One of my favorite authors is Barbar Brown Taylor.  She was named one of the top 20 preachers in America.  A few years ago she wrote a very honest memoir of her decision to leave her role as pastor called Leaving Church.  She is a person who was willing to ask the hard questions and see where the path would take her.  I resonate with her conclusion:

“I thought that being faithful was about becoming somone other than who I was, in other words, and it was not until this project failed that I began to wonder if my human wholeness might be more useful to God than my exhausting goodness.”

This deeply reflective author bring to us some wonderful questions to consider about our communities of faith and self.  This weeks installment of Walking with Questions calls us to stop and ponder the type of communities and relationships that we are a part of and are creating:

“What if people were invited to come tell what they already know of God instead of to learn what they are suppose to believe?  What if they were blessed for what they are doing in the world instead of chastened for not doing more at church?  What if church felt more like a way station than a destination?  What if the church’s job were to move people out the door instead of trying to keep them in, by convincing them that God needed them more in the world than in the church?”

What if we could listen more?  What if we had the courage of Barbara to unlearn what we think we know rather than continuing to look for things that confirm what we already think?

The journey is about two things.  One getting to know yourself in a clearer way without all the props and distractions we put around ourselves to hold us up.  But the second reason is the most important I believe, to learn to ask different questions.  We do this by coming into contact with people and places that we have never encountered.  The very act of walking into the unknown empowers the ability to question or at least encounter uncertainty which is a prerequisite for asking good questions.  Perhaps our most important life long adventure is to ask better questions.  It is our ability to ask questions that will release us from what we think we know in order to be open to what we could know.

For the next few posts I am going to introduce some people who have made me ask different questions in my life.  I will offer some of their perspective in hopes that you will go and engage them more fully on your own.  The companions you invite into your journey will make all the difference in both the way of the journey and destination you are likely to reach.

So, here we go…

“Christianity is the proclamation of the end of religion, not of a new religion, or even of the best of all possible religions.  And therefore if the cross is the sign of anything, it’s the sign that God has gone out of the religion business and solved all the world’s problems without requiring a single human being to do a single religious thing.  What the cross is actually a sign of is the fact that religion can’t do a thing about the world’s problems—that is it never did work and it never will…” Robert Capon – The Mystery of Christ and Why We Don’t Get It

What is beyond religion?  What would my life be like if I let go of religion?  What do I think I need to do to gain the acceptance of God?

As I looked behind me, I could see the top of the oak tree my long and slender platform extended from, shake and twist with every move I made.   Looking forward, I could see way below me the bottom of the ravine where it appeared the open maul of the earth was ready to swallow me.  I heard the metal clink as the karabiner gate closed into place. Immediately it hit me; the weight of the cables pulling me towards the edge.  The harder I resisted, the greater the tension on the swing cables and the stronger the draw to the edge.  I was faced with a decision at that point in time. On one hand, I could allow my fear to keep me frozen in place.  Although the status quo was unpleasant and unsustainable, I knew what I had there on the end of that platform.  The other choice was to keep resisting the source of my fear and let the weight of the cables do their job and pull me into the unknown where after the second or two of weightless uncertainty, I would experience the adventure of a lifetime.  I am glad I took the leap.

This same scenario could be a description of my life of faith.  I have had different sources of fear that motivated me towards God.  At first it was the fear of judgment and punishment.  I am glad that God had something much better in mind.  My experiences, both structured and planned as well as those happenstances of life, have continued to question the skewed vision I had of God.  Each time I was willing to question what I thought I knew, I discovered a clearer picture of the truth (Robinson, 2009).  What causes you fear?  Where might it seek to lead you?

Nearly twenty years ago now, I was sixty feet up an eighty foot cliff.  I found myself paralyzed by fear and uncertainty.  The person on the end of my rope was a nineteen year old who had never rock climbed before.  Although I knew the equipment would work and keep me safe, I did not have the same assurances about him.  Running out of strength, my mind clouded and I could not find a way forward.  In the next moments, I fell.  The rope held, as did my belayer, and I quickly completed the climb with little effort.

Looking back I see in this short encounter the essence of my experience on Frost’s “road less travelled”.  You see going down the less travelled path has been for me less some spectacular scenario and more simple choices. These choices are moments when I could have stayed trapped in what I knew or risk something unfamiliar; I was compelled into the unknown.  Whether it was the first time I started thinking for myself in high school rather than let teachers tell me what to do or start asking the tough questions about the faith and doctrine that had been programmed into me as a child, these were the points in time where my life path has been determined. 

Just like after falling on my climb, I realized that my fear was perceived rather than real, when I started listening to the restlessness, dissatisfaction and inconsistency in my set of beliefs about God and began asking different questions, I found that the fear I had about questioning what I thought was truth was more perceived fear rather than real fear.  I discovered that God was not afraid of my questions.  In fact, He was calling me into those questions. 

For me what has been at the end of the “road less travelled” is a real chance at life beyond fear.  The message that I heard and believed when I was young made me jealous, afraid, critical and distant just like the God I thought I had to serve.  What I discovered was freedom that did not depend on my performance but a peace to be found in the assurance of my acceptance by God.  For the first time, I have started liking myself, not fearing other people and experiencing something of the deeper mystery of God’s actions for humanity (Robinson, 2009) . What questions are you being called into right now?