Faith & Change

Christian Wiman:

In fact, there is no way to return to the faith of your childhood, not really, not unless you've woken from a decades-long and absolutely literal coma. Faith is not some half-remembered country into which you come like a long-exiled king, dispensing the old wisdom, casting out the radical, insurrectionist aspects of yourself by which you'd been betrayed. No. Life is not an error, even when it is. That is to say, whatever faith you emerge with at the end of your life is going to be not simply affected by that life but intimately dependent upon it, for faith in God is, in the deepest sense, faith in life--which means that even the staunchest life of faith is a life of great change. It follows that if you believe at fifty what you believed at fifteen, then you have not lived--or have denied the reality of your life.

I don't think Wiman means in any way that the source or grounding of our faith changes--God is not so mutable as to change as we age, Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever--but that the way we experience and interpret faith changes as we go through life. It has to. Otherwise that faith becomes idolatry, a dull imitation of faith by rote, more important to us than growing and experiencing God. If we cling tight-fistedly to our adolescent or childish understanding we might still believe something at the end of our life, but it will not be a faith equipped to deal with life.

As I read this I thought about the failings of the Jesus People that I wrote about a few weeks ago. The type of faith they promoted was inherently based on a youthful and immediate interpretation of Scripture. Acts 2 without Acts 5-28. 

The Problem of Irony

Irony is sort of the default position for a lot of people my age. The artsy television shows and movies are all cloaked in a steady layer of ironic distance. Mostly this is a symptom of the times. We are afraid or reticent to commit to wholehearted belief in anything for fear that it will crumble around us. And I don't think irony is a political response in the same way it was in the modernist era. I feel like today ironic detachment is just as prevalent in conservative-minded folks like myself. And in moderation I am quite sure that irony can be a fine response to a fallen world--better, at least, than depression or mania. 

But I feel hampered by my irony as well. Almost embarrassed to commit to something for fear of being found too zealous. This, of course, drives the hipster crowd to always seek new things and new experiences so that they stand out (together) from whatever crowd they don't like. But it drives me to be withdrawn.  

Last night I was walking with Clara and Owen and I was telling my wife about this running training book I have been reading. I have finally committed to getting back into shape and so I bought a book Amazon by a nutrionist and trainer that I think is solid and I committed to doing whatever he says in the book. And it has been exciting and fun to get back into shape. I was telling Clara about the life changes I have been making specifically in my diet and how great it is for a morning run to once again be my default position, when all of a sudden this little voice in the back of my head piped up that wasn't it a little silly to be so excited about three weeks of eating healthy and working out? "You sound like a couch potato who just completed their first 5k." 

And another thought responded, "what an ugly attitude that is." And I realized that the need to detach constantly, to subtly berate others through wordplay, is incredibly ugly. Not to mention unfulfilling. The happiest, most fruitful times of my life have not been the times when I have been smug and ironic and critical, but the times when I have been devoted to a cause. Now of course you can be smug and devoted to a cause or critical and devoted to a cause, but too often irony so frees us from anything binding that we (I) can become completely detached from anything concrete. My domestic life frees me from a lot of that, but it is still the battle I wage in my mind. 

Which is to say, I want to be different. I want to believe again, and live again in belief. Irony is a great response to a world governed by Chaos and destined for Misery, but that is not the world I as it is. The world as it is is a work of art, crafted by a sovereign Creator. And the end of this world is Love. And my response to this work of art is to live in it abundantly, not to sneer at it from the gallery.