Peter Enns - Curveball: When Your Faith Takes Turns You Never Saw Coming (or How I Stumbled and Tripped My Way to Finding a Bigger God)

For Beau James

(aka Beau Beaus, Beau Buddy, Little Guy)

b. November 19, 2019

When you grow up I hope you will read

(or at least buy) all my books.

And thank you for believing in me.

Grandpa loves you very much.

Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.

M ATTHEW 9:17 (NIV)

The whole world before you is like a speck that tips the scales,

and like a drop of morning dew that falls on the ground.

But you are merciful to all, for you can do all things,

and you overlook peoples sins, so that they may repent.

For you love all things that exist,

and detest none of the things that you have made,

for you would not have made anything if you had hated it.

How would anything have endured if you had not willed it?

Or how would anything not called forth by you have been preserved?

You spare all things, for they are yours, O Lord, you who love the living.

For your immortal spirit is in all things.

W ISDOM 11:22-12:1 (NIV)

The cosmos is an ocean that drowns every mind.

N ICODEMUS OF THE H OLY M OUNTAIN

I spent much of my life unknowingly abdicating the task of taking full responsibility for my faith. In my younger years, I largely accepted and absorbed the narrative of faith that had been written for me, thinking it to be my own. Then for two decades, as I was busy working and parenting, I would occasionally tweak the surface of itI guess I was too preoccupied for anything other than some light editing for punctuation and typos.

And so later in life, when moments of spiritual reckoning demanded more of me, I was ill prepared.

Life, it turns out, has a habit of throwing us curveballs. By curveball, I dont mean some bump in the road that could easily have been avoided, nor some annoyingly uncomfortable moment that can be handled by distracting ourselves on our phones, going for a jog, or flipping channels. I mean those experiences that are so momentous we simply cannot continue living as if they hadnt happenedeverything changes, and we know we cannot remain as we were.

As for me, my inherited beliefs eventually ran out of steam and collapsed in on themselves. They could no longer explain my day-to-day experiences and, rather, always seemed to be at odds with them. This led to a dark and difficult period in my life of not knowing what to believe, if anything. And if my decades of teaching, speaking, and writing count for anything, I am hardly the first or only person with a story like that.

These upending experiences can be deeply personal and, as in my case, literally cosmic. But whatever they are, they have a habit of boring deep into the very foundations of our stories and calling into question the validity of core elements of the story. Once that happens, the story needs a Part Twoan after.

The big lesson I learned from wrestling with my own curveballs is how deeply my faith in God had been cemented in fearwhich is to say, how I viewed God as very much antagonistic toward me. And so any thought on my part of listening to my experiences and interrogating my inherited faithto inspect its boundaries let alone climb over its wallswas seen as a crisis that had to be averted or at least resolved immediately.

But over time I would come to see that this is precisely the wrong attitude to take. This fear-crisis model of faith, where all things had to fall into place or else, was simply no match for my raw, complex, messy, out-of-control existence. And this got me thinking differently about God. If the infinite God of the cosmos is real, surely God understands my puny humanity and sees my questions and struggles as more than a nuisance. It would take years for me to truly accept the idea that my disruptive experiences are not outside impositions to or an attack on my faith, but are the soil out of which my faith matures and takes shape. The thought of ignoring what my head and heart were screaming at me and simply staying the course became not only more and more difficult, butif God is truly realutterly nonsensical. Can I really ignore my experiences? Can any of us? Is this really what God expects of us? If we ignore them, then what is left of us?

This realization was the game-changer. It created a space for me to step away from the fear-crisis model of faith and toward a curious-hopeful model. That model is built on seeing God as a relentless, compassionate inner presence in my life, always beckoning me forward. That model is one of peace, curiosity, and hopefulness and rests on my embrace of the mystery and love of God.

I value the experiences of my younger yearsthey are still part of my story. I am still a Christian but a different sort of Christian than before. I am not one driven by fear of slipping off the tightrope with the next stiff wind. Rather, I am seeking to live into the sacred space of Gods Presence with curiosity, hope, peace, and love of others. I believe this is the type of relationship God seeks to have with us.

I continue writing my narrative, of courseas are we all. We are dealing, after all, with the infinite Creator of the infinite cosmos, so how can it be otherwise? Working out faith on the go, as it were, is very good news, indeed. I can live my life seeking God with curiosity, courage, security, and peace, knowing that making adjustments is a part of the life of faith.

Jesus said, The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly (John 10:10). An abundant faith while embracing the curveballs of lifethats what Im after, and thats what this book is all about.

A T THE AGE OF NINE I found my true purpose in lifeto play major league baseball. Id been smitten with the baseball bug while flipping channels and landing on WPIX 11 in New York City, the station that carried Yankees games. I still have a memory of those innocent black-and-white images. My parents were German immigrants who knew nothing of baseball, so it came to me as something of a spiritual epiphany rather than an heirloom. To this day I thank my lucky stars for this formative moment (and that I didnt stop at WOR 9 and become a Mets fan).

Now, spoiler alertI did not become a professional baseball player. So why am I still thanking my lucky stars? Because you never outgrow your childhood passionsand if youre lucky, you get to bring them back into your life in ways you couldnt have predicted when you were all-or-nothing convinced of what you would and wouldnt do when you grew up. To quote Terence Mann (played by James Earl Jones in Field of Dreams), The one constant for me through the years has been baseballthrough all the twists and turns and ups and downs, for longer than Ive been a husband, a parent, a professor, or a Christian, giving me delight and, like most things worthwhile, frustration. To this day, forty years after I had to stop playing, I still find myself randomly picking up a bat I keep near my desk and giving it a few swings (hey dogs, move!), holding a baseball in my old pitching hand or putting an old glove up to my face and breathing in the still lingering scent of leather and glove oil.

God, howeverwell, thats another thing. God has been a part of my life journey, too, as far as I can remember, but in a more complicated way. To be honest, God has never felt as dependable as the rhythms of baseball and has often proved more frustrating. At least in baseball you have some predictability, some consistency, some clear and unimpeachable boundaries. Three strikes and youre out, three outs a side, and the team with the most runs wins.