I’m an agnostic

Apologies at my slowness at getting back to the blogging board. It turns out that two and a half weeks of vacation make getting back into good habits a difficult endeavor. It’s not much help that my girlfriend is visiting this week, too. Not that I’m complaining.

While I get my head back on straight, enjoy this quote from the always-intriguing David Dark from an article in the latest issue of Relevant Magazine. And, once again, file it with that topic that I’ve talked about many times.

If we think we have faith, because we faithfully protect ourselves from anything that might call it into question — as if God is counting on us to keep ourselves stupid, closed off to the complexity of the world we’re in — I’d like to argue that we don’t have faith in God at all. We have faith in our own faith rather than the God who transcends it, faith in a faith that will somehow save us. Not faith in God, but faith in a false god of our own conceptions, a god too afraid to entertain a question or a doubt.

If we think certainty is what drives success and, in the end, the very faith (so-called) that saves us, our honest confusion will become a source of shame and a sign of weakness. We keep our honest doubts hidden. As I understand it, this is precisely where the biblical urges what I’m tempted to call a mandatory agnosticism. This is where we’re summoned to know that we don’t know. This is where we’re called to confession, not self-congratulation.

I like calling myself an agnostic about things. It’s become a loaded word, so I use it in defiance more often than not. But, despite my own rebellious tendencies, it’s a word we could all learn and use more often.