Ambiguity and Faith.
When your mind and heart are truly open abundance will flow to you effortlessly and easily.
Question:
First I am a Christian, a frustrated Christian (not with Christ but with many of my fellow believers).
My wife and I recorded your interview the other day. We thought it was a brief but powerful introduction for our teenage sons to a more spiritual existence (thank you). In our discussion after the show, relations between religions and our world’s poor history of managing these relations were questioned. My 15-year-old son asked “how do we know who is right?”. We reviewed your statement from the show, when you discussed relations with others.
“Leave a little room for ambiguity; leave a little room for uncertainty. And in that uncertainty, there are creative processes that will emerge.”
I ask him if our God was a loving God, if his answer was yes then we are all right. Humans are the ones that have applied all the rules for heaven (leave a little room for ambiguity) Then he said, “what about faith? how can we be ambiguous and faithful?”
The creative and well intentioned dad did not have a good response. What would you say to a teenager who accepts Christ as his savior about Christianity’s damnation of non-believers.
Response:
I liked your response to your son that humans are the ones that have applied all the rules for heaven, and that certainly applies to the damnation of non-believers as well.
The discussion of ambiguity was the segment of the interview about how to bridge opposing positions. To say that you are allowing for uncertainty or ambiguity means that you are not shutting the door on your understanding. You are permitting an enlargement of your knowledge.
Even when you are discussing religious beliefs different than your own, ambiguity doesn’t mean that you are negating your own point of view or faith. So it is perfectly consistent to hold onto one’s faith in Christ and at the same time allow that your knowledge is not so perfect and complete that someone of a different faith could not also have belief deserving of respect. In that allowance you open yourself to the possibility a deeper connection that binds you both and through that unifying process a deeper personal faith emerges as well.
Love,
Deepak
