Chapter 1

Talking About Faith: The First Steps

From back pews to back alleys, shopping malls to welfare lines, communion rails to jail cells, believers and non-believers alike struggle every day with both expected and unexpected challenges to the universal quest for security, comfort, opportunity, and meaning—or, in other words, for a decent life in the here and now with good prospects for the future. A common perception among Christians is that they have an edge over those who try to face these challenges without God and without the fellowship of friends who are confident about God’s blessings in this life and in the next. However, even the most conscientious believers have questions and doubts about their faith from time to time. And deep-down, even the most ardently non-accepting of the Christian faith, or of any faith for that matter, share the same yearning that Christians do for a transforming relationship with the ultimate source and vital center of being, power, beauty, justice, and love.

This book is about establishing helping relationships with people for whom and for whatever reason their personal faith or unfaith, and/or their relationship or non-relationship with the Christian community have become sources of distress more than of comfort and uncertainty more than uplift. How to begin the process of relationship-building on both a one-to-one basis and in group contexts is the subject of the present chapter. The first focus is on a mother whose grief threatens to overwhelm her trust in God, and a caregiver who did not let her fears about being up to the job get in the way of listening well and asking the right questions. Then, the discussion moves on to a lively exchange about heaven and hell which broke out in a study group on basic beliefs, and what its able leader did to bring about a deeper appreciation on the part of its members of each other’s personal struggles with the issues.

An Issue with Unanswered Prayer

At the close of Sunday worship one morning, Sue asked if she and I might talk for a few minutes about her present care receiver, Carolyn. Initially, Carolyn had sought support from Sue’s lay caregiving group following the death of her seven-year-old son from brain cancer. “But grief and anger aren’t her biggest issues now,” Sue related with considerable anxiety, “even though they are still very much with her. Prayer is. Carolyn says that she doesn’t know what to pray for anymore, that God hasn’t listened to her for a very long time, that she’s not sure that God ever will again, or that God is even there anymore, if he ever was. I don’t know what to tell her. When Carolyn first confessed her anguish to a close friend,” Sue added, “she received only an angry warning and a forceful directive: ‘Blaming God like this can only make matters worse for your soul than they already are. You must ask God’s forgiveness and then pray even harder for him to listen to you.’”

Help Thou my unbelief

Initially, Sue was deeply concerned that Carolyn’s inability to deal with God’s seeming absence in her son’s distress, and very real absence in her own, had been made worse by her friend’s misguided attempt to help. Sue was right to be concerned, and also to fear that if her care receiver could not get to a more mature understanding of how God does in fact hear and answer prayer, she might no longer be able to experience God’s sustaining presence anywhere in her life. But Sue also knew that the only way Carolyn could get to that understanding would be with the help of someone committed to listen and encourage, not rebut and condemn. No matter how well intended, admonitions to be less contentious, to trust God no matter what, and to pray even harder could only make Carolyn’s turmoil worse.

In order to rescue her from the admittedly very real dangers of her painful questioning and doubting, Carolyn’s well-meaning but anxious friend turned to a time-honored approach to the nurturing of devotional practice in the Christian tradition: exhortation. There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach. Believers who sincerely affirm for themselves the truth of the Christian faith in the company of fellow believers do have a responsibility to hold fast to that truth to the best of their ability in whatever circumstances. And they should expect their churches to hold them accountable for living by their beliefs and for becoming credible witnesses to others, no matter how much inner turmoil they may be experiencing. If they focus more on frustrations in their personal life than on the Author of Life himself, and allow their minds to become malleable to any and every God-denying belief blowing in the wind, what they may need most is a measure of “discipline and reproof” to move them off a wrong track and back onto the right one.

