Introducing…Unanswerable:

Exploring the Complexities of the Christian Faith and Biblical Truth

 

The word ‘Unanswerable’ is interesting and seems appropriate for this collection of writings. The meaning of the word is perhaps obvious, but there are two interesting definitions.

 

1.    Unable to be disclaimed or proved wrong, inarguable, indisputable, absolute

2.    Unable to be answered, unsolvable, unexplainable

 

These definitions do sum up themes I’m interested in like mystery, certainty, and doubt, but the more telling thing is in the definitions themselves, which are opposite in their meaning. One means something which is proven truth, something certain and undeniable, but the other means something that cannot be answered, something that is mysterious and beyond comprehension. These two conflicting definitions of this one word, sum up the dichotomy I want to explore, the idea that we can look at something and perceive it to have one meaning, but that someone can look at the same thing and understand it completely differently. Not only that, but both definitions do also sum up how we experience our faith.

 

Most Christians can say that faith is unanswerable, and it could mean one thing or the other, or it could even be both things at the same time. The word “unanswerable” is about knowing and not knowing, and the meaning can shift or be dependent on context or approach. We could even say that the definition of the word “unanswerable” is itself, unanswerable, because there is no one clear meaning to it. Faith is exactly the same, it depends on context, who we are and how we experience the world.

 

This takes care of the title, but what about the compulsory, unnecessarily long subtitle?

 

This is the crux of the book, it’s about exploring and questioning aspects of our faith that we might struggle with, and the doubts that we might have, but it’s also about noticing the complexities and complications in the doctrines and theologies we hold to be true. It’s about recognising that faith and belief aren’t simple, and figuring out what we do with that. Once we start asking these questions, we are often led into doubt, and this can be a lonely place to be. There is a real stigma about doubt, particularly in the church. Doubt is seen as weakness or lack of commitment, or an absence of faith, and it can be a real problem for Christians, perhaps even worse than sin.

 

Sin can be dealt with easily, with a prayer of repentance, a hand on the shoulder from someone on the ministry team, and a word of awkward reassurance, concerning their “personal struggle with sin”, which you really hope isn’t of a masturbatory nature, as they proceed to lay their hands on you.

 

Sin we can cope with, but doubting or questioning is often seen to be very serious. Confessing that you doubt the doctrine of Hell, or that you question the Trinity, or that you think that maybe women should be allowed to preach, can lead to people having meetings about you, questioning whether you can be trusted to serve in the church, or even if you should be allowed to attend the church. To question things, or to even have certain thoughts about your faith, can be a sign of back sliding, or dicing with heresy, and you can’t have a heretic in the church.

 

The thing is though, we can’t control our doubts in the same way we control our sin. We can control our sin for the most part, by choosing not to steal, by choosing not to commit adultery, or by choosing not to murder someone. But you don’t choose to question things, and the causes of our doubt usually come out of experiences, which challenge the way we understand the world, and they come without invitation. We don’t seek out doubt, because it’s not within our human nature to do so, humans thrive on certainty. But our need to question things is also part of our nature, and so doubt is something that we inevitably have to deal with, and we do so in two ways, we either engage with the questions we have and wrestle through them, hopefully arriving at a place where we can reconcile our doubts somehow, or we bury them and bottle them up, ignore them and refuse to deal with them, hoping they won’t resurface, which I can tell you from experience, isn’t a healthy, long-term strategy. Our need to question is part of our humanity. Everyone doubts some thing at some time, there is no escaping it. Despite this, there is still a stigma when it comes to doubting, questioning or wrestling with aspects of your faith. Just look at the disciple famously known as Doubting Thomas, a man who will be forever known as a faithless doubter, because he reasonably wanted to see for himself, that Jesus had risen from the dead. In comparison, the apostle Peter denied knowing Jesus on three occasions, which is arguably worse than just doubting that someone was raised from the dead, but we don’t call him Flaky Pete

 

In my experience, Christians aren’t very honest when it comes to their faith. A lot of Christians I know present as having their faith all tied up and finished with a neat little bow. Few Christians openly confess to struggling with aspects of their faith in the same way I do, and apparently have their beliefs all figured out. In the past I have expressed some of my struggles to other Christians, in the hope of finding some shared understanding, but almost always, my honesty has been met with confusion or pity, and with a desire to try and fix the doubt I have. This can’t be right though; these people can’t have solved Christianity. They must have some questions; they must wrestle with some aspects of their faith? Have they ever read the Bible? Have they ever contemplated God? Maybe they can accept everything in the Bible, and receive every story they hear about God at face value, maybe they can fully believe everything they are told about God as simple, inarguable truth, but I don’t buy it, they must have some doubts and questions. They can’t have solved the mystery of God.

 

This is what the book is about, it is a no holds barred account of my faith, my doubt, and how I try to deal with the questions that I have. If you are reading this then my guess is that you are in a similar place, in which case, I hope that you do find some solidarity here. This book is for anyone who has ever felt alone as they have struggled with their faith. It is a safe place, and I will try and make it as helpful and enjoyable as possible too.

 

Before we fully get into it all though, there are some things that you need to know about me. You don’t need my entire life story but things have happened to me which have informed who I am, which have brought me to this point in my faith journey, and which have compelled me to write this book. In short, my story involves dealing with the trauma caused by the super-conservative church of my childhood, navigating the conflicting beliefs between that church and every other church I have ever been a part off, my mum’s lifelong mental health issues, the breakdown of my parent’s marriage, my hopes of escaping the troubles of my youth and becoming a professional musician, my own struggles with anxiety and depression, some chance encounters which completely disrupted everything I believed about my faith, and the fallout of a global pandemic which resulted in me losing my job, and which led me to reassess my whole life.

 

I acknowledge up front that some of the things I write will be wrong, but as you will soon see, that’s kind of the point. Our faith and what we believe is an ongoing conversation. We all get things wrong, no matter how spiritual, intellectual, theologically informed, or holy we think we are. There isn’t one definitive explanation or theology that makes sense of God, and so no-one can hold the full truth of who God is. The challenge is how we deal with that.

 

What will follow are a number of sprawling “essays” that explain where I’m currently at when it comes to certain faith related things, and which also offer some different perspectives and ways of thinking. The nature of this book means that you can jump around a bit and look at different chapters before others, if you like, or skip chapters and come back to them. There isn’t a narrative, but there is a final chapter which will probably make more sense to leave to the end, but you know, have fun with it! As you read this book, it might also seem like I’m pulling everything apart and trying to complicate some of the things we believe, this might be disconcerting, but my reason for doing so is to show the complexities of our faith, which I believe is important to understand, but I promise that I do attempt to provide a way out of the confusion at the end, so we can start to make sense of the unanswerable nature of our faith. I will say now though, there won’t be any definitive answers, that’s not the point of this book, and I don’t think it’s the point of our faith either.

 

Text taken from “Unanswerable: Exploring the Complexities of the Christian Faith and Biblical Truth”, available from all good book shops, and some rubbish ones too.