COEXIST V - Ideas on Faith

No matter what life throws my way I always see it through the eyes of my faith. I want to understand the bigger picture, the reason. I'm always asking God WHY, WHY, WHY? Then I wonder if asking WHY is the antithesis of faith. I am addicted to WHY, but like an alcoholic I must accept what I cannot understand or change. I do believe that I am not supposed to know everything. If I did, I guess I would be God! Albert Einstein said, The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

I get carried away with the meaning of everything that happens instead of just accepting that life is sometimes frustrating and random. It would be arrogant to suggest that I could figure it all out. The tragedies of the world, the unnecesary suffering, the innocent children I see everyday already scarred by the life they've been given - there is no explanation except that God gave the world and His children free will. And we've screwed it up royally.

This is an excerpt from a Time Magazine article entitled: My Problem with Christianism by Andrew Sullivan. It begins with: Are you a Christian who doesn't feel represented by the religious right? (Yes, I most definitely am.)

And there are those who simply believe that, by defintion, God is unknowable to our limited, fallible human minds and soul. If God is ultimately unknowable, then how can we be so certain of what God's real position is on say, the fate of Terri Schiavo? Or the morality of contraception? Or the role of women? Or the love of a gay couple? Also, faith, for many of us is interwoven with doubt, a doubt that can strengthen faith and give it perspective and shadow. That doubt means having great humility in the face of God and an enormous reluctance to impose one's beliefs, through civil law, on anyone else.

BINGO! I leave all the judging and decisions in God's capable hands. I've turned into a sort of "I'm OK, You're OK" person and if you're not, it's not up to me to decide that. To me, that is the meaning of COEXIST.

Sullivan goes on to say : As a Christian, I dissent from the political pollution of sincere, personal faith. I dissent most strongly from the attempt to argue that one party represents God and that the other doesn't. I dissent from having my faith co-opted and wielded by people whose politics I do not share and whose intolerance I abhor. The word Christian belongs to no political party. It's time the quiet majority of believers took it back.

AMEN!

Faith is not knowing it all, not understanding it all, not judging those whose shoes we have not walked in. Let go and let God.