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What is a Strong Faith?
Why being sure isn’t always a good thing.
People often say to me that I have a strong faith and let’s be honest, it’s quite a flattering thing to say to a vicar. Sadly, I don’t actually take it as a compliment. I believe that strength of faith is about being able to live with what we don’t know, rather than what we do. People might judge this a weird point of view, or an excuse to be liberal, but I feel it’s fundamental to a healthy spiritual journey with God. And yes, I wish to rescue the word ‘fundamental’ from all those who claim this means blindly and unthinkingly following specific beliefs. As someone who simply believes in God and loves my neighbour as myself, I own the right to be called fundamental.
It’s been a long journey to bring me to this conclusion. Whenever anyone challenged me to consider radical changes to the Church’s teaching, I used to drag my feet, reluctant to give up historic dogmas. For example, there was a time when I would simply have dismissed the idea that God could be female, and it is only recently that I find myself able to live with the creative tension of such a question. I may not be able to answer the question “why can’t God be a woman?” but these days I regard it as a perfectly legitimate question to ask. I happily live with it unresolved, alongside those people who think they have answered it comprehensively one…