Lent 2026 Day 30 – Good vs Good
When we were children, we thought we had it all figured out. Life was about good vs evil. We wanted to be the “good guys” and to triumph over the “bad guys.” So all we had to do was learn the difference between the two, choose the good, and we'd be all set, right? But as we grow up and work our way through adulthood, we come to realize that it's not that simple.
As Terryl and Fiona Givens state in Chapter 2 of their book “The Crucible of Doubt,”
[T]he circumstances that define the reality of the human predicament are not a blatant choice between Good and Evil but a wrenching decision to be made between competing sets of Good.
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We feel unmoored if our religion fails to answer all our questions, if it does not resolve our anxious fears, if it does not tie up all loose ends. We want a script, and we find we stand before a blank canvas. We expect a road map, and we find we have only a compass.
“Unmoored” is exactly what I felt like as I have examined my faith and encountered questions I couldn't find the answers to – or the answers I was expecting, anyway.
But maybe true religion isn't supposed to give us conclusive answers to all our questions or make us feel warm and fuzzy all the time. Maybe it's meant to make us uncomfortable as we are compelled to examine our own hearts in light of what we do know about what Jesus Christ has taught us – and as we try to make sense of what we don't understand.
This is nothing new. The New Testament is full of stories about the disciples of Christ being constantly made uncomfortable both by the teachings of Christ they understood and the teachings they didn't understand.
So maybe the fact that I am wrestling with questions is not the bad thing I thought it was. Maybe it's the point.
#100DaysToOffload (No. 157) #faith #Lent #Christianity