A faithless belief

That sounds like a lifeless belief. In some terms that’s where I am. I do believe. But I don’t seem to have any faith whatsoever.

Faith and belief are often synonymous but at the moment, for me they are different. Deep down I believe in Jesus and his death and resurrection. But I don’t seem to live each day as though I do. Here I consider faith as a daily living out of belief. I have no idea how God works in the world. Some people get healed, some do not. Overall injustice prevails and occasionally some people get what they deserve. Some people ‘miraculously’ get what they pray for, while others have ground out their knees in desperation.

So I’m not sure how to go about praying or even hoping. For some Christians everything is simple. You pray, God answers and sometimes the answer is no. For others it’s a bit more complex in how God works in the world. For me at the moment I’m quite fed up in why I’m expected to expect certain things and understand other things, performing a stunning array of emotional and mental acrobatics to keep up the delusion of sanity.

So I continue my faithless belief, that Jesus somehow is making all things new and somehow we’ll all end up happy at some point. Of course there are some who believe that I’ll end up in eternal torment. Fine. Believe what you will. I hope you feel better for it.

I feel marginally authentic for having the truth of not knowing rather than the delusion of knowing. Marginally.

A bit of Jesus

Yesterday, during the church service I spied my four year old, K2 standing at the communion table. She was looking intently at what our vicar was doing and I tried making eyes at her to move away from that. He was preparing the elements and performing the liturgy and as any parent I was worried that she would be ‘disturbing’ the process.

Turns out she had gone up and asked our vic whether she could help. And he said yes. And there she was getting her hands sanitised, walking along with our vicar while he gave the body of Christ to the people. She then helped him wash the cup and the plate.

I was incredibly moved. Obviously as a dad anything your cute little one does can be moving (sometimes even into a rage). I was moved by a few things.

First K2’s impulse to help and her confidence to go up.

Second the environment of our church which allowed her to have that confidence.

Third, our Vic who was very happy to have her there.

At a particularly cynical time for me it was a strangely ordinary beautfiul thing: a bit of Jesus, not just from the bread and wine but from the actions of a four year old girl and 60+ year old man.