Walking Away

Matt said:

"I've been thinking about the need to have the ability and the willingness to walk away from my faith if my faith is going to be real."

I'd love you to post about this one. I don't understand what you mean...

So I will.

I've been thinking about the fact that a faith without questions isn't really a growing, costly faith. The more we ask questions of faith and the more we get answers, the stronger (or weaker) our faith gets.

Those questions need to be real questions, where if you get the "wrong" answer you are willing to walk away from your faith. If we aren't willing to act on the answers to our questions, even if we don't get the answer that we want, then our faith is not faith, it's habit or ritual. Faith must be able to stand up to our questions, and if it doesn't we need to be able to chuck in the towel. We need to maintain the possibility that all we believe could be wrong otherwise our faith loses its value. Faith finds its values through the existance of doubt. There always has to be the possibility that you can chuck in the towel or how will your commitment ever be real? You won't be there because of your belief, you'll be there because stupidity or fear maintianing the status quo because that's what you do.

That's why you need to be able to walk away.

For those who may be interested, I have no plans to walk away from my faith. And all my questioning comes up good. I have always found God to be faithful. I'm not going anywhere, I'm just open to the option incase one day I find it's all been an embarrassing hoax.