Daniel Rose: The Pastor Next Door

Hey guys, welcome back to the Pastor Next Door, a podcast for honest conversations about faith, especially when faith feels complicated, uncertain, or worn down.

Now I’m not here to give you easy answers or fix anything.

I really just desire to sit with you for a bit, ask good questions, and make room for grace and honesty along the way.

Wherever you’re coming from today, I’m really glad you’re here.

So let’s get started.

Now, many of us were given a version of faith that worked right up until it didn’t.

It was so often built on certainty, you know, having the right answers or believing the right things in the right way.

And those simple platitudes, right, the rules of the road, so to speak, kind of way of faith, worked really well for many of us, at least for a little bit of time.

The problem, though, is that when life hit us in the face, when life applied pressure through grief, disappointment, doubt, silence from God, that kind of faith cracked.

Because you see, that kind of faith is brittle.

It’s the kind of faith that we might imagine as a brick wall held together by really cheap mortar, right?

It is a faith that can get the job done when you’re young, when you’re little, when you don’t ask questions, when life has not washed over you, when you haven’t experienced any kind of pain or suffering.

The platitudes of that simple faith, that faith that is rooted in rules and black and white thinking, that kind of faith works until it doesn’t.

So I want to suggest to you that that kind of cracking of our faith, that kind of breaking down of our faith, is not a problem with us.

It’s not a failure with us.

I want to suggest to you that the problem is the faith itself.

The problem is that we were given, when we were young, for those of us that grew up in faith traditions, a very brittle faith.

So let’s consider a brittle faith.

What does a brittle faith look like?

Well, a brittle faith is rooted in agreement instead of trust.

What I mean by this is that it works so long as we can give simple intellectual assent to the belief system.

That kind of sense of we just agree and we don’t ask questions, we don’t ask why, we don’t test anything, we simply just accept it.

It might be summarized well in this idea of like, the Bible says it, I believe it, that’s the way it is.

Okay, that can work for a little while, but eventually that kind of agreement is going to come up short.

Because eventually our lived experience is going to cause us to have to struggle and ask some hard questions of these tenets of faith.

It just does.

That’s how life works.

Even in the Bible, when we look at different stories and the story of the people of God throughout the Old and New Testaments, what we see over and over again are people who are moving from kind of this agreement-based understanding of faith to a trusting kind of faith.

So a brittle faith is rooted in agreement, not trust.

A brittle faith is rooted in control instead of relationship.

I think that’s one of the things that has really struck me over the last number of years in my own faith journey is how much my understanding and comprehension of faith is rooted in control.

So even the way that we talk so often about how somebody comes to faith or receives Christ is a control-based thing.

It is this idea that we make a decision to receive Christ, that we…

you see how our sense of control overwhelms even that.

And so one of the things that I have had to come to grips with is that statement in 1 John of how, you know, we don’t love first.

We love because God first loved us.

And so there is this…

there’s kind of this initiation by God, and we’ll talk more about that in a few minutes.

But the modern evangelical understanding of faith really is rooted in control.

It’s rooted in us controlling God.

It’s also so often the church, the community, the system controlling us as well, which is why we constantly see things, I think recently, really breaking down and falling apart in so many big churches when that controlling personality gets challenged.

When a pastor gets challenged and they lash out, so much of the spiritual abuse and spiritual trauma that exists in so many churches really is rooted in control.

And it is painted over in the language of faith.

And so that also creates for a brittle faith.

There’s nothing there when it comes down to it.

That is not a real faith.

A faith that is rooted in control instead of relationship is brittle.

And third, a faith that leaves no room for doubt or lament.

I think that’s one of those things that has really created significant brittle faith in people’s lives.

I know it was something that I had to struggle with.

How do you deal with doubt?

How do you deal with lament?

Because in this agreement-based, rule-based, platitude-based, brick-wall-structured faith, you can’t doubt.

You can’t pull any of those bricks out.

You can’t wonder about those bricks because the wall comes crashing down.

Each one is necessary for the wall to work, for the faith to work.

And so if you doubt one, if you struggle with one, the whole thing comes crumbling down.

There’s also no room for lament or sadness or grief because our faith is rooted in these platitudes, right?

These platitudes of, well, God works out all things for good until he doesn’t, until we look at our life and go, what’s up with this God?

I’ve done everything right.

And now I’m experiencing pain, I’m experiencing suffering, I’m experiencing hardship, and I’ve followed all the rules, I’ve done all the right things, I go to church, I have my quiet time, I pray my prayers, I even share my faith, I do all the right things.

So why am I walking through this season of grief?

Why am I walking through this season of doubt?

And I gotta tell you, when I was at my highest point of my faith in my young life, summer of 1995, I had just been on a summer mission trip, I had given 10 weeks of my life to God after my freshman year in college, and I had been home for, I don’t know, a week?

And my grandmother, my Mimi, died in a car accident coming home from the family cabin.

That was crushing.

And to be honest, my faith at that point in time really didn’t have a lot of room for that kind of grief.

