126. Embracing the Binary

Two weeks ago I posted on rejecting the binary - the idea that life is an either or concept.  That life is really lived in the spaces between extremes. The idea is that it is the tension between two extremes provides the very foundation on which we live.  As a Christian my faith needs that binary to create that tension.

          Personally, I see a number of paradoxes, and wondrous contradictions in scripture and in my faith. As Karen Armstrong writes often the point of scripture is for us to be able to see the grace of God; sometime that takes longer than others.  It is understanding those paradoxes and contradictions that allow us to do see that grace.

          Our faith calls us to live a life for which language is inadequate. It is our attempt to simplify our faith that creates extremes, and in doing so makes fools of us.  For me, the life of faith contains certainty about only a few things. 

          Salvation is by grace alone, but we are judged on our actions, and if scripture is to be believed there will be some of us sent away from heaven. Thus salvation is both a gift of grace and a result of behaviour, and yet we ourselves cannot win our salvation. (Salvation from what is yet another discussion).

          It is a similar paradox to sobriety.  While I am unable to follow through on my choice of whether to use or not, I need God.  Yet, the gift of recovery does not last unless I take action.  It is that wondrous combination of the work God and I can do.

          God is incredibly merciful and loving and yet seems be incredibly callous. Making the sun rise on Auschwitz and on those running the gas chambers. Do not misunderstand me, the same freedom granted to us that allowed those acts of horror is the same freedom that also allowed us the acts of courage that intervened. The second world war showed us at both our worst and best. Shamefully, I don’t think we learned anything from it.

          I am called to be gracious and forgiving but also to do so with discernment. To turn the other cheek and yet not cast pearls before swine. I will ignore that the glorious pig is portrayed as a villain. (I like pigs.) I am told to invite strangers in for they might be angels, but am also told that there are those that I should not even sit at the same table as they.

          Personally, I shift from unbelief and that this is utter nonsense to confidence in Christ. On my darker days I think that while there is a God, us Christians have it wrong. On my brighter days there is joy found within my faith. 

          As I said before, contradictions form the fabric of life (different words but same idea). I also know that what was once true may no longer be so. That what I believed as I started my life has now changed. Even the violence of my convictions, passion, has softened. As my perspectives on life change, as my experience grows, as my mental and emotional health shift, so does all of life. As I shift from one end of the spectrum to another.

          But there is something else. As I age, mature seems to be the wrong word, and my perspective changes as well, there I still find God. I consider Thomas, and his doubt, and Christ’s reaction to it. Jesus met him where he lived. And perhaps, for Thomas to have faith, he had to have doubt. For, if I am to be free to choose to be compassionate, I have to be free to choose to be an asshole. I have had times when being compassionate was being an asshole. If I am to be free to believe, then I have to be free to doubt.

          Life is about being in between. Being in between sunrise and sunset. Acceptance and rejection. Love and indifference. Hatred and joy. As the teacher in Ecclesiastes teaches, each has their season. Life is lived in those spaces. The certainty that I see people crave, the desire to live at one end of the spectrum does not allow life and I suspect does not allow God. The vulnerability that is created in being in between, being uncertain, allows God into our lives. It requires faith to live in that balance.

          So this week as I saw a friend of mine making statements I think are total bullshit, I paused and realized that she, like me, is living in the space defined by paradoxes. While she might be at one end, I very well might be on the other.  I have found peace with what I see as being another Christian looking like an idiot.  My prayer for her, is that she is able to give up the comfort of feeling certain, and come closer to God.

          It is only when we allow ourselves the vulnerability of uncertainty and doubt, embracing the binary, that we can shift our reliance to God.