In centuries past, exhortation, including stern reminders of instruction received and consent pledged, represented the church’s primary way of keeping its members bound together in a unity of belief and practice. It also represented the primary way of expressing care for believers struggling with the anxiety and guilt that inevitably accompany the loosening of those bonds. The approach succeeded because the premise on which it rested, the authority and supremacy of the church over its individual members, was taken for granted—if not always enthusiastically—by almost everyone. The premise is still taken for granted in many quarters of Christendom. But it is no longer plausible to people who affirm that feelings are deserving of respect, even when they turn negative toward God, and that there is within everyone the God-given freedom and responsibility to worship God in the light of his or her own experience and best judgment. Although instruction and exhortation have their place in the nurturing of feelings, beliefs, attitudes, and actions in the Christian community, so do good listening, questions offered in an inquiring rather than judgmental spirit, and gentle encouragement of honest searching. It is this latter style of engagement for which Sue had been well trained. As the next section will show, her application of it in her work with Carolyn proved very effective.

Into the dark thicket

One thing that Christians struggling with confusion, uncertainty, and doubt do not need from fellow believers is criticism or rejection for asking hard questions about what they have been taught to believe or doubt, to do or not to do. Questioning is not a sin, and no one should suffer another’s displeasure for engaging in it. Whatever the reason for their questions, people who ask them need and deserve both affirmation of their testing spirit—and even of their testiness—and encouragement to pursue the truth, no matter where the pursuit may seem to be leading them.

As Sue and I talked briefly, it came to both of us that from the standpoint of Christian teaching about God, Carolyn’s understanding of prayer as divine-human interaction and communication, though clearly understandable in the situation she has had to face, is nevertheless too narrowly focused on why God is not answering her prayers as she expects them to be answered. “Ask and you shall receive,” Carolyn has been taught, and now she seems to be putting the full weight of all that she believes about God upon this text alone. (Matthew 7:7; Luke 11:9) Her grief-blurred vision has activated a distorted image of a Deity whose primary tasks are to listen, deliver, and be ready for the next request, a God who must keep on doing things for his followers, especially in times of tragedy and loss, or risk their permanent disaffection. Carolyn’s feelings of disappointment and anger with God are beginning to take on a life of their own, squeezing out her more positive feelings (e.g., of gratitude and joy), and pushing her toward actions (e.g., denying God’s existence entirely, leaving the church) that a short time ago she would not have considered for a moment. More than likely, Carolyn’s painful feelings are related to experiences not only with God, but with other significant people in her life too, and she seems to be displacing some of her disappointments with them onto her relationship with her Creator.

Sue resumed her work with Carolyn, fully aware that she would need to engage her care receiver soon on all of these issues. Wisely, though, she delayed inviting Carolyn to get into them immediately, out of the conviction that her care receiver needed, first, a sense of being accepted and acceptable in spite of the very strong feelings that threatened to overwhelm her faith, and second, affirmation for questioning some of her beliefs in the first place. With Carolyn’s permission, Sue brought the following vignette to her caregiver support group:

Sue: What your friend said to you sounded pretty angry and judgmental. His words must have hit you pretty hard.

Carolyn: They still do, as I guess you’ve figured out. They’re getting to me because they’re so close to what I was saying to myself before I shared anything with him. I shouldn’t be questioning God the way I am, and I shouldn’t be feeling the way I’m feeling.

Sue: Maybe not, Carolyn, but I have a lot of respect and admiration for your doing just what’s got your friend up in arms. I wish you didn’t have to go through the pain you’ve been in, but to me it’s related to doing something important and not something that you shouldn’t be doing.

Carolyn: But if I hadn’t started all this questioning, I wouldn’t be feeling the way I’m feeling.

Sue: Could it be that the feelings came first, that you started asking the questions because you were already feeling let down by God?

Carolyn: Maybe so. But, then, isn’t it wrong to feel that way about God, ever?

Sue: Well, what I’ve been taught is that feelings aren’t right or wrong; they just are. But sometimes I wonder. You’ve shared with me a lot of disappointments, along with a strong faith that you can always count on God, no matter what. Now, it looks like God just isn’t there for you. How could you not feel betrayed and angry and very, very sad?

Carolyn: Sue, I know this sounds a little crazy, but I guess I feel a little better knowing that how I’ve been feeling isn’t something I also have to feel so guilty about. But. . .

Sue: But? . . .

Carolyn: But I’d really like to begin feeling less angry and sad. And I don’t know where to start.

