Thursday, July 30, 2020 (today’s lectionary)
You can’t have faith without doubt
I’m neither a philosopher nor mathematician, but Pascal’s Wager holds a certain fascination for me. As I understand it, Monsieur Pascal didn’t want to take an illogical risk with his afterlife, so he chose to believe in the Christian God and his heaven, rather than risk spending eternity in hell.
My definitions of afterlife, heaven, hell, faith and belief need a bit of sprucing up. It’s easy for me, having grown up with the Lutheran version of hell and brimstone, to see hell as clearly in my mind as if I’d been there. And heaven too, but forsooth, I have been to neither’s door, let alone walked in.
But the wager did not begin with Pascal. I don’t wonder that Jeremiah followed God right out his father’s door, young as he was. Nor that he took the path to the potter’s factory, listening to God’s GPS give him directions.
Rise up, be off to the potter’s house
And there he was, working at his wheel.
When his work went bad, he began again with the same clay.
Can I not do the same with you, Jeremiah?
Yes, you can! Please do it, Lord. But Jeremiah had a hard time with God. In his writing Jeremiah reversed his course over and over. His doubts overwhelmed his faith, time after time. He became so angry!
But no matter. He struggled back to the path and kept on walking toward the potter’s field every time. He wasn’t taking any chances either. On his better days he might have been singing one of my favorite songs. “Change my heart, O God.”
But those days were few.
Give me a break here! You have seduced me, let me see a little of your love! Jeremiah always seemed to end up at the bottom of a well, angry at his betrayers and God and always, of course, angry at himself most of all.
There just was nowhere else for him to go.
Put not your trust in princes or the sons of men
There is no salvation for you with them
God made heaven and earth
And he made me,
I will choose to sing praise to Yahweh all the days of my life.
What if you’re wrong? The voice in my left ear hisses its discouragement.
What if I am? So what? The voice in my left ear tells the other voice to shut up.
Won’t you look like a fool? St. Paul said you would. This left ear voice grates on me. It won’t stop.
St. Paul was a really smart Christian guy.
What do you know about St. Paul? He’s been dead all these many years!
Jesus knocks on my forehead. When I open up to him, Jesus rescues me from these jarring cymbal sounds, screams of stupid battle in my brain.
Open your heart, my friend
Listen to the words of the Son:
See that fishing net? It’s full of everything, good and bad
Some of the fish are already dead!
But so what?
The angels haul it ashore for us and sort everything into buckets
There’s a bad bucket, a sin bin,
And a good bucket, which is where we want to be!
So I don’t need to sort out my thoughts, and get it right somehow?
Oh for Pete’s sake! Of course not. You can’t do that!
One of my monk buddies, Father Louis nee Thomas Merton said,
“You can’t have faith without doubt.”
That’s exactly right. So don’t sweat the small stuff, David.
Keep waking up in the morning and gettin’ on the road.
Let me take care of the rest.
(Jeremiah 18, Psalm 146, Acts 16, Matthew 13)
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