Stumble it!
Imagine that God speaks to you—we’re not talking about general revelation here, this is specific divine interruption. He lets you know that he desires to give you a Gift, but because of “free will” it will need to be one of your own choosing. Having said that you’re given two options:
1.) You can spend the rest of your life being absolutely certain about God, there will be no questions of faith or doubt. There will be an abiding sense of God’s presence and smile in all your ways…but everyone you meet will instantly begin to doubt the certainty of their own faith. They may or may not ever recover from that crisis.
OR
2). through you many of the wrongs in the world will be righted, justice and mercy and grace will be exhibited, the blind will see, the deaf will hear and the lame will walk…but you will cease to believe in God at all. You will even forget this conservation between yourself and the Most High…it will have been all in your imagination.
Which do you choose and why?
Filed under: contemplation Tagged: | ambiguity, art, belief, certainty, charismatic, dark night of the soul, doubt, emergent, faith, gift, grace, house church, justice, mercy, mother theresa, mystic, portland oregon, spiritual blindness
this is amazing!!! 40 comments of (mostly) generous exploratory thoughtful and thought provoking variety. Thank you each for posting on this.
I’ve outline my own thoughts on this earlier in brief detail.
The point of a parable is that they require a certain imaginative reading that inserts the hearer into the role of character/participant. This wasn’t exactly a straight forward parable–but it was designed to cause people to take stock in their own perspectives, revealing themselves…not simply a correct answer.
While I lean towards option two, and several of you beautifully explained the merit it carries, I found some who chose option one did so with such candidness and genuine altruism that it became a valid choice, and also a true gift.
As i said in my last post, one of the things I’m (trying to) working on is “The Parable of the Prodigal God”. Hopefully I’ll have it up shortly. It continues this line of thought and discussion!!
Cheers!!!