One of the givens of having faith in God is that the more we think we understand our God, the less we do. Even more and perhaps more frightening is that the stronger our faith becomes, the stronger our doubts. On the other hand, the more we have our God locked into a box, clearly understood and clearly defined, the less likely we are to be correct. Having faith does not mean we have all the answers any more than it means that we understand the God in whom we place our faith.
Rabbi Daniel F. Polish in an article in America put it this way – “This is a most challenging kind of faith: to live with a God we cannot fully understand, whose actions we explain at our own peril. This God is at the center of our lives. This may be a rockier path to walk than that of either simplistic absolutism or of atheism, but it is the faith of honest men and women, a faith defined by spiritual humility.”
The opposite of spiritual humility, of humility in general, is pride. It is easy to stand on the sidelines and determine who is the one who is humble enough to admit uncertainty about God and God’s will and God’s ways and who is the one so wrapped in his or her own sense of certainty that pride has come to the fore. The truth is that pride often masquerades as humility just as the desire for power wraps itself in fine theological clothing – on any side of any issue, especially about God.
One of the glories of the Episcopal Church, of true Anglicanism, is its theological and sociological breadth. Our sign says “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You.” Notice, there is no asterisk on the sign and no small print at the bottom naming those who are not welcomed. Liberals and conservatives and everyone in between, high church and low church and those of no church are welcomed to become part of us. We are all sorts and conditions of people, which is how God created us.
None of us, I repeat, none of us, no one of us, has a lock on the truth or a lock on God. And as much as we sometimes think we come close to understanding God, in reality we haven’t a clue. We make our God into our personal image and likeness and then determine that those who have a different image and understanding to be heretics and to not be welcomed among us. We even encourage them to go their separate ways or we deliberately (and sometimes officially) separate ourselves from them.
That may sound harsh but how else do we explain why there are so many denominations even in Christendom? None of this is pretty and all of it is sad. But it all stems both from our trying to get a handle on the God we worship and profess to follow and obey and the insidious nature of pride that drives us to either deny God exists or claims to understand what God thinks and wants.
As Rabbi Polish asserts, having faith in God often, if not always, means walking a rocky road. We trip over ourselves, over our certainties and uncertainties, over our pride, even over one another. It means being humble enough to admit that we’ll never get everything right and never, ever understand our God and that that’s okay with God.
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