October 14^th was Leslie Weatherhead’s birthday. (He lived from 1893 to 1976). Weatherhead was an English Christian theologian (Methodist), and part of the liberal Protestant tradition in his thinking. He served as pastor of the huge City Temple in London from 1936 to 1960. Many traditional church folks considered him controversial because of his beliefs.

I loved two of his books, The Agnostic Christian and The Will of God, but he wrote scores of other books on a wide range of subjects. I’m sure many of his viewpoints would still spark lively debate today. I want to read more of his works to see for myself what his conclusions were. But in many cases, what’s most important to me is what we experience, think, feel, and intuit in the process of how we arrive at our personal conclusions that counts the most.                                                         

Speaking of that process, I most appreciated Weatherhead’s statement about how he kept a mental drawer in the cabinet of his mind. It was labeled “Awaiting Further Light.” He knew what he believed out of his actual experiences with God and in the world, and those concepts occupied space in other chest drawers of his beliefs. But he saved this drawer for what he had yet to experience directly in his journey with God. I found this statement and many others in his book The Christian Agnostic hugely helpful, especially as I counseled a young adult who was exploring his own faith at that time.

I continue to cherish The Will of God for Weatherhead’s concept of “circumstantial will.” He said God’s “absolute will” for us human beings is to make a faithful response to God’s will. But God loves us so much that God gives us “free will:” that is, the opportunity to do things right or wrong. Since we choose to do the unloving thing so often, there is such a thing as God’s “circumstantial will.” That means that our Divine Parent figures out a way to have a positive, loving consequence in the long run (that is, in the Big Picture of things) using our freely given choices. Wow, talk about God’s grace!

Weatherhead continues to give us plenty to ponder for our own drawers that are “awaiting further light.”

Yours in faith and continued inquiry,

Betsy Schwarzentraub