Knowing a Person
People are complex. Even our closest friends always extend beyond our field of vision; we know specific people, yes, and yet we are simultaneously in the process of getting to know them better. They are not solvable like an escape room, and we cannot complete someone as we would a video game or a mathematical puzzle.
In fact, there is always an element of questioning in every relationship. We can never have 100% certitude regarding what we perceive or experience in another. People do not offer us an undoubtable form of knowledge.
We can, though, be sufficiently confident in specific others to trust them, and even come to shape some of our life decisions around conversations we have and promises we make to one another. It is not irrational to do so but simply a different way of knowing and deciding than through equations or ideas.
A God who comes to us as a person, and invites us into a personal relationship, will inevitably be one we encounter in ways similar to our other interpersonal relationships. He will be one we never master or complete, whom we may sometimes doubt and question, and yet whom we can learn—over the course of time—to trust and love. Doubt and questioning, in both divine and human relationships, is a feature rather than a glitch.
Practical Steps
We can take a few steps to help our churches become healthier and more helpful places for people like Wesley, Ann, and Scott. Here are five directions to explore:
1) Creating space to share. Having a question or doubt isn’t a mark of indifference but of engagement. But people can easily feel that “this means I don’t belong here any more.” When we create space for people to share their doubts and questions—whether through discussion times at church events or just interpersonally—we are saying to them, “Your struggle belongs here, and this is a part of the spiritual journey, not a distraction from it.” Let’s learn to listen and empathize well.
2) Normalizing wrestling. Not the WWE kind but the faith kind. Ensure that in your public communication and your interpersonal interactions you speak honestly of your own struggles and questions. In Wendell Berry’s novel “Jayber Crow,” a young man lists all of his theological questions to one of his teachers. The unexpected response he receives is not a set of answers but the advice that “you will have to live [these questions] out—perhaps a little at a time.” As we grapple with the God who has revealed himself to us as a person, we too will find ourselves living out the questions. And we can share our experience of that process with those among whom we serve.
3) Engaging with key questions. Are you noticing specific topics and themes that recur among the people you serve? Enter into the struggle on these specific topics. Try to gain a sense of why this question really does trouble people, and seek out the best thinking on the topic. Then maybe do a teaching series around some of those topics. It may be that some of them require a guest speaker, so think ahead on that.
4) Creating space for questions. One church I know holds a Monday night café-style event after each message on a tricky topic, so people can come to discuss and ask questions. If a guest speaker was there on the Sunday, the church asks the speaker to stick around to be part of the Monday event. Another church devotes one Sunday service at the end of each preaching series to a moderated Q&A. In this session, the preaching team can interact with the questions that the series has thrown up for those present. Might something like this work for your church community?
5) Centering Jesus. God has shown himself to us in Jesus. It is therefore in engaging with him that some of our questions are resolved while other unexpected questions come to the fore. One reason why I wrote “Somethingism” was to help both Christians and also those beginning to explore faith to see how Jesus helps make sense of many of our questions, not in a simplistic way but in a way which takes into account the realities with which they are grappling.
Doubts and questions don’t need to lead us—or Ann, Wesley, and Scott—from faith, but are part of the process of learning to grapple with the personal God. One whom we know, yes, and yet one whom we are all simultaneously in the process of getting to know better. We, as people in this process, can be used by God to help those in our congregations who may currently be feeling the tensions more intensely.
