It’s Complicated

So many of us want clarity, definition, simplicity, all the answers to questions, all the problems to be fixed. I know I’m prone to live my life thinking, “Things are all going to line up eventually, and get better.” I have a tendency to still believe, “Life is going to get easier.”

And although I do believe in heaven, and that Christ’s restoration is actively happening in our world, we are still living in that “in-between time”, the strange paradox of Christ’s “already, but not yet come” Kingdom.

Life is both joyful and painful, clear and unclear, beautiful and ugly…it’s complicated.

I was reminded of this by an old quote from Rachel Held Evans, regarding the Bible:

“If you are looking for verses with which to support slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to abolish slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to oppress women, you will find them. If you are looking for verses which seek to liberate or honor women, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to wage war, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to promote peace, you will find them. If you are looking for an out-dated irrelevant ancient text, you will find it. If you are looking for truth, believe me, you will find it.

This is why there are times when the most instructive question to bring to the text is not, ‘what does it say?’, but ‘what am I looking for?’ I suspect Jesus knew this when he said, ‘ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened.’

If you want to do violence in this world, you will always find the weapons, If you want to heal, you will always find the balm.”

Life is complicated. The Bible is complicated. Faith is complicated.

I wonder if a big part of living life well is finding something outside of me, and even my family, to live for. Someone to follow. Someone that makes life more tolerable when it’s painful. And also someone that brightens even the most beautiful colors of life and takes them to a heavenly level.