What is your faith axiom?

For the past four months, a small group of us have been meeting for the God After Deconstructionsmall group study. The purpose of this study is to take a deeper look into our embedded faith — the faith that we adopted early in our lives that has become ingrained in who we are and what we believe about God. Like everything in our lives, our faith evolves as we gain new experiences, and sometimes this evolution is not a smooth one. Sometimes we have experiences that challenge our faith to the point of crisis. When this happens, we are forced to reevaluate what we believe in the face of a new reality. This is deconstruction. 

Our group has been bravely tackling some of the most common reasons for deconstruction: contradictions or violence in Scripture, how a good God could allow suffering, church or political abuse in the (false) name of God, when science contradicts religion, among others. However, before we began tackling these topics, we acknowledged the existential danger in the deconstruction process, and we created a safety plan. In my experience, individuals often dive headlong into deconstruction alone and without a safety plan. The lucky ones successfully deconstruct their faith and reconstruct a healthier faith grounded in a mature understanding of God. Unfortunately, many instead lose their faith in the process of deconstruction and never reconstruct. 

So how do we deconstruct safely in order to reconstruct a healthy faith? First and foremost, we cannot do this work alone. We are called to live out our faith as community, and I believe a big reason for this is because challenges to our faith take many forms, and we often need the support and assurance of other believers to help us through our questions and doubts. We are never in this alone, even when it feels like we are. 

Secondly, we need an axiom to ground us. An axiom is something I learned from one of the participants of the deconstruction crew, and it has shaped the way we have done this work together. An axiom in mathematics is an unprovable rule that is accepted as true because it is self-evident. Unlike a theorem, which requires rigorous proof, an axiom stands on its own. For example, a geometric axiom may be that a line extends to infinity. We do not need proof, and we would not be able to find proof for this, but we know it to be true because it is self-evident.

When beginning deconstruction work, it is important to pause and establish one’s faith axiom that will provide a foundation to come back to when deconstruction invariably becomes overwhelming. Everyone’s axiom is unique to their understanding of God, their faith, and their life journey. My axiom is that God is a loving God. I have no scientific proof for this, but I know God to be love. To me, it is self-evident. So whenever I have an experience that brings God or my faith into question, I look at the experience through my trust that God is a loving God. For example, when faced with suffering or grief, I may question whether or not God truly is all-powerful if God won’t make the pain go away. However, when I stand on my axiom that God is a loving God, I see the way God loves me through the pain, always abiding, and always present. This is enough to keep the walls of my faith from tumbling down. 

Other faith axioms that have been shared in our community are “God is vaster than our understanding,” “God is Truth,” and “God is all-good.” These axioms stand when everything else crumbles. And we share these axioms with each other so that if our axiom itself begins to shake, our fellow sojourners can help remind us. 

What is your axiom for God or faith? What foundation do you stand on to weather the inevitable storm of doubt? I’d love to hear from you about it sometime.