A Fresh Perspective - 07/04/08

In the movie, "The Truman Show," Truman Burbank (played by Jim Carrey) lives in an artificially contrived world. The entire town is dedicated to a continually running TV show. Everyone except Truman is an actor. For Truman it's all real, until something inside him begins to tell him that there must be something more.

Truman encounters many obstacles in his attempt to break out of his box- traffic jams, the inability to book flights, the bus breaks down when he buys a bus ticket out of town. In the final scene he overcomes his fear of water and sails against a hurricane force wind. When he reaches the edge of his world he exits via a door in the wall (painted to look like the sky) to the thrill of the television audience. Truman leaves behind the world imposed upon him and discovers the reality of a whole new world.

I think that many people of faith are trapped in religious worlds that have been imposed upon them by their upbringing or through their initial contact with their religion. And, like Truman, they think they are living by their own initiatives, but actually their world is defined by patterns and beliefs ingrained in their thinking by the religious authorities in their lives. We are either born into our faith or converted into it, and until we start to think for ourselves- questioning, reasoning, and comparing truth claims- the religious world into which we are born or converted is all we know.

In John's Gospel, when Nathanael is told by Philip that he has found the Messiah- Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph- his initial response is, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" According to Johannine scholar R. E. Brown, the saying by Nathanael may reflect a local proverb that expresses some jealousy and disdain between Nathanael's town of Cana and nearby Nazareth. Nathanael is simply echoing a negative, unhealthy belief that he had been taught as a child.

Jesus goes on to shatter that belief. I wonder how many of us are stuck in our spiritual lives because we are clinging to beliefs that have come to define and confine our religious worlds. Nathanael had to let go of this unhealthy belief before he could see with a more positive and honest perspective.

In witnessing about my own faith journey I like to say that this is what I believe right now- at this stage in my pilgrimage- but I could be wrong. Unless I am willing to admit that I could be wrong I have no real hope of seeing with new eyes or experiencing God in new ways. Unless I can humbly admit my limitations as a human being seeking truth I will never get close to the truth. And this is why some people are stuck- they require certainty. They cannot bear to admit that they could be wrong, even though we all see through a glass dimly. There is no certainty when it comes to faith.

Some might argue that if you live on the edge you could fall off. True. But I would rather risk the danger than be trapped in a system that would tell me what I have to believe. Why fear the truth?

I don't worry about getting faith wrong, because I trust God's grace most of all. I believe that God is able to accommodate God's self to us wherever we are on our spiritual journeys. Such is the grace and goodness of God.