Faith requires tenacious
persistence. It means we don’t give up when it gets complicated. We stay
committed. However, we live in a commitment-phobic society. From jobs to
relationships—our culture tells us, beckons us, to throw in the towel when it’s
not fun anymore, when you feel tied down, when you “just don’t feel the love”.
My generation is seen as hard working and proactive—but not reliable in the
long term. We’ve extended our adolescence into our 20’s—we can move around,
“find ourselves” and throw off and away things we don’t like in search of the
next thing destined to truly fulfill us and enable us to “be all we can be”.
Now, seasons of refining are good. But a life characterized by a lack of
commitment will have a lot of short lessons but not a lot of legacy.
As I sipped my chai and basked
in the May sun—I realized that another element of the commitment phobia is
being uncomfortable with questions. Our digital age has it’s perks—but it also
means we expect answers, immediate knowledge, and the tool to attain these are
endless. But this entitlement of understanding sets us up to fail when we face
tragedy. In those situations our
comprehension starts and stops at “why?” in light of marathon bombings,
elementary school shootings, children dying of diseases, millions of babies
never taking their first breath. Daily we are faced with things we cannot fully
explain or understand. All too often, true to our non-committal stereotype—we
give up, get jaded, paranoid, and depressed. We can’t know it all. The
futile attempts only press us further into unhappiness and fruitlessness.
I have seen this play out
personally in this process of re-entry into the US and in grief. I cannot
understand or fix cancer, accidents, world poverty or hunger. My gut is to get
angry—like an angsty teen with nowhere but my wardrobe or the people who love
me to display my disdain. Our generation, myself almost included, has thrown in
the towel on faith. Oh, we’re “spiritual”, “coexist” but neither of those require
commitment or an assertion of truth. We don’t want answers we don’t like. We
want it our way—and now.
But faith requires commitment.
It’s a choice to not let the unknowable drown out the reverberating shouts of
truth. We are loved, purposed, created. But we’re also really screwed up.
Anyone with a toddler will tell you that you don’t have to teach a child to
disobey, rebel, to try to do it their own way.
So where does this leave me—my
faith? Do I give up because it’s hard? Do I get jaded because I don’t like the
immediate answers? Do I use the excuse of “I’m in my 20’s, it’s time to
explore”? or do a look back to my roots, the example of the generation prior to
my “baby boomer” parents, and persevere and trust? If anything, Christianity is
the one belief that explains our world. It tells me that life will suck at
times—it doesn’t try and make me feel better by telling me that I’m a “good
person”, rather, it acknowledges the rebellious inner two year old I know is
there. Instead of heaping guilt and to-do
lists, it bestows abundant grace. It is in a lack of understanding the pain of
this world that I better understand the strength and veracity of my faith. I am
emboldened to proclaim the unpopular truth of Jesus to my peers who so
desperately seek understanding and
something worth committing to.
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