I've never seen an angel, but I'm trying to believe

[her_own_monster]

Kierkegaard. Is. AMAZING.

He underscores, in Fear and Trembling, that faith isn't as easy as it seems. I never considered, in any of my experiences with Christianity, that maybe faith isn't something everyone who considers himself "Christian" has automatically (or vice versa, I guess), or just how prevalent a theme that struggle is in scripture.

Comments

[benjaminmann]

you should perhaps talk to stella some more about this. she understands the whole cusp-of-believing thing much, much better than i do. (i got hit by a thunderbolt. that is a different kind of difficulty.) you would also do well to talk to walter sterling. if you've never had him for a class or anything, just tell him that ben mann sent you and you'll at least have a lead-in. mr. sterling seems to me like someone who maintains his faith despite major difficulties.

with those recommendations in mind, let me give you my very off-the-cuff take:

at the point when not having faith becomes harder than having it, you will begin to have it. this is not some fluffy mystical process that you have to sit around waiting for, either. as you turn the thing over in your head, and perhaps talk to people about it... well, what happens will happen. i do not understand how a person becomes a believer, nor why some people come very close but end up noncommittal or still skeptics.

there are difficulties in believing that it's all true, but there is a point at which they are outweighed by the difficulties of believing that it is not. there is a balance that tips, but how and why it tips toward belief are things no one understands on this side of the glass. i'm saying this because i think that faith is a gift we have to be open to, not a state into which we bring ourselves. God gives-- we only accept. it is hard, but only because we have got ourselves into such a state of resistance.

everyone's process of accepting, of ceasing-to-resist, is different-- and yet the Truth who is offered, Jesus Christ, is in every case the same, 'yesterday, today, and tomorrow.'

i had to cease resisting and accept because of the questions that kept tripping me up: if there is no God to redeem the world, why keep going? if this is not the story of the redemption of the world, what kind of strange story is it? if God has not saved the world in *this* way, what other and more striking way would He use? as these questions became harder and harder to answer, a profession of faith seemed more and more inevitable. this was what the scales-tipping looked like for me.

and yet, one can always turn around and walk away from it. there is a strange freedom alongside the seeming inevitability (you see why i say we don't grasp this process?). cs lewis has a good description of it:

"The odd thing was that before God closed in on me, I was in fact offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice.... I became aware that I was holding something at bay, or shutting something out.... I felt myself being, there and then, given a free choice. I could open the door or keep it shut; I could unbuckle the armor or keep it on. Neither choice was presented as a duty; no threat or promise was attached to either, though I knew that to open the door or to take off the corslet meant the incalculable."

so, there's a start. in the meantime i'll mull over the question of other writers who present the complexities of trusting God. thomas merton and t.s. eliot come to mind... and i think that aaron weiss of mewithoutYou writes unparalleled lyrics on the subject. but you already knew that. ]]

[her_own_monster]

That IS a start, and a good one. I like the way you put it in the last line: "the problem of trusting God." That seems to sum it up.

This is very well-said, and I'm sorry I don't have a good response, except to say that it's given me something to think about :)