- Kosuke Koyama
I fear at times that my skepticism will keep me from really experiencing God, from really growing in relationship with Him. I'm reading an old Russian tale called "The Way of the Pilgrim" (thanks John), a story about a pilgrim who is concerned with learning to pray without ceasing. He is torn because he cannot figure out how to do it, yet he believes that the Bible tells him he is supposed to. An elder, a priest in the church gives him the Philokalia, a book that teaches him how to pray like he believes he is supposed to. While traveling around several "miraculous" things happen; moments of divine providence if you will. As I was reading I realized how skeptical I am of "spiritualizing", of seeing God in the things that happen to us. I am like a clerk he meets. "You hypocrites always see miracles!" he says when the pilgrim tells him a story. He would rather see events as simply natural, which is so much like me. Part of my skepticism, of course, comes from wanting to be careful. It is easy to see things that are not there. To bleed spiritualism into everything. While that is not how I want to live, I do want to be sensitive to God's work in the moments of my life.
Too often in my life I try to carry God. I've been reading a lot of theology texts lately and I fear that a very real reason for this is that I want to grasp God. It's not that I simply want to learn about Him, or experience Him. I want to get a hold of him, so that I can say that I have acquired God, that I have come to an understanding and that I KNOW God. Who He is, what he does, how he works. All of the above. I want to read and read until I have picked God up and put Him on my shoulders so that I can carry Him. No longer would I need faith. No longer would I have doubt or fear of the mystery of God. I would have Him under my control.
Tonight I finished a survey on classical theology, "The Doctrine of God" by Veli-Matti Karkkainen. The last several chapters of the book deal with non-Western theological perspecives. Asian, African, and Latin American theologies are discussed. What really struck me was the contextualization of our theologies. Everything about our lives informs our beliefs. We are slaves to our presuppositions, whether they are natural or learned. I am a white male, and so what that means for me is telling in my theology. Who you are is telling of your beliefs. I don't mean this in a deterministic sense, where we have no choices in our beliefs. But really we tend to move in the direction of the streams of life in which we swim. It's hard to do otherwise without revelation of some sort. Impossible? I don't know. The point is that I realized while reading about theological perspectives that were different from my Western perspective, that my beliefs are as contextualized as theirs. It was easy for me to be immediately skeptical of their treatment of theology. But I learned a lesson about humility. I learned that I don't know all that much. I also came to the conclusion that I want to be carried rather than try to carry God. If I am going to be any kind of theologian (not professional, please God!) I don't want to make an idol of my beliefs. I don't want to insult God, whether by thinking I can carry Him or by being skeptical of ways he can work in my life. On this journey, I want to be a pilgrim, and I want to be an individual that is not so wrapped up in himself, that all he believes comes to mean nothing, as it is but an idol and not the real living Trinity, the God who carries.
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