I’m really not sure that I had any intellectual hooks to hang that kind of grief, that kind of struggle, that kind of doubt at that time.

I didn’t know what to do with my faith.

Thankfully, I had a community of people who loved me, who cared about me, who rallied around me, and I think that’s why my faith endured through that season.

If I didn’t have those people, if I didn’t have a community, my faith would have absolutely crumbled.

It was so brittle because it was so rooted in the sense of doing the right things.

So what about an enduring faith?

Well, enduring faith isn’t rooted in certainty.

It’s rooted in confidence.

An enduring faith is one that can struggle and wrestle and know with confidence that God is good with that, that God loves the doubt, loves the struggle, loves us in the midst of our wrestling, which leads us to the sense of a deeper trust, right?

An enduring faith is one that is rooted in trust, and it is rooted in the reality or in the trust that this God who is love, this God who is gracious and kind, is also a God who will take care of us, who will meet us where we’re at, who will extend to us grace.

And so it’s that an enduring faith is that kind of faith that can speak honestly and stay in the relationship.

You know, I think about like my relationship with Amy in my marriage, and if the two of us could not speak honestly with one another and keep our relationship, that is no marriage at all.

I mean, you have to have a faith, an enduring faith that keeps us in relationship, allows us to speak honestly to God and stay connected in relationship with him.

And if we need examples of that, we have an entire book of the Bible that is dedicated to that, which is the Psalms.

The thing that I love about the Psalms is that they are explosive in rage.

They are cutting in their sarcasm, in their cynicism at times.

They are, there is a depth of lament and sorrow and pain that reflects aspects and seasons of my life.

But there is also a hope, and there is a sense of trust that God is going to bring good about somehow, some way, at some point in time.

Maybe not in the time that we want, but certainly God is going to take care of us and is going to watch over us and is going to make sure that good things are going to come, that justice and righteousness will come.

There is a hope and a trust there.

So, as we consider this enduring faith as opposed to a brittle faith, I think one of the things that we need to understand is that in Scripture, faith is not first about belief.

It is about relationship.

So, this faith that is, that’s not first about belief, but about relationship, it really is rooted in this covenant understanding of how God works, right?

So, God moves towards us in relationship.

God is the one that demonstrates love first.

God is the one who loves us first, and all the way through, it really is a commitment by God first.

And so, you can even look at this in the sense of, I think, in the life of Jesus.

I think this is where Jesus' life is just such a perfect picture of this.

I know, surprise, right?

But what we see is Jesus giving of himself, giving his life so that all things might be reconciled, and then there of God and keep coming back to it.

And what I told him was, to be honest, you know, quite simply, as I wrestle through it, I learn about God.

I learn more about who God is and how God works.

And in the next time I struggle with something, it’s not like I’m starting with a clean slate.

I’m starting with this thing that I learned back here already once.

And so I build on that.

And so that trust that I have developed over, you know, 30 years now of walking with Jesus and walking the Jesus way has shown me that this way of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control is the way I want to live.

And as I practice those things, which is to practice the faith, my trust in God grows.

So as I was thinking about all of this, one of the things that, one of the stories that popped into my head is the story of the father who brings his son to Jesus’s disciples after the transfiguration in Mark chapter 9.

The boy, he says in the story, the man says that his son has a demon.

He’s clearly describing epilepsy.

This boy keeps having seizures and they, you know, they throw him into, he says, the father says, hey, you know, this demon has tried to drown my son, tried to burn my son, throws him into fire with these fits and all these things.

And, you know, he says, if you can do anything, Jesus, do it.

And Jesus says, if?

I can do anything for those who believe.

And the father says one of the best lines in the New Testament.

He says, I believe, help my unbelief.

I believe, help my unbelief.

In one sentence, I think we get this perfect encapsulation of the relationship of faith and doubt.

You see, faith, right?

Faith is a belief in something we can’t necessarily see.

Faith is hoping in something that we don’t have, something that we can’t put our hands around.

And so if we actually have faith, then by definition we are going to doubt.

Doubt is not the opposite of faith.

Doubt works hand in hand with faith.

Doubt is the demonstration of faith.

Because what doubt says is, I’m not sure.

I believe, but I’m not sure.

Or as that father says, I believe, help my unbelief.

So it’s that holding together, right?

When we have a robust and enduring faith, we are going to struggle with doubt.

And we see this.

Jesus doesn’t correct the man.

Jesus doesn’t say, well, then you don’t really believe.

No, Jesus just simply responds and heals the son.

It is a remarkable thing.

And so we need to understand that when we are in this covenantal relationship with God, this enduring faith rooted in the faithfulness of God to God’s promises, then there are going to be times where we’re going to experience silence.

We’re going to experience confusion.

We’re going to experience protest and frustration.

We’re going to sit there in our prayers and say, WTF, God?

What is going on?

That may be the most honest prayer we can pray at some time.

And all of this is part of covenant speech, as we mentioned before, right?

I mean, Psalms gives us permission to speak this way because we see them all over the place.