Sue: What about with asking yourself a little more about the feelings themselves?

Carolyn: Like what?

Sue: Well, for one thing, maybe about just who it is that you’ve been feeling all this anger and sadness about.

Carolyn: About God!

Sue: I’m sure that’s true, Carolyn, but I can’t help wondering whether God’s the only one. Let me ask you this: is there anyone else important in your life who’s ever let you down in a big way?

Carolyn: Now I see what you’re getting at. (Long pause) Sue, as horrible as it sounds, for a little while I even felt my little boy let me down.

Sue: For dying.

Carolyn: Yes! (Breaking down in wrenching sobs.)

Sue: (Waiting patiently) I wonder if he’s the only one you feel may have let you down.

Carolyn: I don’t think I’ve ever shared with anyone but my husband what it was like growing up after my father died of a heart attack, with no warning, leaving us in the lurch. I was eleven, Daddy’s favorite, and the oldest of four kids that my mother kept saying she couldn’t handle. I had to learn to handle them real quick. Mom hasn’t gotten over God’s taking her husband to this very day.

Sue: It sounds like you did a lot more than just handle things back then, even when it was so hard accepting that God took your Daddy, too.

Carolyn: Part of me never has. And now, I feel like I’m having to take care of my husband and kids just the way I had to take care of my Mom and brothers.

At this point in the conversation, Sue felt encouraged, and for good reason. The poignancy of Carolyn’s last comment strongly suggested a readiness to deal more openly with the vulnerability of her faith to feelings of disappointment and anger. What helped Carolyn get to this point was her conversation partner’s non-judgmental, interested, and supportive stance toward the very feelings that had caused another of Carolyn’s friends so much trouble. Sue acknowledged but did not immediately challenge Carolyn’s interpretation of her feelings—that they were the result of her Creator’s abandonment—even though she disagreed with the interpretation and wanted Carolyn to know it up front. By resisting the temptation to question Carolyn’s point of view prematurely, Sue put herself in a position to validate Carolyn’s feelings, and to provide her some relief from the guilt and despair that were inhibiting her ability to take a fresh look at her point of view herself.

It took the next two sessions for Carolyn fully to describe the traumatic events that ended her childhood and left her with unresolved mourning that even now spills over into her deepest convictions about God. Having listened patiently as Carolyn poured out long denied pain, Sue then took her cue for opening a new phase of their discussion from something Carolyn said toward the middle of their next conversation:

Carolyn: I guess you’re thinking that I’ve been putting all the blame on God instead of trying to figure out where at least some of it should go instead.

Sue: I don’t know whether blame is quite the word I would use, but, yes, I have been wondering whether what you’ve been feeling might relate more to what your Dad and Mom didn’t do for you than to where God was in all of it.

Carolyn: I really have demanded a lot of God. Since my parents couldn’t make things turn out like they should have, I’ve been expecting God to get everything exactly like I want them to be.

Sensing that Carolyn may now be ready to re-examine some of her beliefs about God and prayer, Sue offered her a specific invitation to begin doing so:

Sue: So let me see if I’m getting just how you may be doing this. If we really believe with all our heart, I think you’ve been saying, God will give us what we ask for in life. And what got you churning is that you do believe this with all your heart, but God hasn’t been holding up his end of the bargain, maybe ever.

Carolyn: You sound a little like you’re making fun of me.

Sue: I certainly don’t mean to—either make fun or sound like I am. You’re hurting too much for that and you deserve better.

Carolyn: I believe you, even if you do make what I’m saying sound kind of like a business deal gone sour. But you know what? You’re right; that’s what I really am thinking and feeling. The only thing I’d add is (Carolyn begins to tear up) . . . that I’m not sure I do believe in God anymore, that there’s anybody out there to make the deal I want about my life.

Sue: Tell me a little more about that deal, would you? For instance, have you always thought that God will give us what we want if we just believe in him hard enough?

Carolyn: That friend I told you about? Well, he and I belonged to the same church growing up and that’s what we heard about life from the get-go.

Sue: Now I think I understand a little better why your friend was so upset with you.

