I am working through the concept of doubt these days, and to some may be trending on some dangerous ground, but for me I am beginning to see and feel faith more than I ever have.

As I thought about the quote and although I like the sound of beauty trumping doubt, the thing is if you do not doubt freely without the need to “know” that eventually things will be okay you have never really doubted. Beauty may in fact trump doubt, but doubt must be fully engaged for it to do its work in you and for beauty to rise. And I believe that doubt is a very important part of faith.

Are you able to doubt freely? Or when you doubt, do you say to yourself, “It’s okay that I am questioning my faith, because God is bigger than my doubt.” If you are saying things like this to yourself, then I am sorry to say you are not doubting freely. (Not to sound trite).

I have heard a couple different schools on this (via @peterrollins) that I have found helpful. (I adapted it a little).

Picture a cliff. You are standing at it with questions. Those questions may or may not be answered on the other side. So in order to confront the questions you decide to jump off the cliff.

The person who doubts freely knows that when they jump they might fall for a very long time (perhaps forever), possibly never obtaining the answer. But this freedom allows the person to receive, live in tension and see beauty.

The person that does not allow doubt to freely do its work will still jump, but their jump is reserved in that they have this idea that the ground is only a few feet down from the cliff or they jump with this metaphorical harness knowing that God will catch them and make all questions clear with answers when they jump bringing them back to safety.

I see this mentality a lot. I specifically see it in those with Christian backgrounds that have “left” the church but always speak in terms that suggest they “should really go back.” I feel a sadness for these people. They are in essence stuck in the purgatory of faith. Never really growing and always hanging on to something that in practice has never truly worked for them, because if it did they wouldn’t speak in these terms. I think in some variation of this idea this is where I sit.

I see issues in both the hard and fast believer (reject all doubt as a way of belief) as well as in the hard and fast doubter (never trusting the beauty that could trump the doubt), but I won’t get into that now.

So I ask you, are you able to doubt freely?

I hear his words of participation and transformation!

Rollins uses familiar bible stories in some cases and the twists the endings to bring about a point or something for us to think about, and still in other parables he makes up a fictional world describing a well known moral lesson that we might know from the bible or church and then spinning it on its head as well. Each parable made me think deeply and I am even going to gift this book to a number of friends as I think it really has helped me along in my own journey and could be very helpful with anyone else. I even used one of the parables in a recent church service we put on at the open house.

I am not sure if I would do the review justice by telling you some specific examples, but I will say that for those church planters out there that want to have their view of God stretched and encouraged, and also have a way to bridge some of the culture gaps of today’s society, I highly recommend this as a helpful text that will encourage conversation amongst all types and backgrounds of people. I give this book a 4.5/5 for my unqualified CP ranking.

This book has inspired me to work through some of my own parables that I have written but never completed and possibly using them in the future. Maybe even posting them here. We shall see…

In Part 1 of the book he works out his theology and in essence the churches theology over the past centuries and presents some new ways of understanding God. In Part 2 he details 10 worship experiences in light of these theological ideas. I found my self drawn to the experiences more deeply than I have before, but I also realized during my reading that his context in Belfast makes much more sense for the types of services they plan. With that said, I think there is much to be learned from the thoughts in Part 1 and for them to be practiced in a creative way, similar, but more unique to the context one finds themselves in.

I am going to be leading a book study on How (not) to speak of God this September and I have an opening for 1 more person. Let me know if you are interested, as I think this book will be an important piece of material for my own development and for the the open house in 2010.

And for those of you who scan my ramblings here, or hang out with us at the open house, Jem and I are going to be reading and discussing Rollins book How (Not) to Speak of God – Marks of the Emerging Church starting in September. It will be open to everyone.

More to come on that. Enjoy.

Explaining Emergent Churches – Inner Compass from Calvin College on Vimeo.