Rollins' Hope to Believe in God

Well into the game, I've finally come upon Peter Rollins' blog. His post, One Day I hope to believe in God... hits a lot of things on the head for me.

If you have time for more reading, interesting pairings with it are Peter Morrow's comment to Rollins' post and Kester Brewin's parable, Footprints, also on Rollins' site.

Among my responses:

Many in and outside the church operate with the assumption "that we all have a shared understanding of what belief is and what we mean by the word 'God.'" (Rollins) The assumption isn't always true. Recognizing that it's operative and figuring out what to do about it is difficult, yet important.

The assumption is part of why meaningful religious conversation (with religous or non-religious people) and constructive changes in religious settings can be so challenging. We have our definitions of God in boxes. More often than not, those boxes resist being opened.

How do we have a conversation about God when we think about God quite differently than our conversation partner (and we may or may not realize this difference exists)? How do we talk about God when we know our understandings of God differ but we don't understand the other person's perspective, our partner doesn't understand ours, or we disagree with each other's perspectives?

I can see why our boxes resist being opened. Assumptions are strong and ingrained. It's difficult to conceive of what might be outside those assumptions. If we can conceive of it, we may or may not like it. Working with it takes energy in forms that can be hard to come by. It takes a lot of risk. It's scary and threatening. It can lead to reorientation of long held perspectives and beliefs and all they imply.

But not being able to find a bridge between differing understandings of "God" in relationships that matter has its own risks, frustrations, pain and sadness. This applies to personal relationships and to societal level relationships.

How can we communicate about God in ways that might be likely to start overcoming these challenges? How can we do so without throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Or in other words, how can we maintain that which we may find meaninful in religion and at the same time open boxes? How do we make it safe and appealing for ourselves and for others to open boxes? How do we let God and each other out of the boxes and more deeply, fully into our lives?