UNCERTAINTY NEVER ENDS

Alan Ecclestone in The Night Sky of the Lord: "It is a function of the Spirit…to enter searchingly into a man's house, and there to put questions, now like a breath, and now like a wind, to try all things that it finds there, to question their fitness to endure. The process in our own night sky is one of near gale-force winds. It is a delusion to suppose that the disturbing questions will, if ignored, go away, if suppressed, be forgotten, or that by hiding ourselves like naked Adam we escape them. It is no less delusive to expect that we shall get comforting answers to our questionings. To live with our uncertainties is not simply a necessary part of our education at all levels: it is the very truth of faith. To endure the sifting process of interrogation is the hallmark of discipleship."

           

In other words, just because we are people of faith does not mean that we have all the answers, or, if having the answer, understand that answer. We never know for sure, not in this life anyway. As Ecclestone says, it is the Holy Spirit's responsibility, thus a process of our faith, to put the question to us, whatever the question. And for people of faith, the question, the questions, tend to be God-questions.

           

We wonder why, for instance, a good God allows so much evil. We wonder why we have and can have so many choices, so much diversity, so much never-knowing-for-sure, so much uncertainty when what we want as believers is certainty. We want to know for sure, not just believe: know. We want answers here and now.

Perhaps a quote from Michel de Montaigne might help here: "Our life is composed, like the harmony of the world, of contrary things, also of different tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and loud. If a musician liked only one kind, what would he have to say? He must know how to use them together and blend them. And so we must do with good and evil, which are consubstantial with our life. Our existence is impossible without this mixture, and one element is no less necessary for it than the other."

           

Maybe the problem of evil, THE God-problem, is really no problem. Maybe it is simply a fact of existence. To know the good we must know the opposite, at least in this life anyway. That does not mean that the bad, doing the bad, is justified. It simply means that the bad does and always will, in this life, exist, and it is one way that we can appreciate and want to do the good. Maybe, I'm not sure, am rather uncertain.

           

Perhaps one of the roles of the Holy Spirit is to sweep us of off our feet, get our attention, so that we ask those God-questions which, in essence, become people-questions: not why does God allow so much evil but rather why do people allow and do so much evil; not why are there so many choices but, rather, why do we make the choices that we do make.

           

The Holy Spirit forces us to ask questions that we would rather not, forces us to confront problems we would rather avoid, take stock of our personal responsibility which we would rather pass off on to someone else. That may not be very comforting, but it is true. But, then, the Holy Spirit also does not leave us once we are bowled over: the Spirit remains to give us the strength to ask, to answer, to respond, in all our uncertainty