Puzzling faith
Just over three weeks ago, a rather intriguing news alert came across my phone. The headline read: “For the first time in its 84-year history, the New York Times Magazine has printed an unsolvable crossword puzzle.” I’m not quite sure that was worthy of being called “breaking news,” but, then again, it was apparently deeply disturbing for many people who include solving the crossword puzzle as part of their daily routine.
It all started when the puzzle was published in the April 19 issue of the magazine without a clue for 5-across, throwing off all subsequent clues. What resulted was clue after clue that simply didn’t match up with the corresponding black and white squares.
Some devoted crossword-puzzlers were more than a little flustered by all this. When Mike McFadden couldn’t figure out most of the clues he thought, “something was wrong with me!” Another puzzler and former college instructor, Irene Papoulis, said, “The world is making less and less sense these days. So it’s like, ‘The crossword puzzle? Not you, too!’”
McFadden added, “Maybe I’m overreacting, but it ruined the best hour of my week.” Still others said they were left nearly in tears or, worse yet, wondering if they’d had a sudden onset of dementia. Clearly, for some, the predictability of the weekly puzzle is something people count on.
Maybe more to the point, most of us expect to encounter solvable problems. And…when that’s not the case… we’re frustrated or even a bit distraught.
Whether you’re a fan of crossword puzzles or not, the reality is that you, too, likely appreciate clear answers. I’m not sure anyone really hopes for anything in life to be vague, unpredictable, or uncertain. It’s in our human nature to seek clarity and certainty.
Which is maybe why many people sometimes struggle to embrace their own sense of faith. Faith rarely, if ever, provides guaranteed answers or certain outcomes. Take the definition from the New Testament book of Hebrews: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
We might expect our puzzles to have one obvious and correct answer, but faith requires us to be much more comfortable with ambiguity. We might even discover that there could be many plausible answers to the same question.
To be people of faith is to embrace two realities simultaneously: (1) a certain conviction that God is good and loving and (2) there’s not much else we can truly be sure of. So, one of the great gifts of faith is the opportunity to be okay with those unknowns. It doesn’t have to be a sign of weakness or shallow faith.
There’s surely a time and place to expect clarity. Such as a daily crossword puzzle. And then there’s the rest of life… where our faith encourages us to wrestle and wonder, question and consider, with much more regularity. Definitive answers might be hard to come by. But our faith will be better off because of it.
