Doubts

I think I have said this before, but I love my church. I love the way it encourages people to embrace their doubts, not to stay in one place, but to continually seek new answers. Cases in point. Tonight I met with my life group, and in a meandering conversation we ended up talking about forgiveness. How difficult it is to forgive, can you forigve in the absence of justice, why do we even need it, etc. And somewhere between my first and second beers it struck me how rare this is. How rare it is for a group of men to come together and share their struggles and their doubts with faith and be open about their shortcomings and their striving to do better. And then I come home to Trish and her friend Amy deep in conversation. Amy is struggling to reconcile her fundamentalist upbringing with her current world - "I want to do good because I know it is good not because I have always been told it is good." And I realized what a gift she was giving us by sharing her doubts and her fears.

I wish this was the image more people had of Christ followers. I wish they could see more of the doubts and the struggles and the questions and less of the arrogance and the certainty and the rigidness. The only way to build an authentic community is to engage people on a level with their doubts and fears and not from a place of superiority.

Anyway... here is a picture of me and some of the guys from the group with our beers and our Bibles.