The trapeze artist

Tournier cites a trapeze artist swinging from trapeze to trapeze in the circus as an example of this sense of center. He has to let go at one end and flies through the air for a moment before he can hold on to the next trapeze. This “moment in between” is what he writes about. In other situations, too, you can imagine a moment without a stop.

For a trapeze artist, this moment is practiced over and over again. They learn to let go again and again and to find new support. He would be skilled in this letting go. However, letting go is not easy. You have to get over yourself. You have to let go of the supposed security in order to fly through the air, confident that you will find your footing again. The spectators hold their breath, but the trapeze artist can only concentrate on confidently letting go and grasping again.

Rethinking faith

If you want to rethink existing beliefs, you have to learn to let go like the trapeze artist. Naturally, this triggers fear. Just imagine how you would feel to really let go for the first time, not knowing if you can actually grab the next trapeze again. A real argument is not comparable to the quick flip of a light switch. It takes courage to let go of old beliefs. It triggers uncertainty and takes time.

If we stay with this comparison with the trapeze artist for a while, the procedure is as follows:

• Old security – Letting go – New security

The last article on deconstruction and reconstruction (“What is deconstruction?”) is about such letting go of old certainties. You do that because you no longer feel that old security. When a heavy rain washes away the ground beneath you, you do well to seek higher and dry ground. There is a need to set out. This can also take place with one’s own understanding of faith.

Until you’re back on dry ground, you’re just on your way. Those who want to rethink faith because old patterns and old understandings no longer seem sustainable, are on the road for a while and are at home in this “feeling of being in between”. That is something that has to be endured. A new security may come, but a new security no longer corresponds to the old sense of security. One leaves supposed securities behind and finds new support without knowing in advance what this will look like. This not only feels different, but is also shaped differently.

Living with uncertainty

Those who stand at this point must learn to deal with uncertainty. Of course, people can drift into arrogance through arrogance based on their own “knowledge”. That is not an issue in this post. There are many ways to react to changes. For example: If you change from a believer to an atheist, you change camps. I have seen many an atheist who is as ideological as the people whose views they reject. Therein lies no solution for me, because the attitude I wanted to get rid of perhaps and not encounter the same in a different guise.

To endure the uncertainty and the feeling of being in between things, however, requires an extended confrontation. Who dares to say “I don’t know yet”, is no longer in the old thinking and finds himself possible in a far more complex world, in which he carries more personal responsibility than in the old belief structures. Dealing with uncertainty is not sustainable for everyone. It is much easier to embrace another certainty as “absolute truth”. Black and white thinking is always the easiest way to avoid any argument.

The crux of the matter lies here: If we dare to reflect on old assumptions of faith, but do not necessarily want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, it takes courage to learn to distinguish baby from bathwater. This means that every assumption, even about God, must be put on the table.

If the self-evidence of certain assumptions is also questioned in the first two examples here above, the third example is about questioning the self-evidence of all assumptions. This is not with the aim of throwing everything away, but with the aim of being able to distinguish and differentiate.

Asking such radical questions is difficult. Many Christian communities define themselves from the “absolute” knowledge of recognized truths. That these absolute truths are not so clear-cut can easily be seen in the various faith communities and traditions that have formed. There are many manifestations of these supposedly unique things. Being less absolute and more questioning is an accomplishment that stands athwart the self-understanding of many believers.

However, it can be positively deduced from this that security, reliability, eternal values and the like are of crucial importance for one’s own understanding of faith. One can become aware of this. (“Aha! I’m learning!”).

Life and faith are complex

Whoever cultivates this examining and differentiating becomes – one could say – an unbeliever, because he wants to think about these things again without preconceived ideas, if possible. This is not unbelief in the sense of “I don’t think white anymore, but black” (as atheists can do, getting stuck in the same grid), but it is the open-ended question of what endures. This, however, should be a basic concern of every believer.

“And for this I pray that your love may overflow still more and more in knowledge and all sensitivity to it, that you may examine what is essential.”
Phil 1:9-10

Paul then refers to Christ in the second part of his statement, naming many words that are often explained in a specific and pious way. Pay attention: Whatever you think about the next words of the apostle, you interpret your religious understanding into it:

“That ye may be sincere and without offense unto the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness which is by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”
Phil 1:10-11

How could I read this in a more neutral way? The approach to a further examination would be this: I take some distance to this statement, look at it and realize: Paul sees it this way. What do I learn from his understanding? Not my self-evident religious imprint of the past dictates the interpretation to me, but I want to think about this statement. What was the world like in which Paul stood? What was his image of God? What did he understand? Where do I stand myself? Is there an overlap? Which?

