Faith Like a Trampoline

The following post is from our new GodSpot blog contributor, Laura Parker.  Laura has a calm sensiblity about her faith and often finds herself in conversation with friends about issues of spirituality and belief. I appreciate her perspective and am glad she's a willing contributor to Godspot.  After you read her post about Trampolines and Faith, go browse her blogCereal for Dinner.

Faith Like a Trampoline

As my friends and I have been talking about faith and what you really have to believe in order to follow Jesus with your life, I was reminded ofRob Bell's book Velvet Elvis. In the first chapter, he talks about faith in terms of brick walls and trampolines. Read for yourself this excerpts from the first chapter:

"When we jump, we begin to see the need for springs. The springs helpmake sense of these deeper realities that drive how we live every day. The springs aren't God. The springs aren't Jesus. The springs are statements and beliefs about our faith that help give words to thedepth that we are experiencing in our jumping. I would call these the doctrines of the Christian faith. 

They aren't the point.

They help us understand the point, but they are a means and not an end. We take them seriously, and at the same time we keep them in proper perspective. . . 

It hit me while I was watching that for him (a man giving a lecture on the six-day literal creation) faith isn't a trampoline; it's a wall of bricks. Each of the core doctrines for him is like an individual brick that stacks on top of the others. If you pull one out, the whole wall starts to crumble. It appears quite strong and rigid, but if you begin to rethink or discuss even one brick, the whole thing is in danger . . .

One of the thing that happens in brickworld: you spend a lot of time talking about how right you are. Which of course leads to how wrongeverybody else is. Which then leads to defending the wall. It struck me reading the letter that you rarely defend a trampoline. You invite people to jump on it with you.

I am far more interested in jumping that I am in arguing about whosetrampoline is better. You rarely defend the things you love. You enjoythem and tell others about them and invite others to enjoy them with you. 

Jesus invites everybody to jump.

And saying yes to the invitation doesn't mean we have to have it all figure out. This is an important thing to remember: I can jump and still have questions and doubts. I often meet people who are waiting to follow God until they have all their questions answered. They will be waiting for a long time, because if we knew everything, we'd be . . . God. So in the invitation to jump is an invitation to follow Jesus with all of our doubts and questions right there with us. "

rob bell, velvet elvis, pgs. 22-28 

I am learning that faith is less about having the rigid brick wall all figured out and more about just choosing to get on the trampoline and jump, experiencing and living the Way of Jesus in the world. I am learning that the details of what you believe are much less important than simply enjoying a relationship with this God. In essence, I'm learning that jumping is leagues better than brick-laying.

If you haven't read Velvet Elvis yet, it's definitely worth your time. It is an authentic, outside-the-box look at Christian spirituality that rings true on so many levels.

~Laura Parker