Sunday, July 09, 2006
The Box
This is a meditation I wrote for this evening's moot service on doubt:
It used to be that there was an answer for everything. It was simple. I believed x, y, and z, and as I went about my business, the world would prove to me that God exists, and that x,y and z were not in fact a, b, and c.
My mind is a big cupboard. And in that cupboard, there are lots of shelves. However on the highest of the shelves there’s a box. It’s a fairly new looking box. I bought it quite recently. And on the front of it, in black felt marker pen, I’ve written the words “to deal with later”. Right now, that box is overflowing. I can’t get the lid on any more. In fact stuff is pouring out and threatening to engulf the rest of the cupboard. I can’t find anything. You see, it’s fine to have a box marked “to deal with later”, but I didn’t deal with it later.
So now, what do I do with this box? My first option seemed like the easiest and the best. I can throw it away and everything in it. Every time something new comes along that I can’t deal with, everything that threatens my certainties can go straight in the bin. All those annoying conversation with atheists. All the questions I want to ask about why God does this, and why Christians do that. All the times that I’ve said something to someone else that I believed in with all my heart, only to watch them crumple under the weight of my expectations. They can all go in the bin, and the nice men from the local council will take them away every Tuesday. And the liberals. They can go in Room 101. That way, life goes on as if nothing has changed. In the words of The Matrix: “Take the blue pill and I can wake up in my bed the next morning with no memory, as if nothing has happened and life can carry on as before.”
Or I can take the other option.
The other option is to get a stepladder, get up to the box and get it down off the shelf. I can then sit on the floor, with my legs crossed, and go through the box, item by item, and, with the help of a lot of prayer work out how to deal with all those things one by one, one piece at a time. When I get stuck, I can go and look for a fellow traveller who has similar questions, and ask them if they will sit with me, pray with me, and hold my hand as I go through the box and help me work out what to do with those things.
And when I get to the end of sifting through the questions, or if I get too tired, or too upset, or I might find that actually there’s still some things that I can’t deal with, I can put them back in the box, the box can go back on the shelf and I can return to them when I have regained my strength.
Because in that box are all my questions about life, all the odd things that God has done that don’t make sense, all those experiences that I have had that Christians might frown at, all the beliefs that bent and broke before their guarantee expired, all the questions that have been put to me by well intentioned people who by their very questioning have made a deep part of me feel lost. The idea that God may not exist. The idea that God might exist. In fact all the things that by their very nature make life brighter, more beautiful, more hopeful, more real. And that’s just for starters.
It used to be that there was an answer for everything. It was simple. I believed x, y, and z, and as I went about my business, the world would prove to me that God exists, and that x,y and z were not in fact a, b, and c.
My mind is a big cupboard. And in that cupboard, there are lots of shelves. However on the highest of the shelves there’s a box. It’s a fairly new looking box. I bought it quite recently. And on the front of it, in black felt marker pen, I’ve written the words “to deal with later”. Right now, that box is overflowing. I can’t get the lid on any more. In fact stuff is pouring out and threatening to engulf the rest of the cupboard. I can’t find anything. You see, it’s fine to have a box marked “to deal with later”, but I didn’t deal with it later.
So now, what do I do with this box? My first option seemed like the easiest and the best. I can throw it away and everything in it. Every time something new comes along that I can’t deal with, everything that threatens my certainties can go straight in the bin. All those annoying conversation with atheists. All the questions I want to ask about why God does this, and why Christians do that. All the times that I’ve said something to someone else that I believed in with all my heart, only to watch them crumple under the weight of my expectations. They can all go in the bin, and the nice men from the local council will take them away every Tuesday. And the liberals. They can go in Room 101. That way, life goes on as if nothing has changed. In the words of The Matrix: “Take the blue pill and I can wake up in my bed the next morning with no memory, as if nothing has happened and life can carry on as before.”
Or I can take the other option.
The other option is to get a stepladder, get up to the box and get it down off the shelf. I can then sit on the floor, with my legs crossed, and go through the box, item by item, and, with the help of a lot of prayer work out how to deal with all those things one by one, one piece at a time. When I get stuck, I can go and look for a fellow traveller who has similar questions, and ask them if they will sit with me, pray with me, and hold my hand as I go through the box and help me work out what to do with those things.
And when I get to the end of sifting through the questions, or if I get too tired, or too upset, or I might find that actually there’s still some things that I can’t deal with, I can put them back in the box, the box can go back on the shelf and I can return to them when I have regained my strength.
Because in that box are all my questions about life, all the odd things that God has done that don’t make sense, all those experiences that I have had that Christians might frown at, all the beliefs that bent and broke before their guarantee expired, all the questions that have been put to me by well intentioned people who by their very questioning have made a deep part of me feel lost. The idea that God may not exist. The idea that God might exist. In fact all the things that by their very nature make life brighter, more beautiful, more hopeful, more real. And that’s just for starters.