Carolyn: Yeah, but he knows that I’ve never been as sure as he is about the power of prayer, even though I know that believing in it has made him very successful, and that I’ve always wanted to be more like him in my faith. He really is worried about what I’m doing to myself with all these questions.

Sue: Maybe the harshness of what he said to you came more from worry about you than about holding up the right dogmas.

Carolyn: Yeah, deep down I know it did. He got to me, though, just because I want to believe so strongly like he does.

Sue: I think at some level he probably knew that, and so he tried to get through to you the best way he knew how. But why isn’t he getting completely through to you? What’s going on in you that won’t let you fully buy into your friend’s view of how things work?

Working hard to overcome her own impulse to do something—anything—to make Carolyn feel better immediately, Sue continued to give her care receiver the one thing most called for in the situation. She listened, asked questions, listened to the answers, asked more questions, and listened some more, creating in the process a safe place for Carolyn to resolve her distress by reassessing the beliefs that were compounding it. As she expressed it to her group:

Carolyn’s crisis was her own crisis, nobody else’s, and it was about what she did and didn’t believe at the time. What I or anybody else believed wasn’t the issue. My job was to be there, to listen respectfully, and to support her in her struggle, often with prayer. But at times it was all I could do just to sit there quietly and listen. I wanted so much to argue with her! What helped was reminding myself constantly that God would be her guide back to a stronger faith, not me.

Well-intentioned though he was, Carolyn’s friend had only made her spiritual crisis deeper. By contrast, Sue provided just the guidance needed to help Carolyn dig herself out on her own, and in the process come to an even stronger faith. This last, and lasting, phase of Sue’s work began with the question quoted above: “What’s going on in you that won’t let you fully buy into your friend’s view of how things work?” When Carolyn complimented Sue on the question as one she had never thought about, Sue felt certain that her care receiver was now ready to think about a lot of things without her feelings overwhelming her thoughts, and to anchor her faith once again on a solid foundation of sound beliefs. Sue’s certitude was well placed, as the following exchange shows:

Carolyn: To answer the question: I guess I’d have to say that early on I began reading what Jesus said about prayer differently than Shaun (her friend) did. He still thinks it’s all about getting what you want from life.

Sue: And you?

Carolyn: Well, the ask and you will receive stuff is pretty prominent in the Gospels, I agree, but what really got to me was something our preacher said once in a sermon. He said that God will never leave us with more than we can handle, and that he will give us what we need.

Sue: Kind of like giving us only what we can handle, and only what we need?

Carolyn: Exactly. I remember that he was preaching on Luke 11, and when he read verse 13, I almost came out of my seat. God gives us the Holy Spirit when we ask him. That’s what I started praying for then, and that’s what I think I’ve been forgetting to pray for lately.

Sue: So you had been second guessing God on what you could handle, and you were falling back into praying for just the things you wanted, rather than for what God wanted you to have. And got put out when it seemed that he wasn’t listening anymore.

From this interchange on the fullness of what Jesus taught about prayer, Carolyn quickly moved on to acknowledge that she had been wanting something like a “Cosmic Benefits Provider” and that she had reduced her prayer life to a vehicle for sending up only requests and demands:

Carolyn: After all, it’s supposed to start with praise and thanks, isn’t it? I haven’t been doing much of either lately. And my son deserves better; I’m so grateful to God for even the short time we had with him.

Sue: The God that I revere and thank is so much bigger than the God I make demands on.

Carolyn: “Falling down before thee” are the words coming to my mind right now . . . before his holiness.

Sue: Carolyn, what are you feeling about God at this very moment?

Carolyn: (In tears) So much, much more than I can say.

Sue: And about prayer?

Carolyn: (Through the tears) That I just want to adore him and thank him.

Sue: Why don’t we do it together?

Sue and Carolyn ended their session with a mutual acknowledgment that they had reached a point of closure in their formal caregiving relationship. They met two more times to review and celebrate their work together, and to plan for maintaining their very special friendship in the congregation they would both continue to serve.

