learning and knowing faith

Never accept and be content with unanalyzed assumptions, assumptions about the work, about the people, about the church or Christianity. Never be afraid to ask questions about the work we have inherited or the work we are doing. There is no question that should not be asked or that is outlawed. The day we are completely satisfied with what we have been doing; the day we have found the perfect, unchangeable system of work, the perfect answer, never in need of being corrected again, on that day we will know that we are wrong, that we have made the greatest mistake of all.
Vincent J. Donovan, missionary to Africa

In the local paper a few weeks ago, I read a well-written article by a senior in high school who attends the Christian high school that I attended. She made a case that Christians should not be stereotyped as closed-minded and bigoted. She argued for the validity of her education within the Christian school system as teaching her to think critically.

Reading her article was like going back 20 years for me. Her arguments are familiar and I recognized in her writing a girl very much like myself at that age. I knew I had grown up in a bubble, but I also knew I had asked honest and hard questions. I deeply cared for the world outside of my small circles.

Like her, I believed that it was enough to ask the hard questions and to intellectually and spiritually wrestle with the big questions of life and the world. Twenty years later, I would agree that those hard questions were important. For me, the questions didn’t end after high school. They continued into college and they continued into my work in Europe, and they continued into marriage, parenthood and eventually into seminary.

But it is not only my questions and my intellectual journey that is shaped by words like “worldview” and “doctrine” that have informed me. It has been relationships, experiences and dialogue with people and places that are so radically different than me. I have learned and changed much because I have carefully listened to others and deeply loved some people who were very different than myself.

I once believed it was enough to hold a carefully questioned and analyzed system of beliefs. Saying that I had questioned it and wrestled with it and studied Scripture was enough to validate it. But there are other ways that we must learn. We must learn through relationship with others, particularly those who are different than we are. Our love for them pushes us to ask new questions and see things with new eyes.

Twenty years ago, I would have called this relativism. Twenty years later, I say this is the full spectrum of learning and growing. It has left me with more questions than answers, but it also allows me to live freely. It has taught me to follow the example of Jesus who loved so deeply, prayed so passionately and questioned so intensely. Following him has shown me what it means to hold faith while being open to genuine mutual encounters with others, no matter who they are. And in these encounters, I have been changed. Not in the shape-shifting way I once imagined where I conformed to the “world’s” patterns, but in a faith that has moved away from lists, rules and statements of faith into deeper relationship – with God, with others, with the world.

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