YOKED

“Faith should not make your life simple.   It should make it even more complex,” a friend once said to me.   It is a statement I have been wrestling with for some time.   On the one hand, I am tempted to reply that life is already dizzyingly complex, full of existential and interpersonal puzzles to sort through; shouldn’t one’s faith help to ease this complicated frenzy?   Simultaneously, I am relieved to hear my friend speak these words, because they acknowledge and do not attempt to reduce the complexity I confront daily in this world.   If, in the words of Jon Sobrino, we “must be faithful to reality,” then we are also compelled to admit that reality does not always play into theological paradigms as neatly as one might hope.   To cram them into religious narratives uncritically, would be to violate truth as it impinges upon us in the varied, situational contexts of our lives.   It would mean denying, or short-circuiting some aspect of our humanity, a humanity within which God ...