Chapter 2
What a Word
My current favorite word for our time is one that increasingly struggles to endure ambiguity or perhaps no longer wants to. A time in which the longing for clarity and simple answers is growing. And yes: clarity sells well.
It is so clear and provides stability; it is so simple in a time when nothing seems simple anymore.
Like a number.
A number has a fixed value.
After all, everything has its price.
A number is incorruptible.
It is strong and clear and magnificent.
But is that really so?
Does everything have to have a price?
Does everything have to be unambiguous?
Are it not often the ambiguous things in life that make our lives truly valuable?
To be loved.
To experience recognition.
Or even to be able to believe.
Things that cannot be bought.
That is what sometimes makes life hard to endure.
That is what challenges me.
That is what must be endured.
Tolerance of ambiguity, enduring contradictions without resolving them immediately.
Tolerance of ambiguity is the dance between chairs and opinions.
Tolerance of ambiguity is also the dance of faith.
Because faith is always full of tension.
God speaks — clearly? Not really.
Sometimes through donkeys, through trees, and sometimes through me.
Understandable and unambiguous?
Sometimes I have to endure it; the tension between the Holy Spirit and my own quirks.
Sometimes the tension between faith and doubt.
Sometimes the tension between how things are now and how they will become.
Sometimes the tension between hoping and not knowing.
Tolerance of ambiguity is the dance of faith.
Hearing the music of the future — and already dancing to it now.
But what holds us in this tension?
What holds this tension together?
It is not theology that holds us together. It is Christ.
It is not the right kind of piety — no, it is Christ.
It is not the right ethics — it is Christ.
It is not the power of the mighty, nor the misery of the poor;
not the humblest humility or the most fiery faith;
not the greatest knowledge or the most sophisticated arguments.
No — it is Christ alone.
When everything begins to tip over,
call one name: Christ.
It is Christ who saves.
It is Christ who holds everything together.
Christ is the foundation of our tolerance of ambiguity.
Dare More Tolerance of Ambiguity
https://tobiasfaix.de/2022/09/mehr-ambiguitaetstoleranz-wagen/
Tobias Faix, 22 September 2022
ambiguity; the quality or state of allowing more than one interpretation : the quality or state of being ambiguous. A word or expression that can be understood in two or more possible ways : an ambiguous word or expression. Ambiguity (“uncertainty”) and ambidextrous (“using both hands with equal ease”) are connected. Ambiguity (and ambiguous) comes from the Latin ambiguus, which was formed by combining ambi- (meaning “both”) and agere (“to drive”).
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ambiguity