I've Got Questions

I hope this isn’t presumptuous, but why the eff are we even doing this anymore?

Hi friends,

I’m taking an outrage/despair break for our newsletter today (let’s just say that this Enneagram 9 has fully integrated that 8-wing at the mo’) to celebrate a debut author and friend’s new book release. Not only because I want to support her, of course, but honestly, I have a hunch we all need a breather and reset like this conversation. The question that prompted Erin’s response is one that I think a lot of us are asking at the moment.

Today, I’ve Got Questions: The Spiritual Practice of Having It Out With God by Erin Hicks Moon releases into the world. For the uninitiated, Erin Hicks Moon is a writer, podcaster, and storyteller who helps people disentangle faith by creating a kind and curious community that welcomes honest doubt and questions. She is the Resident Bible Scholar and host of the Faith Adjacent podcast,¹ and the senior creative at Popcast Media Group. A homesick Texan, she lives in Birmingham, Alabama, with her husband and three children, where she bravely tries to live without yellow queso every day.

Now, to say that Erin Moon is deeply beloved is as vast an understatement as I can imagine. People love Erin. They love her witty and weird podcast, her Internet presence, her newsletter, sure. They love her authenticity, humour, wisdom, curiosity, and resolute kindness. They love her stories, whether sad or hilarious. They adore her quirks and her foibles, her ability to translate complicated theological ideas into actually helpful guidance, her theatre-kid energy, her questionable taste in movies, and her Texas-sized ability to call bullsh*t.

Of course, I say, "people love Erin," but we all know that I also mean, "Sarah Bessey loves Erin" for those very things. But I also love her for her deep faithfulness, her thoughtful compassion, her inclusive Gospel-centred goodness, her truth-telling about how we got here, her refusal to be anyone’s hero or guru, and her inimitable voice. I mean, what other spiritual leader do you know who will drop Baby-Sitters’ Club and Taco Bell crunchwrap supreme references alongside beautiful thoughts on resurrection and justice that make you want to re-dedicate your life to Jesus again?

There is a hospitality to Erin’s work that makes room for the full truth - not just the hard and painful truths but the beautiful and strong truths, too. She’s the funny, smart, bitingly honest, turn-over-tables-in-the-temple instigator you needed to name the things you can’t say out loud. And she is a steadfastly hopeful, stubbornly faithful, tenderhearted, generous, and trustworthy guide who will lead you back to what you always hoped was true all along.”²

---

I’ve Got Questions

Photo by Aaron Lee on Unsplash

Dear Erin,

I hope this isn’t presumptuous, but why the eff are we even doing this anymore?

Regards,
Liv

I do appreciate an email that gets right to the point.

Because I am a Person with a Faith Podcast, sometimes I get Internet Frangers (these are strangers who become friends) who are in the midst of also trying to figure out why this whole faith thing is so hard, and since it is, is it even worth it? And they inevitably ask some form of this question: Why on earth are we still trying to do this? Why are we still trying to be Christians?…

….. Hope is a reckless investment: the stakes are high and if things go south, you’re in a bad place. And it is beyond easy to sink into the feather bed of hopelessness. To disconnect my heart and my spirit and my body from this flaming garbage truck of a world, to unhitch myself from the risk of faith at all and put my energy into protecting myself and my people from the truth of the matter: no one is coming to save you, and you can only trust yourself.

But then.

But then, but then, but then.

We can sink as far as we want, but the flaming garbage truck is never the end of the story. As much as the ache of the world is true, there is also resuscitating hope putting its breath in the lungs of truth and watching them inflate. And I think when Christians talk about hope, we tend to think they mean the pearly- gates- New- Jerusalem- future kind. But Jesus didn’t say “abundant life when you get to heaven” or “abundant next life.” Just “abundant life.” Here. Now. And no one will be honest about the fact that telling the truth and walking in active hope is damn near impossible.

