Many of the arguments that occur on blogs and on the web are based on the idea of defending the faith.

1 Peter 3:15 (NIV) – But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,

I get that.  But is there a difference between defending our reason for the hope that you have, which is ultimately based in the sometimes irrationality of faith, and defending the orthodoxy of what we believe, which sometimes appears to be a larger body of knowledge of the collective elite?

What say you?

Why is it that I’m always the last one who can see it?

It’s that moment when something is broken in my life and I can’t see it.  My wife and friends can.  My children and my neighbors can.  But I can’t.  It’s like the very nature of the problem is to blind me to the problem.  And to make it worse, the more everyone points it out, the more I seem to protect it, as thought the problem is me.  And it’s not.  The problem is the problem.  But as long as I hold onto it, I can’t tell the difference.  And the longer I hold onto it, resisting the gentle and not so gentle reminders of the world around me to “LET IT GO”, the more it gets embedded within me so that I can’t tell the where I stop and the problem starts.  I literally become blind to the problem.  And in the process I have become my own worst enemy, protecting that which destroys me.

I sometimes wonder if this blindness is what Jesus was talking about when he said:

“though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand.”

Jesus was saying that it is possible to see but not see?  I get that.  Its like being the only one in a crowded room who can’t see the “Stupid” sign on my back.  Everyone is laughing but I’m not willing to pull it off.

Much of the journey of following Jesus has led me to the simple practice of getting honest with myself so I can see.  If we’re really after the truth, it’s pretty clear to me that the problem is when we hold onto a lie as if its true.  And in the process we’re being duped.  To be honest, I’ve been duped too long in my life.  It just doesn’t work for me anymore.

But the reality is that this requires me to get honest with myself, to literally swallow my pride and begin to really listen to those around me who really have my best interest at heart.  It requires me surrounding myself with people who will speak truth into my life while holding my dignity at the same time.  It requires me to really get honest with those moments that I’ve picked up the lie…again.  I hate that moment.  But I’m learning to hate the moment I hold it even more.  I want to let it go.

And what is perhaps more profound is the feeling I get when I actually do let go of the lie.  My sense of clarity about it is ridiculous, making me wonder how I couldn’t see it before.  It was sooooo obvious.  And yet I couldn’t see it.  I was captivated by it.

What if repentance is really just letting go a lie that destroys us?  If this is true, then I want to get a PhD in repentance. I want to see very clearly the moment I’m destroying God’s image in me, the one that sustains me and lets me know I am loved.

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You can find a list of other’s who have contributed to this summer series at Christine Sine’s blog Godspace.

The more I take a critical approach to my own faith the more it comes into focus.  And it gives me hope.

Recently I had a conversation with someone who was deeply concerned about my approach to faith.  This person was so sure I had fallen off the slippery slope and was doomed to hell.  And ten years ago this would have really concerned me.  I would have been racked with fear and guilt, wondering how I could have gone so astray.  But a long the way I realized one really important lesson.  If orthodoxy is true it will always present a good wrestling partner.

You see I made the distinction that truth by its very nature will always be true.  So the problem isn’t truth. It’s me. And to arrest the brokenness that is in my soul means being honest about my own brokenness, so that I can let it go.

This approach has given me a tremendous freedom to fail…and succeed.  The more I wrestle with Scripture the more I feel that it is my own and not someone else’s version.  This deepening, this clarifying has allowed me to take on huge obstacles that would once define me, making me cower in fear.  But in facing them, I have now discovered them for what they are: paper tigers.

Perhaps the greatest shift I have made in my faith came in my own examination with the beginning of the story.  But it was only recently that I have been able to articulate the difference.  The greatest shift in my faith came when I anchored my faith to the entire story of God. In hindsight I realized that much of the theology that I grew up in began in Genesis 3.  Humanity, myself included, was defined by what happened in the fall.

Much of my own faith has been in rediscovering these two little chapters, in really listening to how the story began.  Because when I began in Gen 3, all I could see was my own brokenness.  I was helpless, a little toad, and defined by my brokenness.  But when I began in Gen 1, I could see the radiance of God’s love defining me.  I could see that restoration meant recapturing the vision of the Garden for my own life, one that declared I was very good, that I was worth fighting for.  The cross became the crowning symbol of that love.

I now believe that this recapturing of the Gen 1-2 story will be the defining change in the church over the next thirty years.  It will be a slow generational shift.  It will be painful, but it will be good.  We’ve lived too long in the shadow of an incomplete story.

Last night I had an interesting conversation with a friend about spiritual maturity. A friend of his is part of a small group and they are hitting the proverbial wall and the community is somewhat stagnant. They aren’t taking risks, instead settling into the easy right answer routine. I know that feeling. I know what it’s like to reach a place where it’s no longer about the info, but something else.

And this conversation made me think. What is spiritual maturity? Is it simply a theological ascendancy to a set of beliefs. Is this what Jesus and Paul were after. Because what I have found is that theological brilliance typically leads to arrogance. And yet so much of our current small group formats are based on simple downloading the right information. And the assumption is that the right answer creates right action. And I just don’t buy that.

One of the fundamental problems I see is that we’ve relegated truth to the chalkboard, without ever taking it out on the field. It’s the right answer to learn, not the real answer to live. And in doing so we’ve created a world of theological misfits who don’t know how to practice what they preach. They know the right answer but it has very little value in the every day world because they can’t apply it. I should know because that was me for so long.

Now I’m not doubting or calling out the value of truth. It has been incredibly valuable in my life. But I recognize that at 40, I believe very differently than I did at 25 when I became a Christ follower. And at 25, I thought I had it all correct. But up until that point I had spent 20 years of my life learning the right answer, but it produced little more than a pious religiosity that was crippling me in guilt and fear.

And over time, I am beginning to realize that spiritual maturity is the capacity to love, which is founded in truth. It’s the right answer put into practice in the real world. This is why Missio Dei was so important to me. It gave me a context for the truth. It gave me a purpose other than just theological brilliance (as if) that led me to being the smarter guy in the room no one wanted to know. Because at some point, the basic answers no longer provide intellectual stimulation and what’s left is an ad nauseum, esoteric debate about the subjective. And it leads to division, which leaves the enemy laughing.

Spiritual maturity is engaging the truth. And the truth is that He loves us. He establishes us as His beloved creation. He gives us His Spirit. And with that Spirit, we can live like Jesus. That is the Good News. And living the truth is to love in a world that so desperately needs it. It’s being loved as much as it is loving people. It’s learning that I am loved and letting go of the baggage that is essentially a suitcase full of lies. It means embracing my own dignity and taking responsibility to grow into love, to meet the Holy Spirit at exactly the right moment He is calling me to.

Spiritual maturity is learning to forgive the unforgivable, not because I have to but because I need to. In forgiveness I find the love that restores my own heart as I let go of the justice that longs to come back and haunt me. In reconciliation I can participate in a larger mission of restoration than brings the best to the world, not my worst.

I long for spiritual maturity, the capacity to engage truth in love. I long to realize what God has created me to be, unencumbered by the wounds of my past. I long for the capacity to be love to the world around me. I long to be whole. That is spiritual maturity.