To Re-Dig the Temple
I recently heard a biblical scholar mention the concept of the Latin term A Priori. It means, “from the former,” or “before the fact.” It encapsulates the tendency we all have to believe something by our own presuppositions; before any examination or experience. It’s basically a pre-commitment to a specific system. What happens when we bring these presuppositions into our faith life? What are the potential dangers we face, and what is the impact this has on our faith’s longevity?
The human experience makes it impossible to live outside of systems. Our culture and personal experiences inform the way that we digest the world around us, and our internal laws and morality are shaped by those experiences. Holding to a specific system isn’t the problem, it’s very human. The problem begins when our systems become so rigid that we equate our system with the system.
So much of church has been about holding to the prescribed interpretation of scripture as fact, all while believing it is faith. But faith is a story, it’s a journey we take with God that doesn’t require us to memorize “facts” about him beforehand, but to know His heart, to learn His ways as he walks the road with us. Anything less, is us trusting in our beliefs, our certainty, not God Himself.
Certainty can feel comforting for a time, sure. We have access to a certain level of relief when we believe we have the right answers. It provides followable guidelines. It’s also stagnant and oppressive, not to mention boring, and simply doesn’t work. We cannot expect infinitely curious human beings to squash down the presence of their curiosity and questions.
What was true for my faith origins seem to be a trend throughout the church: we take what we want to believe, and we start digging the temple ground right there. That is A Priori. We often don’t fully know why we believe the way we do, or can even adequately explain what we believe. Yet, we are so confident in the system that we have illegitimately claimed. This is the exact atmosphere that sets us up for failure. Our beliefs are unanalyzed, inexperienced, and uninformed. Then…we have a question that we just can’t push down anymore. Those questions we’ve avoided in the name of “faith,” have sunk down like sediment and has formed our foundation. We won’t feel satisfied forever with this unresolve. The curiosity grabs hold and the thread of one question becomes another, and we keep pulling until the garment becomes undone.
Instead of being able to tandemly hold onto our questions and our faith, we heartbreakingly or disenchantedly find it hard to identify with being a Christian at all. When the structures we hold onto encapsulate everything and anything, we can’t let go of any of it without letting go of all of it.
But what if we met the text where we are? What if we began to see our faith as more of a journey than a set of rules? Instead of taking our established ethics and finding evidence to support it, what if we came to the Bible to see what our ethics should be in the first place? When we come to the scriptures with our own personal conjecture, we will dangerously decontextualize the word.
All of this deconstruction is happening for a reason. It’s not because the Gospel isn’t alive, we just don’t know how to take the fibers of this disassembled garment and fashion it into something meaningful.
It is no simple task to reimagine your faith. It is actually pretty confusing and quite painful. Yet, when we find ourselves feeling so very lost, we are actually on holy ground. God Himself will show up beside you, he will tenderly teach you the ways of love. He will help you assemble the garment into something you can warm yourself under, something you can lay across your shoulders as an anointing, something that no amount of questions can pull apart because you have found a new kind of certainty: one that is no longer about what you should believe in, but who.