Finding Faith
“I think we are made of stardust, and God made the stars.” —Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
Transcendent Kingdom is about Gifty, the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, who is a Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience. She started her studies partly in an attempt to help understand what has happened to her family and to the faith that was the foundation of her childhood, all of which have crumbled and have left her feeling very much alone.
Gifty’s experience is not the same as mine in many ways. She is a Black American woman and a first-generation American citizen. She is a scientist studying addiction in lab mice, and her mother, who has come to live with her, does not get out of bed. Taken as plot points, we are not the same.
But plot never tells the whole story for any of us. Gifty’s questions, particularly the questions of faith, are questions all Christians must wrestle with, and her love for her family, although she tries to be tough, makes her so beautifully vulnerable. Her loneliness and her need for help lead her to let in some friends, and the awkwardness of these encounters made me want to cry in recognition. Gifty is reaching out to be more fully human, both in her questions and in her stretching out toward a friend, however comfortable or uncomfortable it is.
When things got difficult, the models she has had to follow have been very different: her father dealt through retreat; her mother through prayer, her brother through escape. Gifty deals by reaching slowly, creakily, out--and finds that maybe it’s not the answers that are the most important thing. Maybe sometimes it is the questions and the seeking heart to ask them. She, like Jacob, wrestles with God, not wanting to let go until she receives the blessing.
I related powerfully to her questions and to her heartbreak, the moments when we find that the things we thought we understood were not the way we always perceived them. I can still remember the crises of faith that came throughout my life and the ways I struggled to figure out my belief. I see how I learned and am still learning to depend on God, and I will always be learning.
It was such a comfort to read this book and recognize a fellow traveler. If you are also a person who has lots of questions, a person who longs for all of the right answers, or a person who sometimes just struggles to stay faithful, this may be a book for you too.
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