When Talking about Heaven and Hell Turns Unheavenly

Maggie never saw it coming. “I just can’t keep quiet any longer,” Linda blurted out in the middle of the discussion. “What Sal’s saying about who’s going to heaven and who isn’t just turns me inside out. Sal, how can you call yourself a Christian when you talk like that?” As the study group’s leader, Maggie was surprised by the intensity of Linda’s anger. Then, she was stunned by the outpouring of passion-filled declarations by other group members on other subjects as well. All of a sudden, Maggie’s group was awash not only in disagreements about the particular issue raised by Sal, but also in questions about beliefs that she mistakenly believed had already been dealt with to everyone’s satisfaction.

With effort, Maggie managed to get the group back on track that evening, and brought the meeting to a peaceful close. Over the next week, though, she thought long and hard about how a course on Basic Christian Beliefs could become an object lesson on how not to talk to one another as Christians. A close friend, who frequently teaches the same course in another parish, offered Maggie some helpful observations:

The fact that people felt safe enough to share what they really believe says to me that you’re doing a great job as their leader. And you know what? Their going at each other the way you describe reminds me all over again that though our beliefs are really, really important, sometimes we shouldn’t make them all that important!

This friend has it right: beliefs do matter, but so does the respect that Christians are expected to show one another. It is good that members of Maggie’s group are struggling to anchor their faith on a solid foundation. It would not be good, though, were they to trust more in their beliefs than in the God who is the ultimate source of those beliefs. Christians whose relationships have collapsed into harangues over which beliefs are acceptable and which are not cannot be effective agents of reconciliation between the warring factions of humankind. (2 Cor. 5:19,20; Eph. 1:11; Col. 1:15-17)

The background for the discussion to follow is what the Christian tradition as a whole teaches about the role of beliefs in shaping the attitude and outlook, the thoughts and feelings, and the decisions and actions which characterize the Christian life. In the next chapters, this background will be brought into the foreground of talking about faith. The purpose is to define further a perspective from which friends and caregivers, clergy and lay, can listen and encourage another without getting lost in specific questions of faith and without feeling that somehow they must provide answers for them. But for now, the focus will be on specific exchanges in Maggie’s study group of beliefs about the afterlife. Since there are many people involved in this particular case, a reminder may be in order that, as was so in the previous discussion of the caregiving relationship between Sue and Carolyn, all of the names of Maggie’s group members, including the leader’s, have been changed and potentially identifying information re-worked, in order to respect privacy. However, the issues and the tenor of the discussions to be recounted are presented as accurately as the protection of confidentiality will permit. One aim is to illustrate concretely just why beliefs do and should matter, and matter deeply, to our experience of God and to our relationships with others. The other aim is to bring out the profundity of what Maggie’s friend said, that beliefs are “really, really important,” but not always “that important.” It is easier to remember either the first or the second part of what she said than it is to remember both parts together. And therein lies much of what is incomplete about all of our theologies as expressions of Christianity’s distinctive message and teaching.

Back to the trenches again

This section of the chapter opened in the middle of a troubled discussion among members of a Basic Christian Beliefs study. Linda was mad at Sal over what he was saying about heaven and hell, and others were randomly throwing in concerns about other beliefs. Maggie, the group’s leader, was momentarily floundering in uncertainty about how to regain hold on things. The way that she and the group got back on track is the subject of what follows.

As might have been expected, Sal did not take kindly to Linda’s overly personal attack, “How can you call yourself a Christian?”

Well, Linda, here it is: the Bible says that morality makes a difference and that people who don’t think and act so are going to hell. When you compare this with all the sentimental stuff you’ve been spouting about how God loves everybody no matter what, just who’s the real Christian here?

It was at this point that other members began weighing in. “Hold on, Sal, you’re not listening to Linda at all,” one member blurted out. Immediately and quite forcefully, another lined up with Sal: “Linda, you don’t have the right to accuse anybody in this group of not being a Christian. Who are you to say something like that?” Then a third member, Hank, shattered the last semblance of cooperativeness in Maggie’s group:

Sal and Linda aren’t the only ones in here who aren’t listening to each other. I think a lot of us, along with myself, have been feeling pretty frustrated with our glossing over what we really think about the beliefs we’ve been studying. We’ve been a lot more eager just to get through the book than to put our real issues on the table. A lot of the beliefs we’ve been looking at aren’t at all clear to me, and I need help!

