This video is included on the brand new DVD/download Recycle Your Faith Discussion Starters Volume 1 – Questioning the Answers. Be sure to check out all three volumes now available in the Recycle Your Faith Store.
How have people responded to your questions about faith? How would you have liked them to respond?
Updating…
Jim & Joy Schroeder are a part of Emerging Desert in Phoenix, Arizona.
I just watched “A Serious Man” last night. The questions brought forth in that movie remind me of the questions they’re addressing. Oh that we could all be this brave.
Susan – I LOVED “A Serious Man” for those reasons!
I’m currently reading the book Monkey Town: How a Girl with All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions by Rachel Held Evans. I love it because even though I don’t agree with everything she’s saying, it encourages people to ask questions about your faith, even the questions you have answers to. And even better, it shows how just because you’re questioning the answers, it doesn’t mean you are going to leave God. If you are interested in what this video is talking about, you may want to read this book.
If I am wrong about THIS what else might I be wrong about? Very scary to some. Some people need their entire natural life well organized and need answers and places to assess blame–for this type of person, question-asking is terrifying. I personally like the process. When I submit to it, I come out stronger and more assured in what i do believe. I am doing that with Islam right now. What is it, how is it different, why is it attractive to many? I am coming away more assured of the fact that I really really dig Jesus and Mohammad isn’t in the same class.
nice job Craig, K
I like you, Jim and Joy Schroeder. Rock on.!
I liked the way you said you felt alone when the person wouldn’t go with you because they were afraid. I used to be surrounded by a lot of people who were very afraid of a number of things. Now I’ve surrounded myself by a lot of people who are generally hardly afraid of anything. There was a time in between those two situations when I felt some aloneness too–I had chosen to leave my old community, and I was in the process of building my new community. =)
Thank you Benjamin ady! I appreciate you watching our clip and taking the time to leave your thoughts! I am a little disappointed that I still feel adrift on the outside…but it definately is a more honest place!
Joy,
I felt a disappointment too. Mine was about this belief that I had that somehow, maybe, in some universe, the people by whom I was surrounded would change in the ways I was changing and thus still be community for me. Now I’ve realized that communities are *massively* more difficult to change than individuals, and the truth was that my old community never was going to change–they still haven’t ten years on, just as they hadn’t during the 11 years I was there. The only way for me to fully embrace and solidify the changes I was making was to leave them and find my new community. =)
What if your sense of being adrift on the outside could become a sense of being adrift on the *inside* of your new community, which is even now gradually coalescing around you and your awesome honesty which is only going to attract other honest people?
Which is worse? Being secure and safe in your misguided ‘truth’ because you don’t question it, or fearing the unknown as you bravely journey into it with eyes wide open?
I agree with Joy, I think honesty is more helpful.
Sure, it has its price–but honesty and integrity isn’t as pricey as the dishonesty of burying your quest for understanding.
But, the aloneness is a very real hazard.
All of my questions eventually end up being answered “You’re obviously having a struggle with your faith and having these doubts/questions will allow the enemy an opportunity to lead you astray.”, or “If God wanted us to have all the answers, He would have given them to us. We just need to have faith.” Of course having faith has still not answered any of my questions so clearly that’s not ‘the’ answer. I’m quite over being told that questioning certain things show a lack of faith. I would also like to hear “I really don’t know the answer to that.” I agreed with everything Joy & Jim said in this video. I love that this is something they deal with as a couple because it’s usually one person in the relationship with questions who can’t even look to their partner for support. I often feel as if people go overboard throwing scriptures, prayers and accusations at those of us with questions because that’s much easier to do than to look inward and face the possibility that they may have a few doubts of their own. It used to be a really lonely place for me when I could not find anyone who shared, or would admit to sharing my doubts. Since I’ve established my own personal relationship with God, that for me means its ok to disagree with Him and the church on some things, I rarely ever feel that loneliness or guilt.
As long as “God” is understood as an object separate and apart from us, there can be no “personal relationship” because we can only come to know God as we more fully seek to know ourselves. I really believe it has to be that way because God and we are so intimately intertwined. “God” is not a noun. “God” is a verb. God IS unconditional love. God becomes personal to us when we discover the transforming power of unconditional love in our human lives. Faith has never been about finding answers. It’s always been about finding and living unconditional love. Just a thought…