The Real Problem with Faith
It’s Not One Idea But Two Opposing Ones. And It Matters.
Let’s GET this fire started!
Just a tiny bit of personal context first though, to help you understand why I was so moved to write the essay that follows, why I found it so hard to write that it took nearly four years and a dozen tries, why even now I’m still not sure I’ve done the insight justice, and why I’m practically in tears that I might have finally pulled it off halfway.
As my life has gone from drain-circling rock bottom to presence over the last dozen years, I’ve found myself on the horns of a painful dilemma. On the one hand, I find it very hard to deny my sense that at some key plot points I’ve been helped, and that “faith” might have had something to do with it.
On the other hand, the instant I try to name where my help might have come from, I find my words empowering someone’s story and thereby giving them permission to be an Asshole.
It doesn’t matter what I say, what explanation I give, what lingo or lexicon I use, what fields of expertise or paradigms of understanding I invoke, which side of the familiar, tired “debates” I appear to folks to land on. It goes the same way every time.
But then recently the “aha” came, from wherever “aha’s” come from:
