Thursday, July 23, 2015

Certainty, Not a Lack or Loss of Faith, Causes Many Faith Crises

I believe the expectation of knowledge over acceptance of faith causes a lot of crises. Those crises are not caused by losing faith; they are caused by losing certainly. 

In fact, I believe certainly breeds many crises. A crisis can't occur without the breaking of certainty - and certainty is a lack of faith, in a very real and important way. If we insist on knowing everything, we lose the ability to believe the unseen - and seeing something that doesn't fit our certainty shatters that certainty - since we can't hold on to what is left - that which still is unseen.

Working through a faith crisis is, to a large degree, an acceptance of uncertainty - a willingness to wait and not leap to conclusions (generally the opposite of previous conclusions, as in the example of a completely zealous Mormon who becomes an equally zealous Anti-Mormon).

Working patiently through a faith crisis involves patience and weighing of options (multiple, complex, mixed-up, paradoxical options), and that is opposed to certainly and the expectation of knowledge. It requires faith that an answer might exist beyond the simple, two-dimensional caricatures at the extremes of the spectrum - and that "the answer" might not come in the desired time frame.

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