Faith Doesn't Grow in the Soil of Certainty

It seems to me that the audio version of William P. Young's novel, The Shack is having as much impact as the book itself. It is very well done. I received it as a gift from my wife for my birthday in December. As I've noted in earlier posts, The Shack is the story about a man who loses his young daughter through a ghastly crime and who confronts God in a very unique way following this devastation in his life. In the book, God is presented to the man as a very warm and savvy African-American woman called "Papa". (You just have to read the book to understand this.) In one of the ever more intimate conversations between the grieving man and Papa, the latter makes a statement something like the following: "Faith doesn't grow in the soil of certainty." (That's probably not an exact quote, but I'm in lazy-mode right now, and I'm not going to the book or the CD to check.)

"Faith doesn't grow in the soil of certainty." That flies in the face of much of what we assume about Christian faith, right? Aren't we invited to be certain that God exists, that Jesus saves us, and that we know where we'll spend eternity? Of course there are elements of certainty about a living faith in Jesus. I hear Papa making a different kind of statement, though. Human beings tend to deify our own capability to achieve certainty. We live in the information age. We believe we can access, command, organize, and maneuver ever-increasing volumes of data. The more we know, the more we will control. That's certainty. By extension, we can reach points at which we know everything there is to know about God, everything there is to know about Jesus, everything we need to know to manage the Holy Spirit, and everything that will provide us with an abundant life as a Christian. Certainty is just a means to the illusion of control.

Papa says, I think, that faith comes in the realization that we do not have ultimate control, that we are indeed as vulnerable as we think we are, and the territory of life can be very uncertain. It's when the slats are kicked out from under us, and support scaffolding is not in place, and trusting a faithful God is more than just a concept - it is either a living truth, or everything is a waste. Faith doesn't happen with a safety need. It happens when we leap into the arms of God, choosing to believe that He is there as Jesus promised He would be. Jesus, after all, entered the ultimate uncertainty before us.

"Faith doesn't grow in the soil of certainty." How does that grab you? I still struggle with it, but it definitely grabs me. I'll see you around the next bend in the river.