Bumbling Forward in Faith

Insights Editor William Greenway Interviews

Cynthia L. Rigby

Bumbling Forward in Faith

Professor Rigby, you told us your topic last January, before COVID-19, George Floyd, and the shaking of our world. Why did you focus on the demonic?

Mainly because of the number of questions I get about the devil, demons, and evil forces in the world when I’m out visiting churches. Mainline theologians don’t talk much about the demonic, so I proposed this topic to nudge myself into thinking more about it. What sense can we make of biblical imagery of principalities and powers and demons and the fight we wage with them?

You begin with a Paul Tillich quote about creative faith and the truly ultimate. What is truly ultimate and what is creative faith?

The truly ultimate is whatever ultimately drives us. Tillich wants our ultimate concern to be God, not our perception of God, not our construction of God, but the God who is above God. For instance, in his day, and still in ours, a misplaced ultimate concern is nationalism. Whenever our ultimate concern is not God, it becomes idolatrous and requires confessing and repenting and a return to the God above God—on this particular point, Barth and Tillich agree (and they do not agree about much).

How does this jive with creative faith? Creative faith is always open to receiving from this God who is above God, always open to the God beyond our idea of God melting us, molding us. Creative faith is open to transformation even in times where God seems to be acting in very un-Godlike ways, which can feel very risky.

You also cite J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, where she has Dumbledore say we should always call things by their proper names because “fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.” What are these devils we should take care properly to name today?

The pandemic has unearthed so many. As noted in my essay, Catherine Keller says “too many” to deal with all at once. Racism, sexism, heterosexism, anti-environmentalism, ageism—so many people who have died of the coronavirus are dying because they’re in homes for people who are elderly and not getting the treatment that they deserve. Disparities in class are being unveiled. I’ve read that disparities in class have become inadvertently visible in Zoom classrooms, where suddenly in

the background the differences in students’ homes is starkly visible. All kinds of demons are getting uncovered in these days.

You say even our talk of “getting back to normal” and the “new normal” can be demonic if it serves to cover over and resist transformation?

Yes. I’m a bit suspicious when it sounds like the goal is primarily to get back to where we are comfortable or to “adapt” and survive whatever comes at us. I’m concerned that emphasis on “normalcy” and “adaptability” might keep us from being creative and open to naming and disarming the demons that obstruct the kingdom of God. Our focus should be, rather, on participating in God’s work of bringing the kingdom “to earth as it is in heaven.” This peaceable kin-dom is not normal.

You stress that we should be confident God is with us, but you also caution us not to march ahead with certainty, but to bumble forward despite our uncertainty. What is the difference between marching and bumbling?

I think the difference has to do with where our certainty is centered. I associate “marching” with treating God as a kind of notary or divine caddy or sponsor or maybe helicopter parent who assures us we are entitled and supports us in our rightness. But the fact that God is with us doesn’t mean we are necessarily in the right. Actually, awareness of God’s presence with us and inclusion of us in the work of bringing the kin-dom should provoke in us jaw-dropping humility, as it did so often with the psalmist (see Psalm 8). The work is God’s, Barth reminds us; all our efforts are provisional (which, by the way, frees us to be playful). That’s what makes it so amazing that God uses us as essential players in God’s work! Philippians 2 reminds us that when we remember that “God is at work in us, enabling us to will and to work for God’s good purpose,” we will not be know-alls, but will marvel at our inclusion, “working out our salvation with fear and trembling.”

I bet there are people reading this who are asking, “Is she saying God wants us to be afraid?” I don’t think that, exactly. But I do wonder if sometimes we jump too quickly to thinking that being afraid or uncertain has nothing to do with the Christian life, to assuming being ultra-confident is a sign of a solid faith. What I’m learning is that having faith really does mean we have to keep climbing back up onto that altar, continuously re-submitting to the God who is above God, being always open to new ways God might be speaking—even through our uncertainties, sufferings, doubts, and fears (Rom. 12:1–2). What I suggest, rather, is that we “bumble along” like Neville or, to use a more classic example, like Don Quixote, from Man of La Mancha, whose family wants to lock him up for “dreaming the impossible dream.” I’m playing with the image of bumbling as a way into imagining what it looks like to move forward even when we are uncertain, hoping against hope that, even though we might fail, we are participating in a cause far greater than ourselves. Our certainty rests in God, not ourselves—the God who has entered into our uncertainty and validated it, in a sense, taken it into Godself. To the degree we think faith is about marching forward with certainty we will naturally attempt to overpower or repress our fears, doubts, and sufferings. Better to bumble forward and watch to

How do we live faithfully in this space? By hanging on until it’s over, spouting pietistic aphorisms, determined to be convinced it will be all right? At what cost to reality, including weeping with others? Or do we go the route of doing what we can, deciding God doesn’t have much to do with the world, and advising everyone to be reasonably responsible, but to be gentle with themselves if they don’t get much done?

see how God might use the stuff we once were taught is weak and shameful to transform the world.

We’ve spoken of the creative faith you affirm, but you also warned against destructive faith. What does destructive faith look like?

Destructive faith is faith that’s closed off to the transcendent God above God who is doing things that we might not expect or want. Destructive faith is a closed system, any closed system—conservative, liberal, progressive, whatever—any system closed to the work of the Spirit who continuously makes us anew.

You speak of being sucked dry by a demonic dynamic. You invoke the noted black liberation theologian James Cone, who says we should struggle against this dynamic because it violates the gift of our creation. Can you say more about what Cone is talking about?

