What if…

Here’s the thing – too many of us come to this Christian thing, this faith thing, this religion thing, this church thing not with an intent to learn (really), not in humility believing that I (we) need to be instructed on things we know little about. Instead, we come with the perhaps insecure intent to justify, support, or confirm what we want to believe already. Our culture has come to the point where we believe we can think anything we want to be true and it is therefore true, for us, and it matters not whether anyone agrees or whether real-life counters what we want to believe.
The “learning process” has changed from one of acquiring new/more knowledge from people who know far more than I do that will change me and my perceptions of truth or reality, to a process of seeking out anywhere “facts” that support what I want to believe. Sadly, for many people the anti-culture anti-intellectualism of our time reigns and they would rather simply remain ignorant.
As such, instead of giving ourselves to a teaching that challenges our preconceptions and may well demand that we align our opinion or belief to an established “truth,” we instead try to overtly or subtly change the teaching of this “truth” so that it will match up with what we can only already conceive of. We rely upon our own understanding of what is possible or our own ability to correctly discern, rather than yield to a very old and established teaching that effectively extends to multiple cultures and languages and billions of people over two millennia.
I well understand the good and arduous process of wrestling with stuff, but that is different than asserting that what I want to be true therefore is, even if just for me. What happens if we say, “I don’t know” or “I am probably wrong,” and begin there? What would happen if we give ourselves to a process that will probably turn everything we rely upon upside down? What would happen if we looked back over these past 2,009 years and step aside our own hubris and considered that what has survived all these years of trial and persecution, this wisdom, just might have something to say to us of the Truth, of God, and of God’s ways for us – not just the limited and myopic vision that we cling to?