Here's Part 3 of Krish's series. Be sure to read Part 1 and Part 2 for needed context. And chime in here in the comments: what will it take to foster anti-fragile faith in your ministry? -Paul
As a child of the 1980s, it was hard not to want to be Harrison Ford. After all, he landed the dream roles in two of my favorite movie series: Han Solo (clearly the coolest person in the Star Wars universe), and of course the Archaeology Professor adventurer: Indiana Jones.
One of my favorite scenes from the finest of all the Indiana Jones movies; Raiders of the Lost Ark, shows the Nazi villains transporting the Ark of the Covenant in a wooden crate with a Nazi insignia. When the camera pans out and the soldiers leave the Ark alone in the cargo bay, we see the Swastika on the outside of the crate being burned away from the inside. The point? The holy contents were bigger than the crate, the power of God greater than any badge. It made a deep impression on me. I think that director Stephen Spielberg was indicating that God's power does not belong to any nation. God does not fit into a box.
Do we know what's really important in discipleship?
Sometimes, Christianity seeks to systematize God—with pre-packaged answers to every conceivable question or situation.
God cannot and will not be boxed in by our own specific cultural or political preferences. He will burn his way out. But sometimes, Christianity seeks to systematize God—with pre-packaged answers to every conceivable question or situation.
Christian leaders often tell us exactly which political party to vote for, how to discipline our children, who should be the wage-earner in a household, why it is wrong to save the planet, which baptism is the only baptism that counts, when and where to pray and which prayer to use when we face difficulties in our lives, how to respond to our neighbor's doubts about the resurrection, which organizations we should support financially, and countless other subjects.
But buying into a Christianity that comes as such a complete and definitive lifestyle package is like building a house of cards. When one tenet falls, everything collapses. Disciples may end up with their entire faith being compromised over an issue that is relatively minor. Augustine put it well: "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity."
If we never allow our congregations to explore and struggle through these practical and theological issues, they won't have the skills to reconcile their faith with their everyday life.
But still, the key element of discipleship is applying faith to the specifics of life, isn't it? Of course. But we want them to ask the questions about how they should vote, and bring up their children, and pray, and reach their neighbors. That builds resilience. If we never allow our congregations to explore and struggle through these practical and theological issues, they won't have the skills to reconcile their faith with their everyday life.
So how can we encourage them to ask such questions, without falling into the pastoral trap of spoon-feeding them answers that we have crafted? How can we encourage them to be open-minded without (as GK Chesterton famously put it) being "so open-minded that [their] brain falls out?"
Exploring the paradoxes and tensions of Scripture can help us. We're forced to distinguish between the foundations of our faith, and things that can be held loosely. These secondary issues will cause tension, as we wrestle not only with our own understanding and application, but as we accept others who may take a different view. But a key step in getting specific in our discipleship means helping people differentiate between essentials and non-essentials.
How will we relate to questions?
Even if we do not subscribe to prepackaged Christianity, it can still be a temptation for us to turn our congregations into clones, our disciple into a "mini-me." We feed them the same books, courses, and festivals that we enjoy. Secretly, perhaps we expect little clones of us to appear at the other end of the production line.
We teach this way without even realizing it. Let's think about our last sermon—did we spend more time giving good answers or encouraging people to ask good questions? Just as a good math teacher withholds the answers to encourage students to work problems out for themselves, maybe we should think twice before shortcutting processes of development. After all, struggle builds resilience.
How we model questioning will shape those around us. What do you mean by that excellent question? What are the possible answers? What are the implications of that? Is this really what Scripture teaches? To what extent is that biblical rather than cultural? What would it mean if I took that seriously in my life? Why is that difficult for you? How does this connect with what the Bible says elsewhere? What would you say to somebody who took the opposite view?
Rather than giving handouts and hand-me-downs when it comes to theology, what if we encouraged wrestling and wrangling?
The paradoxes of Scripture and theology often force us to answer questions with questions. Life doesn't come with pat answers. When Job came to God with the age-old question of the suffering: Why?, God refuses to answer him, despite letting future readers in on the secret of Satan's wager. Instead God asks question after question forcing Job to think hard about whom he was trusting in the middle of his tragic circumstances.
Rather than giving handouts and hand-me-downs when it comes to theology, what if we encouraged wrestling and wrangling? We'll see more disagreement. We might also see stronger Christians.
Can we struggle openly with God?
I have heard people bragging about their marriages who claim, "We never argue." This kind of claim always makes me nervous. Are these couples really connecting with one another? In any relationship it is as we connect that we inevitably clash—but those clashes help us know one another better, and connect more deeply.
It is when God surprises us that we know that we are connecting with him not as a primped Stepford god, or a puppet-deity who just does what we want, but as someone we're in a relationship with.
I remember a conversation that took place during one of our family Christmas gatherings. One of my female relatives revealed that she left the shower running while she applied her hair and body products. Her husband (of nearly 60 years) was outraged at such a waste of water. He always turned off the shower between rinses … and assumed everyone else did the same. We had to laugh.
It is when God surprises us that we know that we are connecting with him not as a primped Stepford god, or a puppet-deity who just does what we want, but as someone we're in a relationship with.
We long to see our church members having real encounters with the true and living God. By honing in on the parts of our relationship with God that challenges us the most, we connect with him and become prepared for real life. We learn relational resilience with God.
By honing in on the parts of our relationship with God that challenges us the most, we connect with him and become prepared for real life. We learn relational resilience with God.
For example: the Bible is full of incidents where God's people clash with him. We're presented with awkward apparent paradoxes in his character. In Scripture God is both terrible and compassionate; offering mercy to Israel but genocide to the Canaanites. We meet a God who is both distant and present—calling the Israelites out of Egypt to be with him, but keeping his distance in the Holy of Holies. Jonah, Habakkuk, Moses, David, Peter, and others complain to God when they don't understand him.
Unless we are able to wrestle through these paradoxes with God and our church community, our faith will become stunted, warped, or half-hearted. But it may be that as we wrestle, that our understanding of who God is grows, and our relationship with him is strengthened.
If we are going to see people thrive in their spiritual lives we need to help them go beyond the honeymoon period and enter a mature faith with a living God. We want to help them become open minded about discovering new depth and breadth in their faith, through wrestling with good questions rather than settling for easy answers and through testing the limits of their own cognition, delighting in encounters with the mystery of our complex God beyond.
And we might just find that our own faith is made more "anti-fragile" in the process.
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.
