Like auntie, like niece

Auntie and Niece, originally uploaded by juliecinci.

For those who are diehard Julie Unplugged voyeurs, my entire graduation set can be viewed here. Warning: there are 42 pictures and I'm in every one. Ack! :)

What an extraordinary day! My aunt and uncle flew in from California on Friday night. My aunt was in the car for five minutes and immediately we were deeply involved in conversation about the nature of the testimonial genre in theology, particularly as it relates to torture (Diana Ortiz was the focus of this conversation). June (my aunt) is a tireless thinker, a deeply affirming person and thoroughly enjoyable company. We never stopped talking the whole weekend.

One of the things I keep thinking about at the end of this journey is not what I believe but rather how I think theologically. On the way to the airport today, June and I discussed the fact that part of the postmodern condition is that once we've deconstructed faith, truth, reality, we are faced with a table of puzzle pieces that won't neatly fit back together. Somehow extra pieces get into the box and refuse to torque themselves into the right shape to complete the picture.

So must we account for every piece when we put our theology back together? In other words, when we are thinking theologically, just how many experiences, ideas, doctrines, traditions must we account for, include, reconcile?

There is no definitive answer to this question obviously, but I did find myself automatically seeking principles for that process. I do consider it vitally important not to ignore the misfits in our theological puzzles. We want to. We hate that some of those ideas and experiences mess up our neat, tight, well-structured theologies. We want to have an organized system of beliefs that is one size fits all.

Yet if we leave out (deliberately or naively) the schools of thought, experiences, and worldviews that clash with the one we want to protect, we will arrive at a theology that doesn't ring true. It will feel protective and rigid, rather than expansive and enveloping. It's not enough to toss the misfit pieces into the mystery box and ignore them. For instance, when someone claims that God abandoned her during torture and did not experience comfort, companionship, succor or hope, we can't simply throw blame back on the victim for not appropriating God's presence, nor can we ignore that important testimony about the direct subjective experience that negates the belief that "God is there for us when we suffer."

Both the ones who find God "there" for them in suffering and the ones who do not must be accounted for in some meaningful way or our theology is a fantasy - it's the gratification of our dearest hopes, not the expression of an attempt to make sense or meaning out of life and faith.

How do you account for the complexities of experience when describing or narrating the faith? I'd be interested.