Enns - The sin of certainty: why God desires our trust more than our correct beliefs

A few years ago, I was on my way home from a (boring, Lord-help-me-get-out-of-here) academic conference on the West Coast and thought it would be nice to chill with an onboard movie, which airlines used to offer before they gave up trying. Nothing looked remotely interesting except for Disneys film adaptation of Bridge to Terabithia, so... sure... why not, lets give it a shot. I cant recall my exact thought process, but I guess Disneys marketing assumption that your inner ten-year-old never really goes away is right on the money.

The movie tells the story of a friendship between two fifth graders in rural Virginia, Jess and his new neighbor, Leslie. Jess is a shy and self-conscious boy from a poor and fundamentalist Christian family. Leslie couldnt be more oppositean a-religious free spirit with a contagious imagination, and who looks at life as one adventure after another. They become close friends, but Jess isnt always sure how to think about Leslies nonconformist ideas.

In one scene, Jess and Leslie, along with Jesss spunky little sister May Belle, are in the back of the family pickup truck on the way home from church. Jess had invited Leslie, who seems to have spent her entire life insulated from the kind of world Jess takes for granted.

For Leslie going to church is another opportunity for an adventure into the unknown. She is glad she came along, despite the hellfire-and-brimstone preaching, and declares, That whole Jesus thing. Its really interesting.

May Belle is absolutely shocked and corrects Leslie: Its not interesting. Its scary. Its nailing holes through your hand. Its because were all vile sinners that God made Jesus die.

Leslie looks at May Belle like she had just told her she believed babies were delivered by storks. Do you really think thats true?

Not only do they believe it, but Jess tells her they have to because its in the Bible. May Belle dutifully adds that if you dont believe in the Bible, God will damn you to hell when you die.

Leslie will have none of it. I seriously do not think God goes around damning people to hell. Hes too busy running all this, she says, pointing to the sky and trees overhead.

And with that, I was nostril deep in a faith crisiswhich, I dont mind saying, is embarrassing to admit.

It wasnt fair. I wasnt ready.

How was I to know that the company that gave us Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and Son of Flubber would venture deep into a religious debate? I was just minding my own business at thirty thousand feet over the Midwest and was caught off guard. Mea professional Christian, a seminary professor paid to think right thoughts about God and to tell others about them. But after a long trip, my orthodoxy shield was resting at my side. I was unarmed, and Leslies words hit their mark. In a flash and without words, I thought quietly to myself, I think Leslies right.

The idea that the Creator of heaven and Earth, with all their beauty, wonder, and mystery, was at the same time a supersized Bible-thumping preacher, obsessed with whether our thoughts were all in place and ready to condemn us for eternity to hell if they werent, made no senseeven though that was my operating (though unexamined) assumption as long as I could remember.

A fifty-two-second exchange in a moviea Disney movie, for crying out loud (this is so embarrassing)uttered by a fifth-grader and total outsider to the Christian faith. She doesnt even have a Ph.D. or fly across the country to academic conferences. And the next thing I know, my view of God flies away as if sucked out the window due to loss of cabin pressure.

Leslies comment confronted me with a simple yet profound and uncomfortable question: When the dust clears and in the quiet of your own heart, what kind of God do you believe in, really? And why? I thought I had that all worked out. Yet, amazingly, with decades of church, Christian college, seminary, and graduate school behind me, and now a seminary professor, I had never actually asked myself that question to see what I thought. (And have I mentioned how embarrassing this is?)

But now I felt threatened, cornered into a moment of uncomfortably honest reflection. Leslies comment was uttered with such effortless childlike commonsensical innocence, and it brought to the surface thoughts that had been safely tucked away for many years behind a thick wall of proper Christian thinking. I had never openly explored my thinking about God because I was taught that questioning too much was not safe Christian conductit would make God very disappointed in me indeed, and quite angry.

So dangerous thoughts lay dormant, never entering my conscious mind. My theological antivirus software had been doing its job, working in the background to keep me from errors in thinkinguntil this stupid Disney movie snuck past and forced me to deal with it.

Jesss God was my default God, but Leslies God was the one I, deep down, wanted to believe in. My inner May Belle reacted quicklyan aggressive panicked voice scolded me for slipping off the rails. After all, I wasnt calling into question some side issue of faith, like whether God wants me to give up chocolate or coffee for Lent, but a central questionperhaps the central question: What is God like?

Once you start down this path, theres no telling where the dominoes are going to falland then what? So I just sat there, trying not to think about it. But the train had pulled out of the station with me on it, and it was too late to jump off.

I didnt plan this little moment, and before I knew it my view of God passed from Yeah, I got this to Uh-oh. Not triggered by an impressive book or lecture, the way its supposed to for scholars. Not inspired while fasting or on a weekend prayer retreat, the way its supposed to for the spiritually mature.

But a common and ordinary moment worked unexpectedly to snatch me from my safe, familiar, and unexamined spiritual neighborhood and plop me down somewhere I never thought Id land. A forced spiritual relocation.

This episode and others like it resulted in a lot of spiritual wrestling matches, a change in employment, a change in churches, and even some breaks in relationships with other Christians. But while there has been much angst and some pain, there has also been a deepening, a maturation, a growth in my spirit that has led to closer intimacy with God.

Ive come to accept these uh-oh moments rather than run from them. Precisely because they are unexpected, out of my control, and unsettling, they bear with them a lesson I need to hear: I need to be willing to let go of what I think I know, and trust God regardless. And I have come to trust that God uses these moments.