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The No is as important as the Yes

The No is as important as the Yes

Frederick Buechner, The Return of Ansel Gibbs:

If you tell me Christian commitment is a kind of thing that has happened to you once and for all like some kind of spiritual plastic surgery, I say go to, go to, you’re either pulling the wool over your own eyes or trying to pull it over mine. Every morning you should wake up in your bed and ask yourself: “Can I believe it all again today.“ No, better still, don’t ask it till after you’ve read The New York Times, till after you’ve studied that daily record of the world’s brokenness and corruption, which should always stand side by side with your Bible. Then ask yourself if you can believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ again for that particular day. If your answer’s always Yes, then you probably don’t know what believing means. At least five times out of ten, the answer should be No because the No is as important as the Yes, maybe more so. The No is what proves you’re human in case you should ever doubt it. And then if some morning the answer happens to be really Yes, it should be a Yes that’s choked with confession and years and ... great laughter.

Via Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church by Philip Yancey

  • 6
  • Aug 27, 2008, 1:03am

Comments

  1. Daniel

    August 27, 2008 2:02am

    Amen, brotha.

  2. Daniel G.

    August 27, 2008 7:35pm

    There’s portions of this I agree with, for example re-asking yourself everyday.  Having doubt.  Wrestling with the idea that every last drop of it could simply have been contrived.  Some left over instinct that was at one point beneficial in the evolutionary process. 
      Being influenced on this topic by the existence of sin…  That part I can’t relate to.
    There is, in my opinion, real answers out there for those sorts of questions.

  3. Jason's avatar

    Jason

    August 28, 2008 4:23pm

    Out of curiosity, what might those answers be?

  4. Daniel Giesbrecht

    August 29, 2008 9:12am

    Let’s define the question.  I don’t want to start a straw man type argument, but it seems like it’s “How can there be a God and yet there’s all this brokenness and corruption”.  Before I proceed, is that correct?  Feel free to redefine it if I missed something or am off base entirely.

  5. Jason's avatar

    Jason

    August 29, 2008 10:24am

    Fine, I think that’s as good a place as any to start. It’s a great question—perhaps THE question. (And I think that’s partly what Buechner is addressing in his quote, that sometimes Christians too blithely dismiss asking that question.)

    But I do think it needs to be clarified a little bit, to “How can there be a LOVING God and yet there’s all this brokenness and corruption?“ If there is a God, but He isn’t loving, then who cares if He exists and there’s still brokenness and corruption in the world?

  6. Daniel Giesbrecht

    September 2, 2008 7:09pm

    How can there be a LOVING God….
    How else would we have it?  What I mean is, what would be MORE loving than who he is now.  Would a more loving God step in every time some certain line of immorality or justice was crossed?  Predictably making it impossible for us to truly make a decision.  The decision to do what we ought, or do what we want, when those two aren’t the same thing.  In that sense, becoming less of a being and more of a law of physics.  Would that be more loving?

    I’m not done responding to this, I haven’t got the time to respond adequately and will return to it, just didn’t want you to think I’d forgotten.

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