Because as a global faith, particularly in Western cultures, we’ve stopped telling the truth. The truth about what Jesus said, about who we are, about how we are supposed to take care of people, about what we’re supposed to stand for, about what we’re supposed to love. We’ve ignored, gaslit, rejected, or buried the truth and asked everyone to just be hopeful in a fantasy ungrounded in reality. Or we’ve decided to stay sitting upright at the cold table of judgment, criticizing anyone who dares to imagine a different way.

I get trapped in these patterns when I forget the actual bonkers nature of what we’re saying we believe in here with Jesus. Like he told the crowd in John 8, he’s saying he’s offering a life without death, and besides that, a way of living that speaks to the humanity of every single person. When I really remember this is not about budget meetings or interpretations of Scripture, when I go back to pre- empire, weird Jesus who said strange things like “drink my blood and eat my flesh” and wanted us to love our enemies, I cannot shake it. Maybe you can, Liv. I’m not the one who can decide that for you.

I would love more than anything to extract myself from what feels like a fruitless exercise in longing expectation for love to triumph over hate. It would save me a lot of emotional capital at the very least. But dammit, I cannot shake the way the Gospels systematically blow up the idea that only the put- together and the fully articulate can be with God. How only the well or the rich or the powerful have access to God. I cannot look away from Jesus touching people considered to be unclean, Jesus inviting those that society deemed unfit, Jesus defying space and time and physics to show his love. The story of an expansive God compacting every bit of God’s nature into a fragile, vulnerable infant. How it’s true that love matters when it’s honest, or to quote Paul, “No matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love” (1 Cor. 13:3). How there’s no denying that when you see someone, even yourself, in their belovedness, it can change who they are, how they live, and their purpose in the world. I cannot stop looking at the cracks where the light breaks free.

That’s why the eff I’m even doing this anymore, Liv.

No matter how hard it tries, bleak, despondent truth cannot kill hope. And it does try, Liv. You need to know it’s going to try really hard.

- Erin³

---

Giveaway and Community Conversation

So that’s my question for us today as a community: how would you answer Liv’s question there? Or perhaps, more to the point, why the heck are YOU doing this anymore? (And if you’re not or you’ve tapped out or whatever, you are welcome to say so. This isn’t a place where you have to pretend to a faith and certainty you do not share or feel right now. All answers are very welcome and honoured.)

Come tell us: why the eff are you doing this still?

I’ll randomly choose 5 commenters to receive a copy of Erin’s new book and you know what, I’ll throw in my latest, too (that’s Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith). I’m afraid I can only manage USA and Canadian addresses though due to postage costs, so keep that in mind. We’ll pull the winners and update this post in a week with those. Winners will be contacted using the email you used to sign up here. Comments are open so everyone can join in today.

EDITED TO ADD: CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED. Winners were notified through their subscriber email so congrats to Melanie, Kristen, Jen, Sarah, and Trisha!

If you want to buy the book - and I think you do! - here’s a link to Baker Books and Bookshop.org for our American friends and for us Canadians, here’s the link to the Indie Booksellers and at Chapters Indigo. (If you can’t swing the book right now, one great way to support authors is to request it at your local library for purchase by the system: not only do you get to read it for free but then it’s available to your whole community, too.)

Okay, I can’t wait to read through your comments and borrow a bit of hope from you all. I will try to weigh in with my own response to Liv’s questions there, too. Eventually.

Love S.

My Books | Field Notes | Instagram | Facebook | BlueSky | SarahBessey.com

• 40 Breath Prayers for When You Are Despairing: Show me who to be, and what is mine to do.

• Good words for hard times: A community conversation

• The one who needs to be nourished and the one who feeds: Or, Despair is not our only option

• In which I get honest about contentment, capacity, and a few other things: Or; Fit for purpose

• I do love an end of the year wrap up: The Top Ten 2024 Posts

1. I have been a guest on the Faith Adjacent podcast! Actually, that episode may have been the most fun I’ve ever had on a faith podcast - it’s called Leap of Faith. Here’s the link if you want to listen to it.

2. These couple of paragraphs are an excerpt from the Foreword for her book, which I was honoured to write.

3. This excerpt is shared with the publisher’s permission.