Dave Brisbin | 1.29.17
Just last week I was asked why churches and religions have to “always say that they are right and everyone else is wrong?” Great question from a young person looking at church from the outside in, trying to figure it all out: why the exclusion, the judgment. Why indeed? What is it about us that needs to build tall walls, delineate us from them, make our spirituality, which is inherently mysterious, an absolute certainty. In a word, it’s fear of course, and when we’re afraid that we may not be worthy of acceptance, love, or belonging, then we immediately begin the exhausting task of removing any pain, imperfection, and uncertainty from our near vicinity. We need to be right, be flawless, be certain, because the alternative is just too terrifying or at least uncomfortable to entertain.
Just last week I was asked why churches and religions have to “always say that they are right and everyone else is wrong?” Great question from a young person looking at church from the outside in, trying to figure it all out: why the exclusion, the judgment. Why indeed? What is it about us that needs to build tall walls, delineate us from them, make our spirituality, which is inherently mysterious, an absolute certainty. In a word, it’s fear of course, and when we’re afraid that we may not be worthy of acceptance, love, or belonging, then we immediately begin the exhausting task of removing any pain, imperfection, and uncertainty from our near vicinity. We need to be right, be flawless, be certain, because the alternative is just too terrifying or at least uncomfortable to entertain.
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And in the making of all uncertain things certain, there has to be winners and losers–a zero sum game in which there are haves and have nots, the elect and the damned. But it was not always so in Christian thought, and certainly Jesus never taught so. To begin to understand the transforming message that perfect love casts out fear is the beginning of a journey that will lead to an embrace of mystery and a faith based on trust and not certainty…to a living of life that once again makes friends with the unknown, finds contentment and adventure in an amiable uncertainty that admits that while we don’t have all the answers and may not be right about everything, we know we are loved in such a way that mere clarity becomes a footnote.