We see everything reflected in the Psalms, and it’s good, and it’s beautiful.

And so if you’ve ever been afraid to say what you actually feel to God, this is your permission slip.

You have permission to speak to God honestly.

You can share with God your doubts.

You can share with God your grief, your laments.

Be honest.

God wants to hear it all, and God embraces it all, and God loves you not in spite of it, but in the midst of it, because God’s love is not dependent on me.

It’s not dependent on you.

It’s not dependent on our performance.

God’s love is rooted in God’s identity.

God loves us because God is love.

And that is a remarkably beautiful thing.

And so we get to just trust in it.

We can just rest in it.

You don’t have to perform for the divine.

So as we continue to consider this, we need to ask the questions of how does God work?

If God wants us to have this enduring faith, how does this work itself out?

Well, I think the first thing we need to understand is that formation doesn’t happen quickly.

Spiritual formation is measured in years, not moments.

So we’re just not going to overnight have this robust, strong, enduring faith in the same way that if I go to the gym one time, I’m not going to be ripped.

I have to put the work in.

I have to go to the gym and I have to lift the weights and I have to put the reps in and I have to eat the right food and I have to do the right things.

And if I do, then I will get stronger.

And the same is true for our faith.

Growth is measured in years, not moments.

Because you see, here’s the thing.

God is patient in ways that we are not.

We want to be perfect right away.

And we’re not going to be.

We are going to struggle and fail because following Jesus is hard.

Following Jesus cuts across all of our natural inclinations.

Our inclinations are not to love well.

Our inclinations are not to take care of others.

Our inclinations are almost always self-centered.

And for us to move beyond those things is going to take time.

We have to put them away.

And God is patient in that process.

I think something else that we have to really wrap our heads around, and again we see this demonstrated in the life of Jesus, is that the resurrection life doesn’t erase wounds.

Too often the bill of goods that has been sold us in American Christianity is that if you start following Jesus, your whole life is going to be roses and sunshine.

And it’s just not going to be roses and sunshine.

It’s going to be hard.

It is going to be difficult because resurrection doesn’t erase wounds.

In the story of Doubting Thomas, he says, I won’t believe until I put my hands in the holes on his hands and my hand in his side, the hole in his side.

And Jesus shows up amongst the disciples, and what still exists on his body?

The holes and the wound in his side.

Resurrection doesn’t erase wounds.

It transforms them.

It transfigures them.

It changes them into something of meaning and purpose.

I mentioned my Mimi dying back in 1995, and that was a wound that lasted and continues to last.

I still grieve that.

I wish she could have met my children.

I wish she could have been at my wedding.

I think she would have enjoyed it.

I think she would be so proud of her great-grandchildren.

And yet, that wound of grief has been transformed, and it has allowed me to understand some things about myself, some things, potentially even how God works, in ways that I don’t know if I necessarily would have otherwise.

Now, in the moment, it was awful, but now that I have 30 years of perspective, I can see the good that has come out of that time.

That has helped me grow, that has helped other people in my life grow.

Wounds in resurrection become transfigured.

They become transformed.

And so while we walk through difficult seasons, seasons of lament and grief and doubt and suffering and pain, that is a symbol, that is a sign of us being in a place that’s unfinished.

And yet, in the midst of something that’s unfinished, we still need to be faithful.

We need to reflect the faithfulness of our faithful Jesus.

And that can be hard.

And even as we seek to reflect that, the thing that we can trust is that in the midst of that, Jesus is faithful.

And so, you know, as we’re kind of coming to the end here of this introduction before we dive into season one, I think something that’s really important for us to put our hands and our hearts and our minds around is that a faith that endures is usually quieter, humbler, and more honest than the faith we are taught to admire early on.

That faith that is rooted in black and white thinking, that faith that is rooted in, you know, this is right, that is wrong, that faith that is rooted in rules, that faith that is rooted in platitudes, tends to cover up its struggle, tends to cover up and hide its doubt through being loud, through being arrogant, through just kind of pretending that life isn’t hard.

But an enduring faith, an enduring faith is one that is strong.

In true strength, we oftentimes see reflected in the one who is quiet, the one who is humble, and the one who is honest.

So what should you be looking forward to over the coming seasons on The Pastor Next Door?

Well, first, this is going to move slow.

We’re not going to rush through things.

We’re going to work our way through slow.

I hope that you will experience grace first.

I hope that I communicate to you this, a context of grace and an environment of grace here.

I hope that I will be honest.

I really, really try to be as honest as I possibly can be as I wrestle through things.

So I’m not going to sugarcoat stuff.

I’m not going to try to lie.

I’m not going to try to pretend things are easier when they’re not.

I’m going to be honest.

This space is going to be non-performative.

The editing here is not going to be the best.

You’re not going to get cool music tracks or anything like that.

It’s just going to be me and a microphone talking about grace.

It’s not going to be quick fixes.

There’s not going to be easy answers.

And there’s not going to be any pressure to arrive somewhere spiritually.

You might be listening to this because you’re struggling.