Hard to swallow...

My grandfather has a joke that goes something like this:

Every church (in his priestly experience, Christian church) has to swallow just a little. Not every person agrees with everything the church does, and there's just a little you have to swallow.... Mormon's just have to swallow the most.

It is just a joke, but it speaks to a larger problem that I see, and I'm not talking about the Mormon church.

The problem is the idea that a religious institution would ever force any belief on a person, or that an individual would have to "swallow" anything. Now I'll be the first to admit that the previous sentence sounds a little naive, and I intended it to be so. But let's back up here and think about what a faith community should be.

Ideally it should be a community center, a place for people to come and recharge, a place for someone to find pastoral support, a place to find community. Community and pastoral support are, for me, fundamental. It should be a place where you feel safe and cared for. A faith community, be it a church, an organization, a gathering or even a pair of people, must be in itself a sanctuary to those involved.

The mistake we make, I think, is that we assume that religious institutions are where we find answers and where we let someone else do the thinking for us. Now this is the moment for me where it becomes difficult. On one hand, for me a religion of answers defeats the purpose of having faith at all. But on the other hand I like the idea that we are faithful because we seek the answers of life.

If we seek answers, we must have questions, and to have questions we must be allowed to have questions.

For me, I can't be part of a community that does not allow me to ask questions or to question what I see. This spans all aspects of life, from the religious to political. If we are not allowed the freedom of thought, and subsequently the freedom to question, then liberty, true liberty, in it's crazy Orwellian way, has perished.

A faithful community has a responsibility to its members. It has to care for them, nourish them and love them. If the community is not prepared to deal with the questions that each member brings to the table, than it is not prepared to care for, nourish or love those members.

So when I approach a community of faith, or even a conversation, it is vitally important to me that I am allowed question, to even doubt what I hear. Because without questions, and without doubt, there can be no faith.