FAITH AND DOUBT 03.

GOD AS MOSAIC. FAITH AS LIVING OUT A CREED.

There comes a point—after the graduate seminars, the theological hair-splitting, the seasons of deconstruction, the raw prayers—that you realize something unsettling but freeing: you are never going to land on a final, airtight picture of God.

And that’s okay. In fact… maybe that’s the point.

We’ve walked through how the biblical tradition presents a moving target—God as man in a garden, storm on a mountain, cosmic architect, intimate parent, consuming fire, and Spirit beyond comprehension. We’ve talked about how every age, culture, and person projects their longings upward and names what they see.

But what do you do with that in real life?

THE GOD WHO WON’T STAY STILL.

When you start to live with this awareness, you notice that God refuses to stay put. The moment you think you’ve got the image nailed down, life comes along and shakes the frame.

A diagnosis.
A betrayal.
A miracle you didn’t ask for.
A silence you can’t explain.

And suddenly, the God who felt so solid yesterday looks blurry again.

That’s actually the STORY of the Bible that ties it all together— God is surprisingly unsettled. He shows us by the rivers of Babylon when he was supposed to be a local storm God. He shows up in the last imagery you might expect. He shows up as a person walking around in the creation.

But God still shows up.

And so this is not a sign you’ve lost your way. It’s the same story the prophets, psalmists, and apostles lived, lauded, and lamented. When you enter their writing, you are witnessing them witness. They are learning in real time to walk with a God who shifts—sometimes starkly—between comfort and disruption.

Hebrew Bible scholar (somewhat of a pirate and a good man), Walter Brueggemann, calls this the rhythm of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation. Faith isn’t a straight line; it’s a spiral that keeps passing through seasons of clarity, confusion, and a deeper kind of clarity that’s been through the fire.

HOLDING THE MOSAIC.

So how do you hold onto a God who’s too big for your definitions, too wild for your categories? How do you find stability, help, and hope?

You learn to hold the whole mosaic at once. You let the lamb and the lion live side by side (rawr…baaa). You let God be tender and terrifying, merciful and just, near and impossibly far.

Because here’s the secret: if you only keep the pieces you like, you will end up with a God small enough to fit in your pocket—and too small to carry you when your world collapses.

And this is the trick: This mosaic of God CORRESPONDS TO REALITY. Good and evil. Love and hate. Life and death all in just one breath.

The God who can hold you in tragedy is the God who can stand in the whirlwind and say, “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?”
The God who can move you toward justice is the God who still thunders from Sinai.
The God who can sit with you in grief is the God who weeps at Lazarus’ tomb.

You need all of it. I know I do.

FAITH AS FIDELITY, NOT CERTAINTY.

There’s a great line in Disney’s Mandalorian, when someone makes fun of the Mandalorian for never taking off his mask out of some weird loyalty to an “old religion.” Mando quickly and surely answers with conviction,

“It’s a creed.”

He doesn’t miss a beat. This is because he has a chosen path of conviction whether or not his emotions drag him this way or that way. He has chosen fidelity to the path and the promise of being a Mandalore.

At least for me, so it is with the God of the Bible and the Christ. I know more about doubt than any of my atheist friends, and I choose the creed. I choose the path. I die to myself daily for it because it is the truest way I know forward in a world of chaos, to choose love, forgiveness, sacrifice, and a better world.

It’s not an old religion. It’s a creed. I choose fidelity.

What if this is true for you too?

Maybe the mistake was ever thinking faith was the absence of doubt. In the biblical languages, faith is less about mental certainty and more about fidelity—steadfastness, loyalty, showing up.

You can have questions and still be faithful. You can wrestle and still hold on. That’s the Jacob story in a nutshell: not clarity, but commitment in the struggle.

I love that Jacob believes and walks with a permanent limp. I love that he ultimately chooses fidelity AND he’s a total conniving fuck up. Both things.

And so…. choose both things. An honest look at the uncertainty and a living faith that God puts the breath in your lungs.

If God is a moving target, then maybe faith is the willingness to keep aiming.

THE BLESSING IN THE WRESTLING.

At some point, you stop asking for the final answer and start asking for presence in the middle of the mess.

You start praying prayers like:
“I don’t understand You, but I trust You.”
“I don’t feel You, but I’m not letting go.”
“I don’t know where we’re going next, but I’m still in.”

And slowly, you find that the blessing isn’t on the other side of the wrestling match—it’s in the wrestling itself.

The questions become part of your worship. The tension becomes part of your prayer life.

And when the next season of disorientation comes—and it will—you’ll already know the way forward.

Because faith in a living God will always be dynamic, unfinished, and alive.

So keep going. Keep holding the mosaic. Keep wrestling for the blessing.

And when you’re too tired to wrestle, remember:
God is not afraid of your questions.
God is in your questions. God IS YOUR QUESTIONING.
And the same God who changed shape for Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, and Paul…
will meet you exactly where you are, and exactly as you need.