Commonplacing: Williams on Dostoevsky, 2

Not having much in the way of original thinking lately, I am allowing others to do it for me. Another gem from the Dostoevsky book I am working through (slowly): 

"What [Dostoevksy] does in Karamazov is not to demonstrate that it is possible to imagine a life so integrated and transparent that the credibility of faith becomes unassailable; it is simply to show that faith moves and adapts, matures and reshapes itself, not by adjusting its doctrinal content (the error of theological liberalism, with which Dostoevsky had no patience) but by the relentless stripping away from faith of egotistical or triumphalistic expectations. The credibility of faith is in its freedom to let itself be judged and to grow."

In our conversations about faith recently, Clara and I have joked about how much we had figured out about God and Christianity when we were 19. I had it down. I knew how God worked, knew how this world worked--there was an almost mathematical simplicity to the whole thing. Now, I feel as if I hardly know a thing. The faith is still there, but the proud assurance of my total grasp of it is gone. And I don't think this is a bad thing; I don't lament the loss. Over the years, I have found that I am far worse and Christ far greater than I ever could have imagined then. I have also found this glorious world to be far more complicated and the people who walk about on it far more confusing, interesting, beautiful, and fallen than I could have known then. And that, I think, is growth.