I asked myself such questions when I was still “unbelieving”. There I was actively working toward a better understanding, but not constrained by particular doctrines, nor shaped by subcultures. I had questions and I openly asked these questions to myself and also presented them to God in prayer (“If You exist, give me insight …”).

Open-ended does not at all mean blindly accepting or rejecting everything that has to do with the Bible. Here the writer of Hebrews gives a good hint:

“He who comes to God must believe that He is, and will be a rewarder to those who earnestly seek Him.”
Heb 11:6

It needs something like an advance of trust. This is a statement and commitment from my own experience. This is part of the text. This is how faith works (“if … then …”). However, nothing is said about the content of this belief. Even if I were to distance myself and consider the Bible only as a time-bound cookbook, then this is part of the recipe. You can decide to recreate the dish and then experience for yourself whether it tastes good. However, this statement has nothing to do with my own past in churches or free churches, or with my own assumptions about what faith is.

The author writes this as a personal understanding that does not speak of me. In many Christian communities, however, everything that is written is said to speak of me immediately. It is interpreted from today’s point of view, from the teaching of the community or from the Christian subculture. However, all of this is limited. It is up to us to do something with this information. It’s like when a chef writes down a recipe and we read that recipe. Whether we do anything with it is up to us. Whether we succeed in the recipe as described, we will discover. Or do we still want to change something? Do I have all the ingredients in the house? This is not the subject of discussion here, but it is something to think about.

Without trust there is no faith

However, it is sobering at this point to note that without trust there is no faith. That’s what the passage in Hebrews 11 says. Anyone who lets go of that is definitely in a different place. However, this does not include a conviction. Faith is not a precondition, but merely how many things work. Faith, therefore, is often not the starting point, but the attitude that one discovers later, after one has begun to believe.

Let us think, for example, of Adam, who was addressed simply and directly by God. We do not read that Adam had first “believed” before God could address him. The encounter is immediate and without preconditions. God speaks to him, not the other way around. Adam did not seem to be what we call “religious” today. He was not pious. He just walked around in the Garden of Eden. There God spoke to him, the Bible tells us. The same thing happened countless times in other stories. And: people have believed without knowing this verse from Hebrews 11.

The idea that the Bible has always existed in its entirety, and that we naturally assume everything that is written there, was not so given anywhere in the Old or New Testaments. Our present Bible, in its present compilation, came into being hundreds of years after the books were written. Until then, they were individual pieces of writing. The Bible is a library, not a single book. Abraham, for example, did not have a Bible. He was neither Jewish nor Christian, but was called by Paul the father of all believers.

Life and faith are complex. There is no simple answer. Blind assumptions do not always lead to trust as the Bible describes. But Abraham heard God, trusted His statements and set out for an unknown land (Gen 12:1-4). His trust or faith was put into practice with him in a concrete way. It was a gamble because he didn’t know where he was going to end up. The writer of Hebrews mentions it this way:

“Faith is the confident acceptance of what is expected,
a conviction of facts that one does not behold.”
Heb 11:1

And:

“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called,
to move out to the place that he should receive in the future to the lot;
and he moved out even though he didn’t know,
Where he would come.”
Heb 11:1 and Heb 11:8

Now, if I want to believe like Abraham, do I need to hear a similar call from God? Of course not. We should learn from this history. Abraham left behind his ancestral faith, his family and his fatherland. The ability to learn and to set out for unknown horizons is part of faith.

Faith is courageous. Fear-driven religious beliefs are not what drove Abraham. There were no special effects, no special teachings, but God spoke and He walked. That’s all there is to the story. What is described is reduced to the essentials. Exactly how it happened, we do not know. But as it has been handed down and is contained in Scripture today, it should get to the heart of why it goes. It is examples like Abraham’s that are listed by the writer of Hebrews. They are testimonies that should make a difference.

Abraham let go without understanding everything. A lot of things in life happen just like that. He set out with confidence because a promise was made.

How do you want to live your life?