Passionless Certainty

Probably better to start a new post than try to finish the prior one. :) So consider this to be "Faith Crisis? (part 2)"

But before I pick up where I left off.. let me rave just a moment about dinner. Tilapia fillets in a lime and basil marinade, pan-fried in olive oil. Ooo, yummmmy! The marinade wasn't too bad with some sugar snap peas for a vegetable, either. Fish is really remarkably easy.

And! J1 called from California where she has been applying for (and not getting) jobs for two months, with the news that she is starting a new job on Friday! Yay! :) A medical assistant to a neurosurgeon. Huh? Not in the operating room, strictly in his office, but may help with removing sutures and such. Will wear scrubs, even. Apparently the surgeon and his wife are cultured people and liked her art history degree. Go figure..



Okay, so where was I? Something about cognitive dissonance..

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Ok, so I think I know why my Calvinistic theology was clashing with my recent (last 7 years or so) life experience. As I said, it has to do with risk, uncertainty and passionate engagement.

How?

Well.. hang on..

The way I think of it is like this: the whole direction of modernism since the Enlightenment has been toward certainty of knowledge, and a narrowing of what can be considered knowledge, based on how verifiable it is. The more scientifically provable, the better. And that concept over time has ruled out more and more areas of life as knowledge, such as the arts, literature, human emotions, and .. faith. Anything not verifiable didn't count as knowledge. If there was uncertainty about something.. it couldn't be trusted as true. Subjectivity was seen as something negative - objectivity was king.

But the problem with this is that all learning has subjectivity to it. All people process things subjectively. All of living contains some measure of subjectivity. We are not part of the Borg collective, all with a common mind. We are individuals who each bring our own unique perspective to learning. Plus, even in science there is great need for intuition, inventiveness, imagination (all of which are subjective), otherwise new discoveries don't get made!

What certainty does is eliminate risk. It eliminates the risk, in particular, of being wrong about what we know to be true. And yet, even the most secure science (such as Newtonian physics) is eventually shown to be partly in error, or rather .. incomplete.

Einstein used his vivid imagination to picture a person traveling on a beam of light, and in that flash of insight he understood that time is relative, that the universe doesn't have "a" clock ticking uniformly throughout. It has many clocks ticking, all of which are on "local" time, and all of which run at different rates. Astronomers later verified his theories about the curvature of light by gravity, and thus the relativity of time.

But before it was confirmed, he *imagined* it to be true. True enough to stake his reputation on it. That is *not* certainty.. but it *is* confidence - confidence in the validity (if not yet the actual verification) of his ideas.

Whenever we take a risk, a risk that, if we are wrong, could either expose us to bodily harm, financial loss, or ridicule.. we are NOT dispassionate about it. We are nervous, agitated even. Risk brings passion to the forefront! It's like "laying out for a Frisbee", in a way. It's curling away from you, you're not sure you can reach it, but you surely will not if you don't dive for it.

If you risk "going horizontal", you might have a chance to snag it. But you could miss it altogether, look foolish, land wrong and hurt yourself besides. But you try! You take an on-the-spot calculated risk, based on what you *know* about your speed, agility, the direction of the frisbee, the wind conditions, and... who's watching you! :)

But how do you "know" these factors? With certainty? No.. But with some measure of confidence! Enough to take the risk and go for it. That is knowledge with the uncertainty left in. And that also leaves in the passion!

The problem with modernism is that in its quest for certainty, it drove out passion. It also marginalized as untrustworthy almost all of life and how we know most things - by making subjective value judgements based on observation and intuition.

Now to my main point. Finally. ;)

As I have come to view Protestantism, and particularly Calvinism, it seems that it has cooperated with the Enlightenment and modernism in how it prizes certainty and devalues mystery.

Calvinism neatly categorizes people according to God's unconditional election of them, and through His irresistable grace (points U and I of the T-U-L-I-P acronym) assures us that their eternal destiny will come about no matter what.

So.. it lets us off the hook, really, as to evangelism. Heart for the lost? Who me? What for? There are no "lost" that God will not save (if they are among the elect) through whatever means necessary, whether I play along or not. The introvert can stay in his cave.

Also, because of Calvin's notion of the total depravity of man and the preservation of the saints (T and P), it matters little what I do as to effectively righteous living because I can neither earn my way into God's favor, nor can my bad behavior cost me my salvation, so.. who cares what I do, really? If I get into heaven by my fingernails.. at least I'm in. Can't take that away from me. Restrain my behavior? What for? My salvation is certain - there's no risk.

And don't even get me started on the limited atonement.. (L, if you're keeping score.)

Suffice to say that there is a lot of certainty in Calvinism, and also.. very little passion for godly living in community left in it, either. There's little appreciation for mystery, and little tolerance for struggle and doubt. It's part of why expressing doubt and honestly admitting to struggle is not looked upon happily in churches with a strong Calvinist tradition.

So.. my faith crisis, I think, has not so much been with God and who He is, but with a theological system that has (at least in my personal application of it) drained the life from my living. So where have I found my passion, my zest for life? Well, I haven't had much of it lately, but what I've had of it has NOT been in the things of God.

And that's because of how I have been looking at the things of God for the last 25+ years, because of the spiritual screen through which I've seen life. And now my life experiences simply won't let me get away with hiding behind that screen any longer.

It isn't God that I doubt. I simply think I've known Him in a way that is too limiting, and devoid of risk. And with absolute certainty.. there is no passion. There is no faith.

Uncertainty requires faith to act. It requires confidence in what you *know* (yes, even subjectively) to be true. And now the famous quote from Hebrews 11:1 (NASB and ASV used here) about faith is making more sense: "Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen."

Assurance and conviction, yes. Certainty? No.