By this time, though, Maggie had regained her composure and began taking constructive charge of the discussion again:

Maggie: Ok, gang, hold on a minute and let’s start working on what’s in front of us one thing at a time. You’re all nodding at Hank as if you agree with what he’s just said, and I want to respect that. In a minute, I’d like for us to begin taking up each question that you have about the beliefs we’ve looked at so far, and not push any further until we’ve done that. First, though, we owe it to Sal and Linda to spend a little more time in heaven and hell! (Laughter from the group.)

Linda: Yeah, I know I acted like the devil’s henchman all right. Sal, I’m sorry for what I said. I guess I was getting too caught up in my own concerns to be open to yours.

Sal: Apology accepted. And I owe you one, too. What was happening in me was a flood of memories about the church I grew up in, that came down hard on anybody who even hinted that there might be some beliefs we ought to study up on and put to use in life. You could believe or not believe anything you wanted, and nobody was supposed to care one way or another. For a minute, you reminded me of some people I went to great lengths to get away from.

Maggie: Sal, it sounds like the issue wasn’t so much what Linda’s own belief is, but the way she came across to you about yours, and what it reminded you of.

Sal: Well, Maggie, I do want Linda—and everybody else—to believe what I’ve come to believe about the afterlife. [Others are smiling with him.] But I’m not happy with myself getting into a wrangle about not being a good enough Christian. It irked me that Linda seemed to be doing that with me and lo and behold, I started doing the very same thing with her.

Linda: Sal, I think I was having the same kind of experience that you were, remembering what it was like growing up in a church that was a lot different from the one I go to now. Back then, you got judged mighty quick when you said the wrong thing about the Bible or anything else that you were supposed to believe without asking questions. I wound up with a lot of fears of being on the wrong side of the pearly gates.

Maggie: Maybe that’s why it’s so important for you that those gates stay open all the time?

Linda: I’ve never thought of it that way, but you know, you’re right. It gets me real upset to think that anybody would be locked out, forever.

Sal: And for me, I guess, not having a gate that can close leaves us here on earth with an “anything goes” philosophy.

By Maggie’s reckoning, this was the interchange that made possible the best discussion that members of her group had yet enjoyed together. My own assessment is that what Maggie said next to the group was just as important:

Linda and Sal seem to be at really different places when it comes to what they believe about life after death. And they’ve shared some very different experiences that seem to lie behind what they believe. But: they’ve shared. They haven’t hollered. I can’t help thinking that there may be a way through their differences short of one “side” giving up in favor of the other. So, group, what do you think? How might Linda and Sal reach a meeting of the minds here?

Thinking about what happened

As members of Maggie’s group struggled with the question that she had just put to them, they followed a process that held them in good stead when they moved on to other questions about Christian beliefs. In Maggie’s words, it was a process of taking beliefs seriously, but not at the expense of respecting and caring for the people who held them, even and especially when another’s belief was seriously at odds with one’s own. With respect to belief about the afterlife in particular, Maggie now thinks that she and the group learned four important things, together. First, they learned that what individual believers make of doctrines of the “last things” (eschatology) depend a lot on what their own formative experiences in the church have been like.

Second, Maggie and the group learned that what people believe about the life to come is inextricably tied to what they believe about the God who authors the whole story of human life, including its future. As the two confronted each other’s very different conceptions of the afterlife, Sal saw Linda’s God as permissive, weak, and unreliable. “How could a God who punishes nobody ever be a Rock of anything for anybody?” he asked. In turn, Linda saw Sal’s God as the angry, vengeful God of tribal religion. “How could an avenging God ever be a God we could worship?” she asked in reply.

