Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

questions in faith

On ISIS, God’s Love and the Narrow Way

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candle

Like most people around the world, I’ve been thinking a lot about those 21 men who were murdered by ISIS on the beach in Tripoli. I can’t get the picture out of my mind, all of them in a row on their knees in the sand, their orange coveralls bright against their captors swathed in black.

I can’t help but try to put myself in their shoes in those final moments, as they were marched alongside the crashing surf and forced to kneel in the hot sand.

I can’t stop thinking about the cruel juxtaposition of that setting – a pristine beach, the roar of the sea and the brilliant sun the backdrop to 21 savage murders.

Since Sunday evening, my social media feed has been, by and large, a continual stream of images depicting those 21 men, along with hundreds of blog posts, status updates and tweets lamenting their tragic deaths. I join the Christian community in condemning this heinous crime and praying for the families and loved ones of these men.

Yet at the same time, I can’t help but wonder about the images I’m not seeing in my social media stream. The images of thousands of Shiites,  Yazidi, agnostics and others who have died at the hands of ISIS. Why am I not seeing them, their faces, on Facebook and on Twitter? Why am I not hearing their stories among my Christian friends and peers?

I’ve read Ann Voskamp’s eloquent and convicting blog post several times since she published it on Tuesday, and I’ve thought a lot about what she wrote. In fact, her words – these in particular — have been ringing in my ears day and night:

“Everybody’s in — who opens the door with the key of the Cross.

Love wins — because the Cross wins. The Cross Wins.”

Ann’s words were written not only as a lament and an impassioned call to action, but also as a response to four words spoken to her on an airplane just a few days prior to the murder of the Egyptian Christians. A fellow traveler, glimpsing the Bible open on her lap, turned in his seat and declared to her, “Everybody’s in. Love wins.” 

And so this is the question – questions, really – I’ve been turning around in my head since I read Ann’s post:

Am I not seeing the Shiite faces, the Yazidi faces, the agnostic faces in my social media stream because they’re not in?

And are they not in because they didn’t get the right key, the key of the Cross?

Are they not in because they did not walk through the narrow gate?

And is the way so narrow that it’s open only to so very few?

I know what Scripture says. I know Jesus tells me that he is the way and the truth and the life; that the only way to the Father is through him (John 14:6).

Yet let me tell you straight up, I struggle with this. I question it. I wrestle with it, bumping up against walls that feel constrictive, questioning how God’s love – so big, so deep, so wide, so incomprehensibly, infinitely awesome; a love from which nothing can ever separate us – can, at the same time, be so black-and-white, so seemingly limited, so “You’re in, you’re out, end of story.”

Many of those Shiites, Yazidi and agnostics stood up to injustice and were crucified, burned, beheaded, stoned, raped, tortured and thrown off of buildings for their courage and convictions. Did they endure these atrocities simply to plummet straight to hell?

There are only two possible answers to this question. Yet I have a hard time, knowing what I think I know about God and his love, believing the answer to this question is yes. “Yes, they went to hell, the end” frankly doesn’t seem to align with the unconditional love of God we read about again and again in the Gospels.

Do I really worship a god who created a child in Mosul who would live a life of poverty for 12 years before being gang raped and killed by ISIS, all in preparation to spend eternity in hell because she had never heard the gospel, or because her parents had raised her in the religious tradition in which they’d been raised, and in which their parents before them had been raised?

I pray to God himself that the answer to this question is no.

I sometimes wish I had the faith of someone like Ann Voskamp. I’m not saying that kind of faith is easier by any means, but it seems clearer and more confident than my wishy-washy, confused, muddied version of faith – which some would probably say is no faith at all.

The truth is, I have no answers. None. Jesus’ words in John 14:6 seem straight-forward, they seem black-and-white, they do. Yet who am I to know for sure what they truly mean? Who am I to say, unequivocally, “THIS is what Jesus means, the end”?

Maybe my desire for Jesus’ words to mean something more is simply my own wishful thinking.