Cone is talking from the perspective of Black Americans, from the perspective of those who have been harmed by Christians who march forward self-righteously in the name of a god of their own making, not even trying to see the God above God. Robert Dabney, who ran the Austin School of Theology, the precursor to Austin Seminary, for example, wielded Bible verses as weapons to justify slavery and promote white supremacy. In this regard, the Black Lives Matter movement is naming and seeking to disarm those demonic principalities and powers that shape institutional systems, sucking the power and the life out of some people in order to

benefit others. James Cone thinks this is the mortal fight Jesus fought and won, culminating on Calvary. This is Christus Victor atonement theory—another thing (besides the demonic) Presbyterians think they are too sophisticated to take seriously. Cone, by contrast, claims Jesus is victor over the demons and urges the faithful to get on board, bumble forward, and fight.

What do you mean when you talk about the God above God? What vision of God do you have in mind and what are you resisting?

I’m finally more Barthian than Tillichian in my understanding of God, meaning that I believe God can be known by way of God’s self-revelation if we can manage to see it. While God’s acts reveal God’s true being, however, I don’t believe they ever exhaust it. As Scripture says, “God is able to do more than we can ask or imagine.” That’s what Tillich thinks, too. And reading Tillich during this pandemic and the rough times we’re having with “all those demons” served as a good reminder to me that even Jesus doesn’t exhaust the reality of God. We have to resist even a vision of God centered in Jesus if that vision reduces God to a God that is only Jesus. I started thinking about all this a couple of years ago, when I was having health problems and my father died. I preached a sermon in the Austin Seminary chapel asking the question, Does God ever lead us into temptation? I got a lot of pushback on that question because it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing the God we know in Jesus Christ would do. But, you see, what we expect God to do and not to do is kind of beside the point. That’s what it means to be open to being met by the “God above God.” To move away from thinking about what it seems like God would do to being open to what God is actually doing.

Can you say more about your understanding of the significance of Jesus’ cry from the cross and what this means for our questioning?

Yeah. When we are truly open to being met by the God above God in ways that we not only didn’t expect, but in ways we don’t like (even in ways that don’t seem very God-like), it helps to know that Jesus is right there with us. He, too, is disappointed, at times, in the God above God. He struggles with God’s will. He cries out, suffering and lonely, with a bitter “Why?” It is not at all evident that Jesus at the very end of his life was “convinced … that nothing could separate him from the love of God.” He experienced separation. But think of what he learned, and what therefore God in a sense learned, and what the world learned by way of Jesus’ submission to the God above God. I don’t think the cross is creative or playful; but I have trouble, these days, denying that there is nothing redemptive about the cross itself. I think there is some holy destruction going on there—and Jesus is naming it, and the lament psalmists name it, and we should name it, too—that twists the demonic back around in ways that show God taking what we intended for evil and using it for good (Gen. 50:20). Creative faith, as I have said, needs to be open to holy destruction as well as to the stuff we like and can make sense of, or else our faith becomes destructive, closed off to God’s work of undoing and remaking.

You are affirming doubt and questioning and bumbling along, yet you end expressing confidence that in the end God’s way will triumph …

Rats. I was trying to not default to being triumphalistic at the end. True to what you’re saying, Romans 8 has that beautiful verse where Paul declares he is convinced that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. This makes me wonder: What if I’m not convinced? What if I’m uncertain? Fortunately, Romans 8 also talks about all creation groaning for redemption; we are in labor pains, Paul says, as we wait. That’s where we are at this moment, I think. That’s where I am, at least. And I’m trying to figure out how to live the Christian life as we are groaning, present even to the painful moments, working for the kingdom to come. This unique time that we’re in is not parallel to waiting from cross to resurrection, in my view; it is more about how to navigate Christian life from resurrection to Second Coming, as the sky grows red in California, black people are ruthlessly murdered, and corrupt governments try to keep marginalized people from casting their vote. How do we live faithfully in this space? By hanging on until it’s over, spouting pietistic aphorisms, determined to be convinced it will be all right? At what cost to reality, including weeping with others? Or do we go the route of doing what we can, deciding God doesn’t have much to do with the world, and advising everyone to be reasonably responsible, but to be gentle with themselves if they don’t get much done?

I am trying for a third way. A way that includes uncertainty as well as certainty, all the whys as well as the statements about God’s love. It is the way of the bumbler and not the marcher; the one who keeps pushing forward and trying things because they know and hope they participate in something greater than themselves. It is the way that celebrates God’s unconditional, steadfast love whether it holds to it firmly or it loses sight of it explicitly. It is the way that is open to the God above God being present in the abyss itself, on the cross, and even—possibly—working in and through the demonic that God is thereby turning inside out.

In this understanding, nothing is separating us from the love of God on this dire day, in this difficult moment, not only because God has entered into it in Jesus Christ but because God has taken us—with our uncertainties; with our bumblings—into the life and work of God that includes suffering, doubt, disappointment, despair, agony, temptations, and questions. Living before the sovereign God, when things are good and we can praise, means all of our work is play (Barth). But living in relation to the God who is above God, when things are bad, means even in our loneliness, fear, and pain we are not left behind, for God is with us, groaning at our side, with all creation, even when we cannot pray (Romans 8:26). And the reality of this love lifts us up, along with the sufferings of the world, along with our uncertainties. Our uncertainties are not overridden but included, somehow, in the life and work of God. So we beloved are ready right now to bumble forward and confront those demons, hoping against hope that God is somehow working together for good even those things that are truly horrible. Perhaps, in this framing, registering our uncertainty is a form of confession: it is a way of acknowledging that—really—God is bigger than our very best imaginings. v