Dear Tristan: on faith

Dear Tristan,

This letter is the most important of all the ones I’ve written so far and also the most difficult. I want to write to you about God, about faith, about a life of spirituality.

And I have absolutely no idea what to say.

People who know me well, who have read these letters as I’ve written them, have probably been wondering where God is, where my faith is. I haven’t spoken of him much, except in passing. And honestly, the reason is because I don’t really know how.

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know God. My mom – your grandma – says I prayed and made a profession of faith when I was just two years old. That’s way before my conscious memory picks up, so I don’t remember that day. All I know is that I’ve always known who God was, and that he loved me, and that he sent Jesus for me, and that I get to spend eternity with them.

But that simple message of faith in the creator of the universe easily got obscured as I got older. We went to lots of different kinds of organized church gatherings, but I learned basically the same thing from all: be good. God wants you to be good. Here are the list of things you must “do” and the things you must “not do” in order to be good. (oh and by the way being good doesn’t get you into heaven but it’s super super super important, like the most important thing, except of course having faith in God, but faith doesn’t mean anything unless you’re also good, so you’d better get your act together and do all the right things so that you can be good.) A perfectionist to the core, I internalized the message very well and before long knowing God became pleasing God which became I’m a miserable failure at this pleasing God thing which became condemnation condemnation condemnation.

Let me tell you, if anyone tries to convince you that the message of the Gospel has anything to do with condemnation, run RUN far away.

So I lived my early years in this condemnation, combined with this weird view of God that treated him like a vending machine…put in the right amount of change, get a certain result. Do the right thing, get blessed.

When I lost my first love after trying so hard to “do the right thing”, I started asking questions. I felt like God had failed me (though I later came to realize that it was the things I’d been told about God that had failed.)  I started doubting. I told God that if he was real, he had to come for me – I wasn’t going to go looking for him anymore.

Since that day I have never really stopped doubting. I have studied apologetics and philosophy. For every answer there is a new question. The truth is, I still have doubts today. I pray, with the man at Jesus’ feet, “Lord, I believe…help my unbelief.”

I don’t know what to share with you about faith, because I don’t have an unwavering confidence that everything I believe is true. I can’t see God, Jesus could be just a historical figure, and all the “proofs” of God only raise more questions. Sometimes I wonder if we really are making the whole thing up. And yet I can’t walk away, as I have known people to do.

Because in that dark moment, when I told God I wasn’t looking for him anymore, when I stopped reading the Bible and stopped “trying” to be a Christian, God came. I can’t explain how, really. He sent me words – words that forever changed my view of who he was, that helped me to see that he was not a vending machine but rather a lover. He spoke to my heart rather than to my heart. I felt like I had no faith, but I think that dark time was actually the beginning of faith because I had the guts to say “If it’s true, God won’t leave me here alone.”

But I think it’s called faith because there is also uncertainty. If there were certainty, it would not be faith.

Yes, faith should be based on some sort of evidence. But there is no evidence so overwhelming that it makes faith unnecessary. (If such evidence existed, there would be no unbelievers.) So for me, on an average day, I measure my faith in percentages…I think it’s 60% likely that God exists and that Jesus was his son and 40% unlikely. On a good day it might be 70/30 and on a bad day…well….maybe 50/50 or even 40/60.

Some days I am just not sure.

And that scares me a little, because I don’t know how to share with you this God I know, and yet this God that I’m sometimes not even sure exists. I don’t know how to teach you about him, on those days when I myself question him. And yet he is the most important thing to me, the person who first loved me and showed me what love was, the person who showed me that relationship is the most important thing, the person who gave me freedom, the person who provided the cure for my sin-disease so that I could spend eternity dancing with him. He is the person upon whom every concept in these letters is based, the person without whom none of it makes much sense.

I used to know everything, until I didn’t. And then I realized that the only thing I really can hang onto, the thing that makes more sense than any of the rest of it, is the person of Jesus Christ. I took a philosophy class in college on “the historical Jesus” – examining who he was and what his life was really about. While some things in that class caused deeper doubt in me, when all was said and done I realized that this is where my faith rested. Not on some “ontological argument” or other round-about ways of saying “there must be a God because…”

No, my faith rests on a person. A real person who lived, and commanded much attention, and died. Yes, there are details of Jesus’ life that are debated by scholars. But for me personally, the way of explaining his life, his following, his death, and the events following his death that makes the most sense is to say that he was the Word of God made flesh.

I don’t know much anymore. I can’t lay out long and complicated “proofs” for my positions like I used to be able to. I have lost the bravado, the certainty. But I have gained Christ. Because, you see, God doesn’t ask us to be 100% sure. He just asks us to pray…

Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.

And so I think that is what I will share with you. I will share my belief, and my unbelief. I will let you ask questions and not demand certainty from you that I don’t have for myself. I will say honestly “I think this is the most likely thing.” I will tell you about the person I have come to know, this person that was born as a baby (like you!) that we celebrate on Christmas day, this person who came to lead us into relationship with God as Father.

And I hope that one day you pray with me,

Lord, I believe.
Help my unbelief.

love,
mama

other letters in this series:
on failing to live up to ideals
on curiosity
on intrinsic motivation (and why we won’t do sticker charts)
on disagreements and choosing a different path
on being open
you are not what you do
on perspective taking
on the most important thing
when the going gets hard
on falling in love
on feelings and needs
on empathy
on differentiation and self-validation
on insecurity
on expectations
on becoming
on respect
on requests and demands
on authority and power
cherish the moment
on hope, desire, disappointment
on choices
on addictions
on words

Daddy’s letters:

I love you
I’m sorry
Be Yourself
Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be
Be Powerful
Be…just be
Do it for you
On Rewards and Punishments
Choose Wisely
Hold onto Yourself
Cultivate Empathy
tell me what you feel
Be Differentiated
an invitation
no expectations
have regrets
what do you want?
why do you want?
I hear you
seek the truth
how do you know?
imagine that
what’s your story?