On faith and failure

A few weeks ago, I was part of a conversation with a group of seniors where we reflected upon the question, “Have you ever seen or personally experienced the failure of faith?”  A loaded question, if ever there was one.  What does it even mean for faith to fail?  We may have had some difficulties answering that question, but we certainly found no shortage of things to talk about!  We talked about the experience of the absence of God, about the perceived inadequacy of faith in the face of imminent death, about faith’s failure to overcome fear and doubt, about faith’s inability to meet this or that intellectual challenge, about the slow drift away from the convictions of one’s childhood.  It was a fascinating, if at times dispiriting conversation.

Then, on the other end of life’s spectrum, I had another recent conversation with a person in the (in)famous 18-30 demographic—a segment of the population that is, according to research, exiting the church in droves.  I heard about a restrictive and stifling view of God, about difficulties with the exclusivity of Christianity, about preferring a more tolerant view of the world, about how despite admiring (a selection of) Jesus’ teachings, the whole package simply wasn’t working anymore.  Too judgmental, too hypocritical, too inconvenient, too narrow, too _____.   For this person, faith had failed.  Or, at least, faith of a certain kind had failed.

These two conversations provoke all kinds of questions, of course.  Questions like: What do you mean by “faith?”  How do you understand the term?  What do you expect faith to do or be?  What do you suppose it ought to “accomplish?”  How would you know if it had “worked” or was “working?”  Is faith static or dynamic in nature?  Is there room for the expression of doubt, confusion, anger, etc within the context of faith?