Here's part two of this three-part series. Catch Part 1 here for needed context, and follow up with Part 3. Today, Krish outlines the importance of acknowledging complexity and difficulty in our faith. – Paul
I loved the way my Phys Ed teacher wanted my rough comprehensive school in Brighton to have a rugby (for U.S. readers: think American Football but without the body armor and helmets) team that could take on the well-to-do public schools in our area. I was virtually blind without my glasses on, but I could run fast, and was given the role of winger. Our coach drilled us to fully commit to a tackle: hit the runner with all our might, grab on to their legs, and hold on for dear life. A half-hearted tackle would certainly end up with a boot in the face—so we needed to go "all in or not in at all," he said.
Are we open-minded when facing challenges and complexity?
By deliberately tackling the conundrums and paradoxes in our faith we can help increase the level of confidence that our churches have in Scripture.
Christian leaders need to have the same attitude in ministry. One excellent example is how we engage (or disengage from) Scripture. We often skirt around the difficult parts of the Bible for fear we cannot offer perfect answers. However, because our contact time with our congregations is limited—especially as attendance in many churches becomes less regular—deliberately focusing on the tough parts of the Bible can be a good investment. By deliberately tackling the conundrums and paradoxes in our faith we can help increase the level of confidence that our churches have in Scripture. We can help our congregants experience that all of Scripture really is God-breathed, and model the skills to handle any part of the Bible … even the tough ones.
If we can help our church members move beyond character studies from the book of Joshua or the comforting words of Joshua 1:8-9 and instead wrestle with the paradox at the heart of the book of Joshua—that an all-loving God seems to command genocide. If we can go beyond the simpler lessons of Abraham's story and instead wrestle with the paradox of an all-sufficient God who demands that Abraham kill his own son, then we build resilience into the discipleship of our church members. We don't need to be afraid of the militant atheist attack on Scripture like these famous words of the Oxford Professor Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion:
"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."
Let's learn to model an all-in attitude with the tough questions. We may not know all the answers, but we can give it all we've got and show that difficult questions won't phase us—one key step to fostering anti-fragile faith.
Reactions and duality
I met a Christian nuclear scientist recently. His day job involves travelling around the world advising people on how to get a fusion reaction going—the same reaction that powers our sun and every star in the known universe. I wondered how the teaching in his church relates to his intellectual prowess. Do his leaders support him in his ministry to world-leading scientists?
What kind of support and equipping are we offering people in our local churches? Are we giving them a robust theology that clearly impacts their work? Is our teaching broad enough to include ministry outside the walls of the church?
I recently met a Christian woman who runs the largest online community serving mothers in the UK—she regularly has the prime minister and other political leaders wanting to come speak to her network because of its huge reach. When I asked her how we could pray for her in her vital role she told me that no-one had ever asked her that before. She broke down in tears. What kind of support and equipping are we offering people in our local churches? Are we giving them a robust theology that clearly impacts their work? Is our teaching broad enough to include ministry outside the walls of the church?
We often underestimate the abilities of the members of our congregations. We give them a watered-down, over-simplified understanding of faith which seems geared more towards aspiring couch potatoes than aspiring rocket scientists. But what if rather than dumbing the message of the Bible down into bumper-sticker answers to challenging theological problems, we embraced the richness and complexity of our faith?
We give our congregations a watered-down, over-simplified understanding of faith which seems geared more towards aspiring couch potatoes than aspiring rocket scientists.
Just like advanced physics, some aspects of our knowledge of God are difficult to grasp. We may need to revisit even the most basic assumptions of our own faith in our quest for breadth and depth.
When I was studying physical chemistry at university, I was pretty sure I knew what light was. Then came my very first lecture at university. Professor Kemp, wearing his white lab coat, safety glasses, and sporting a mad-scientist haircut walked into a room full of expectant students in our own gleaming white lab coats and he wrote Schrödinger's (very long) equation on the board. It scared the living daylights out of us as we were told to mentally throw away everything we had been taught about how light worked, and perform experiments that demonstrated contradictory things about light. Rather than take the easy route and ignore or discount one or the other set of data, we were shown that as scientists we were to take the humble route, acknowledge both truths, and accept that our brains are not big enough to understand the paradox they call "wave/particle duality."
Similarly, when we say that Jesus is both fully human and fully God, or that God is one and three, or forgiving and just, it is not just nonsense, or a play on words. We do not need to toss a coin, or hold a debate, or "ask the audience" to decide between them. Both doctrines are true, with neither being compromised.
Learning to explore the paradoxes of God's nature may be mind-bendingly complex, but the end result is that we are left humbly in awe of a God who cannot be fully understood.
Learning to explore the paradoxes of God's nature may be mind-bendingly complex, but the end result is that we are left humbly in awe of a God who cannot be fully understood. Our congregations should be given the opportunity to engage the complexities of theology. They just might learn to recognize that the limits of our understanding can also inspire faith.
Sometimes, there are no satisfactory answers. We can only trust a God whose ways are beyond ours, who we can hardly begin to comprehend. But we refuse to give in too early. In the wrestling with the mysteries of God—finding an anti-fragile faith that is deeper than sheer understanding— they will help us when tragedy occurs. It builds resilience.
Dr. Krish Kandiah is the Executive Director of Churches in Mission at the UK Evangelical Alliance. He lectures in Evangelism at Regents Park College, Oxford University and is a Doctoral supervisor at George Fox Evangelical Seminary. His latest book is Paradoxology: Why Christianity was never meant to be simple.
