#AdventWord #Believe

Back around the turn of the century, I had a crisis of faith. Five years after graduating from seminary, a trapdoor opened beneath me and all my theology fell through it. I never stopped believing there is a God, I just wasn't sure what I believed about God. Maybe even more, it became important to me to know how I came to my conclusions about God. Who taught me? How did I learn it? Were the sources trustworthy? How did I know (believe) what I know?

In other words, it was your basic late-30s epistemological crisis.

It was an odd time, in some ways. I tried to stop going to church (failed) and tried not to think about everything in theological terms. Occasionally, I'd find myself somewhat passionately making some point about one religious topic or another and afterward say to myself, "Huh, I guess I still believe that." 

Over the years, I've re-built my theology, not exactly a systematic theology, but a theology that remains recognizably Christian, built it back up by what I myself saw or experienced as much by what I'd been taught in church, Sunday school, and seminary. 

" . . . we walk by faith, not by sight"

So many of us want to say, "I'll believe it when I see it."  I will say I've seen my share of things that lead me to believe in God, in Jesus, in the whole Trinitarian kit and kaboodle. But I admit there are gaps I fill in, mostly by faith, by choosing to believe.

I do think that it is important to not take everything on faith, to not believe easily. Test everything. I don't walk around blindfolded. I'm going to look underneath for evidence of what I thought I knew.

But there's no getting around it. I believe. Or Belief has me.

Lord, help my unbelief.