Third, they learned that what people believe about the afterlife can affect the credibility that the Christian message has for them about how things work not only in the world to come, but in this world as well. For Sal, believing that grace always vanquishes punishment wholly undermines an all-important teaching of both Christianity and the Judaism that preceded it, the belief that everyone is finally accountable before God for what he or she does and does not do in this life. For Linda, by contrast, what Sal refers to as a respect for moral responsibility represents only a regression to a kind of you-are-what-you-earn mentality, from which Jesus came to save all humanity.

Finally, Maggie and the members of her group learned together that though beliefs about heaven and hell sometimes serve as summary statements of everything else that the Christian gospel has to say about human destiny, there clearly is more than one way to picture what lies ahead of us in the next life, for which human existence on earth is the necessary preparation. Some pictures of the next world seem deliberately conjured to arouse in people an almost immobilizing terror, e.g., of “the wrath to come.” For Sal, it is some such picture that alone motivates people to become true disciples of Jesus Christ. Other pictures seem more oriented to conveying a transfiguring hope, e.g., that “in a twinkling of an eye, we shall all be changed.” (1 Cor. 15:51,52) For Linda, it is the picture of eternal rest and rejoicing, and not of eternal torment, that inspires true worship of God. Even the single most important affirmation of apostolic faith about the afterlife, belief in “the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting,” can serve as both a linchpin of anticipation and a litany of despair depending, by way of examples, upon whether one’s image of life on the other side is an image of nothingness, of torment, or of peace.

What the members of Maggie’s group discovered, as they explored other basic Christian beliefs more fully, is that even those beliefs that the church considers to comprise the absolute bedrock of faith can mean different things to different people at different times. Many people find a discovery like this troubling and even unnerving. But members of Maggie’s group are not among them. As Hank put it: “It’s pretty humbling, and at the same time, freeing, to realize that there’s more to the beliefs I hold, and more to other people’s opinions about them, than I ever realized there could be.”

Reconciling differences of belief

Of all the controversies that undermine religious fellowship and outreach today, one of the most vexing is over the role of beliefs in the life of faith. On one extreme side of the debate are believers who insist that only by holding firmly to traditional teachings and practices can anyone be able to stand firmly for final truth in an age of moral relativism and religious pluralism. On the other extreme side are believers and inquirers who warn that aggressively imposed, non-negotiable definitions of belief and behavior are a principal source of divisiveness in the world today, weakening the credibility of any and all belief-systems to people seeking a deeper understanding of faith and its nurture.

Adding to the hostile tone of this unhelpful debate is the misuse of labels, for instance, conservative / traditionalist / fundamentalist and liberal / modernist / progressivist, to identify allies and denigrate enemies in wars of ideas that threaten to undermine not only Christendom, but Islam and other religious traditions as well. Condescending conservatives gloat that their own fellowships, steadfast in their scriptures, confessions, creeds, and moral code can only prosper, while those of the liberals, alleged to believe and do anything they want, can only decline. Arrogant liberals, fulminating against the oppressiveness of tradition in general, and substituting cultural relevance and social activism for sound theology, summarily dismiss conservatives as narrow-minded, mean-spirited enemies of authentic, inward faith. Shouting loudly and unremittingly at one another, doctrinaire conservatives and liberals hear only each other's rancor, not each other's meaning.

If the earnest students in Maggie’s Basic Christian Beliefs group are any indication, there is a clear way through and beyond controversies like these. The essential first step is honestly acknowledging that our most carefully considered and passionately held theological convictions are still only partial views of the message of the gospel in its fullness. With this acknowledgment shared mutually and humbly, we can then begin to consider seriously that people, whose views of core Christian beliefs are very different from our own, are capable of sharing the Christian message as powerfully, persuasively, and truthfully as we believe ourselves to be. Christianity is healthiest when it affirms human beings’ God-given right to ask probing questions about the meaning and truth of its core doctrines, and when it affirms that there is also a vital center of beliefs to be discovered on the far side of all genuine questioning and doubting. If our churches are to witness effectively to the whole, and not just to part of their respective faith traditions, they will need the best that all of their members together can bring to strike the best balance between holding convictions firmly and encouraging constant reflection on how we can express those convictions most credibly and persuasively. The next three chapters will address specifically how to strike this balance.