There is a popular faith revival chorus that goes: “I have decided to follow Jesus. I have decided to follow Jesus. I have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back! No turning back!” Critical thinkers find it hard to understand why anyone in their right senses would commit their entire future when one does not even know what new ideas and facts would emerge tomorrow to challenge ones present beliefs. But faith, understood as a total commitment and surrender of one’s life to God differs from faith, understood as intellectual assent to doctrinal statements. One may have problems with certain church teachings and at the same time maintain a firm commitment to Christ and his church. In the movie Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye is a Jewish dairy farmer, living with his wife and five daughters in Russia. It is a time of change and revolution, especially in the relationship between the sexes. First, one of his daughters announces that she and a young tailor have pledged themselves to each other, even though Tevye had already promised her to the village butcher. Initially Tevye will not hear of his daughter’s plans, but he finally has an argument with himself and decides to give in to the young lovers’ wishes. A second daughter also chooses a husband for herself, an idealist revolutionary. Tevye is disappointed but after another argument with himself, he again concedes to the changing times. Then Tevye’s third daughter falls in love with a young Gentile. This violates Tevye’s deepest religious convictions. Once again, he has an argument with himself. He knows that his daughter is deeply in love, and he does not want her to be unhappy. Still, he cannot betray his deepest religious convictions. “How can I turn my back on my faith, my people?” he asks himself. “If I try and bend that far, I’ll break!” Tevye pauses and begins a response: “On the other hand...” He pauses again, and then he shouts: “No! There is no other hand!” Critical thinking thrives on the ability to examine the two sides of an argument: “on the one hand..., but on the other hand....” Today’s gospel reminds us not to carry this relativizing thinking too far. In matters of faith, we come to a point where we discover, like Tevye, that there is no other hand, no other option to consider, no other way. There is simply the right way and the wrong way. This is what we see in the response of Peter and the Twelve to the crisis of faith that visited the followers of Jesus in today’s gospel story. “When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?’ ... Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him” (John 6:60, 66). Jesus was teaching his followers the doctrine of the Eucharist, namely, that he would continue his presence among them in the form of bread and wine. His followers could not make sense out of this. Does he think they are cannibals who eat human flesh and witches who drink human blood? Failure to understand Jesus’ teaching plunges his followers into a crisis and many of them respond by turning back from following Jesus. Now only Jesus’ most intimate followers, the Twelve, remain. Jesus turns to them and asks, “Do you also wish to go away?” Peter answers for the group, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God” (verses 67-69). What is the difference between Peter and the Twelve who stick with Jesus and the other followers who turn back? Peter and his men did not understand the doctrine any more than the others did. They probably had as much a problem with the idea of eating flesh and drinking blood as those who left. The critical difference lay in Peter’s understanding that difficulty with a particular teaching of Jesus is not enough grounds to give up following him altogether. The other followers probably thought of Jesus as one way among so many, therefore, if you disagreed with his teaching you shop around for another one whose teachings you agree with. Peter, on the contrary, saw Jesus as the way, the unique messenger of God. He saw that it was better to follow Jesus even without intellectual enlightenment than to go out in search of intellectual enlightenment and lose Jesus. Too many Christians today follow the footsteps of the disciples who left because they did not agree with some teaching or the other. We know that faith seeks understanding but there in no guarantee that faith will always find the understanding it seeks. Today’s gospel, therefore, is an invitation to put faith before and above understanding as Peter and the Twelve did, not to put understanding before and over faith like the unfaithful followers who left.