Scott Stilson

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me:

Thanks for your quick reply. My message is not so urgent that you need feel any friendly responsibility to reply tonight, despite the gravity of the subject, for I’ve already talked this over with more than a handful of friends, all of whom have been supportive. I write you specifically because I understand you to be one of the leftmost Christians, theologically speaking, in my own social sphere.

How am I asking you to reply to [my doubt]? I don’t know, exactly. But I’d be happy if you answered any of the below questions:

Like I said, please take your time in replying. And/or let’s set a phone date. Your pick.

friend:

I’ll do my best not to ramble too much here as it’s taken me so long to write and I’m sure you are busy too! I’ve had this conversation with many of my friends who grew up at Life Center or similar places.

Have you doubted?

Your story is not dissimilar to mine. To be brief, my doubts (primarily about the congruence of OT God with Jesus, Biblical authority, and then a near complete unravel) came to head in the midst of serving at the worship arts pastor for a church plant about five years ago. These issues long brewed beneath the surface but they were, unintentionally, pushed through by the lead pastor (a good friend) who was making an issue of this ad: electexiles.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/u… and what he thought was purposterous about it. Anyway, I pulled out for a while dealing with it all landing as a follower of Jesus where my previous issues were largely moot. I can unpack that more if you want, but that’s up to you. So, yes, I’ve doubted and still doubt but my “belief” is a different now where doubt is more of a tool than a disability.

What specifically have you doubted? What have you done with your doubt? How do you handle it?

The two things I mentioned earlier were the frays to start the unravelling. From there I’ve doubted everything about everything, including the potential waste of my most of my life, time, and even money holding to these beliefs.

Maybe I should say the one thing I’ve never really tossed out the window: following Jesus' way is unequivocally the best possible way to live. Even if nothing else is true in the Bible and even if Jesus was a completely fictional character (we assume in this scenario that there probably isn’t a God) Jesus is still the way I would choose and the world could choose to make all of life so much better.

It was from that idea that I was able to rebuild my “faith”/ “belief” / center. I made a core that worked under any circumstance that I could understand given years of thinking about it. Is that the best way? The most powerful spirit filled way to go? I imagine many would say not, but given the options it is the one I knew would be least likely to unravel. (I am realizing some of this as a write it so bear with me.) There is not room in this center for people to tell me made up platitudes to make me feel good in a cyclical pattern of warm Abba Father love thinking while sidestepping issues. As you can guess, I don’t think most church literature and their approach takes doubt seriously in that it actually wants to answer the questions with answers. Instead they take stuff that can be fine and use it to redirect which in people like me (and you I think) only breeds further doubt down the road and even distrust. THIS has to end…. Anyway.

As I see the next question, let me say that I have a few different types of belief now. However, I am not talking about the “this is true for me” hardcore simplistic postmodernist thought. All of these types of belief, for me, leave the door open to other voices.

  1. Belief that something is true, but not necessarily at the expense of some other truth.
  2. Belief that something is certainly untrue, but without necessarily a true substitution to put in its place.
  3. Belief that is more like a leaning but enough to work with.
  4. Belief that something probably can’t be known.

I probably have more types, but I have trouble articulating without present examples.

Do you believe that Jesus is alive?

Yes I do, believe that. Though I to be fair I should ask two questions back. (1) What do YOU mean by “alive”? (2) How important is this answer to your own beliefs and are other types of “alive” weighted differently?

Ok, I’m going to leave it there for the moment so I have SOMETHING to send you and plus I asked a few questions there. Ask any others and I PROMISE to write again within 8 days of receiving your next email. If I don’t read back I’ll send what I’ve completed soon.

me: Thank you. Especially for the care and time you took, especially for someone like me whom you barely know. I agree with so much of what you’ve written. It sounds like we have indeed traveled down similar rivers, although for me, dissatisfactory church experiences were not at the headwaters (though I’ve swum through those, too); I’m never surprised to hear that even well-meaning people fall short of what is good and true. For me, the doubt has been metaphysical from the get-go. Perhaps if we communicate in bullet points, albeit admittedly disorganized ones, it’ll help us correspond without spending inordinate time on it: - You call doubt a “tool.” To what use? - I can get fully behind your reductionist take on Jesus-following as the best way regardless of the reality of His existence. I certainly hope that my doubt leads to my faith comprising more action. But it seems to me that so much of what Jesus preached was about putting faith in Him, not just His way. - I’ve found Mike McHargue’s Doubt Series helpful, taking his “AT LEAST…EVEN IF…” axioms as Gungor lists them about halfway down this blog post as my irreducible kernel of faith-practice, a “core” like the one you made. Perhaps you could add those axioms to the resources you use, too? - One thing I’ve found helpful are a handful of occurrences that defy the possibility of (even eventual) naturalistic explanation, like this two-part healing story from a new and very helpful Internet acquaintance of mine, or like the time a close, anglophone-only American friend of mine spoke Mandarin for a half-hour with a Chinese national. (I’m still investigating the latter, although it is multiply attested.) At the same time, investigating other miracles has fed the doubt because it seems likely to me that much of what passes for miracles is mere coincidence or hypnotism at work. - I agree 100% that church needs to be a safe, fruitful place to express and process doubt. I, for one, have tried to be very open about - How do you handle spurts of doubt now? - By “alive” I mean that His consciousness actually exists as its own independent agent in the cosmos. Whether that consciousness is in a physical body doesn’t matter to me. But it is substantially different to say He is alive in a metonymical way, as in, saying He is alive to mean merely that His teachings and ethos have survived in His people. - The second half of my questions are still salient to me: - Do you have any ideas about why God seems so (committed to being) hidden? - Why do you pray? - How do you pray? - What sorts of things do you thank God for? - How are you handling child-rearing with an eye toward them believing? - I’m very eager to hear your Steve Schallert album in its entirety. If I may say it to a virtual stranger: Much love. And happy, faithful Christmas to you.