Or maybe, like the man on the airplane declared to Ann Voskamp, everyone gets in; love wins.

Or maybe, as Ann declares, everyone’s in – who opens the door with the key to the Cross.

Maybe it’s something different entirely, something or some way none of us could ever possibly anticipate or imagine.

I don’t know. And honestly, I don’t like the not knowing. But somewhere deep in the not knowing is also my faith, that messy, wishy-washy, confused faith I claim.

The best I can do, it seems, is to remain confident in what I hope for and assured of what I cannot see.

To believe in my heart that God’s unfailing love for us is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.

And for that to be enough.

Learning to Live the Questions

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hammockyarns2

The necklace — a choker with a velvet strap and a single brilliant faux sapphire — sat within reach, right at the edge of the open desk. I wanted that necklace; I had to have it, the desire for it so strong it made my stomach clench. So while my third grade teacher bent low over my classmate’s shoulder, I quickly reached behind their backs, slid my fingers into the open desk and then slipped the velvet strand into the front pocket of my corduroys.

Regret rushed in almost instantly as the thrilling high of holding the treasure in my hand crashed into gut-wrenching fear. Stealing, I knew, was a ticket straight to hell. I’d broken one of the Ten Commandments, had committed a mortal sin, and there was only one way out of the hell fires for which I was bound: confession.

…I’m writing about doubt, unbelief, questions and hope for one of my favorite online venues, SheLoves Magazine, today. Join me over there? 

To Know the Dark, Go Dark

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“What are you reading?” he asks, diving onto the bed, pulling Nana’s afghan over his body as he curls next to me.

“Some poems,” I answer, showing him the cover of the Wendell Berry collection I picked up from the library. “I don’t usually read poetry,” I admit, “but sometimes it’s good to try something new.”

“Read me one,” he says, pulling the afghan up to his chin.

I flip through the book to find the the shortest poem. I read “To Know the Dark” aloud, because it’s only four lines:

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

“So what’s the answer?” Rowan asks.

“What do you mean, ‘the answer’?” I say.

“You know,” he says, “The answer. The answer to the poem.”

He thinks it’s a riddle. Too much Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, evidently.

“Oh honey, there’s no one answer,” I say. “That’s the hard part and the wonderful part about poetry, there’s not just one right answer.”

He pauses a moment, considering. “It’s a bat,” he says. “It’s about a bat.”

I read the lines again. “Yeah, I can see how you would say that,” I say. “Because of the part that says ‘without sight,” and the ‘dark feet and dark wings.’” Rowan nods, pleased.

He stays under the afghan to hear another poem, and then, concluding this one is about a tiger, he leaps off the bed and out the door, leaving me under the afghan alone, thinking about his question.

What’s the answer?

I think sometimes I approach faith the same way Rowan approached the poem. What’s the answer, I want to know. THE answer. And while I know that Jesus is the be-all-and-end-all answer, and that’s all, in the end, I really need to know, I often find myself grappling for other answers to questions that gnaw at me, the why questions.

Why did my cousin die before she reached age 30?

Why did my children’s grandparents die too soon, leaving them with this empty, awful grief?

Why do 26,000 kids die every single day because they don’t have access to water, something as simple and readily available as water?

Why, in short, does suffering exist? And why doesn’t God do anything about it?

I want THE answer to that question. And others.

Religion, like poetry, doesn’t provide all the answers.  We might get hints. We might get flashes of clarity, moments of illumination, but a lot of the time, we live in the dark, turning questions around in our heads, trying to figure out the why, searching the Bible for answers, praying for the peace that passes all understanding.

Maybe though, what I need to do is revisit the answer I offered Rowan about poetry. Maybe the hard part and the wonderful part about questions in faith is that there isn’t just one right answer.
Maybe God doesn’t give us all the answers because we need to know the dark, to go dark,  to see for ourselves that even the dark blooms and sings.
 
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”  — Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

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