Richard Rohr challenges our view of faith with three boxes, which he feels represent the stages of spiritual development.
The first stage is one of order marked by simple answers. He compares this to a child’s toy box, which is neat but limited: “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so.”
The next stage is about disorder. We lose our sense of certainty and begin to ask questions. He compares this stage to a messy playground where real growth can occur.
The final stage is re-ordering, where we let go of the simple answers of the first stage and enter a wide expanse of maturity where answers aren’t that important anymore.
Is this how Jesus envisioned faith? Is this the path to maturity?
Philip Gulley thinks it is. He says, “If the church were Christian, inviting questions would be more important than supplying answers.”
Progressive Christians like Rohr and Gulley give the impression that certainty is proud and conviction stems from close-mindedness. Again, Gulley says, “We just never know. We think we do. We think we have life figured out, and in our arrogance, we become hard.”
I think we have all had times when we have stubbornly shut down other perspectives and blindly held to our own preferences. But is faith more about questions than answers? Is it a journey or a destination? Is it a room to enjoy or a box to break out of?
1. If it’s been delivered, we don’t need to go searching somewhere else
Jude would have found Richard Rohr’s view of faith very strange. Far from urging people to leave certainty behind, he appealed for the church to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3). He saw the Scriptures as a complete package. In the Word of God, we have all the answers that faith seeks.
2. The content of our faith is to be guarded, not discarded
While progressive Christians talk about discarding our answers, the apostle Paul spoke of defending them. He urged Timothy: “guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called 'knowledge,' for by professing it some have swerved from the faith" (1 Timothy 6:20-21).
Already in the first century, people seemed to be advocating special knowledge that caused people to abandon their faith, and Paul warned against it. Faith is a “deposit” that’s been “entrusted” to us. Moving on from it is like leaving out our bank card and broadcasting our password. That might feel freeing, but no one would call it wise.
3. Guarding the truth isn’t just for the spiritually immature
Richard Rohr acknowledges the idea of faith ordered by simple answers, but he feels that this is an immature phase that should be moved on from. Again, the apostle Paul disagrees.
Not only does he warn Timothy in his first letter to “guard the deposit entrusted to you,” but toward the end of his life, in his second letter to Timothy, he repeats the charge and builds on it: “Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you” (2 Timothy 1:13-14).
This isn't to say that faith never involves questions. The Psalms are filled with cries of “How long, O Lord?” (Psalm 13:1). But biblical faith doesn’t celebrate doubt as an end in itself—it seeks resolution in God’s revealed truth.
The Christian life consists of what Eugene Peterson calls “a long obedience in the same direction.” We don’t graduate from the simple answers of faith, but we guard them and explore all of their riches.
G.K. Chesterton said it best: “Merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to close it again on something nourishing.”
While questions have their place, faith is not a journey toward uncertainty—it’s the firm grasp of God’s revealed truth. Let’s not view being open-minded as a virtue in itself. It can often just be a sign of ignorance. If the faith has been delivered once and for all, our task isn’t to endlessly deconstruct it but to believe it, enjoy it, and defend it.
In awe of Him,
Paul
