Curiously, my not getting everything done today that I wanted to get done as I stood up to leave to go to the Potters’ house for dinner and trick-or-treating elicited feelings of anxiety and disappointment. In addition, and somewhat laughably, it led to doubt of God’s existence. What a silly thing to hang it on.
I woke up this morning with Raffi’s “All I Really Need” in my head. According to Mr. Cavoukian, here’s the list:
- a song in my heart
- food in my belly
- love in my family
- the rain to fall
- the sun to shine
- some clean water for drinking
- clean air for breathing
Many fewer people than do, myself included, have reason to complain or doubt whether God is good.
My suspicion is that God put the song in my head overnight. A nice little gift.
I worry that nothing good will end up coming from this doubtful episode.
Lord, may it not be this way. Would you change me on the inside and help me to love better and more actively, be more sympathetic and humble, and be alive in You all the more because of the doubtful episode.
My favorite holistic metaphysics is this one, with probably a dash of Greg Boyd’s free-will theodicy mixed in.
With Resurrection Letters Vol. 2, all Andrew Peterson needs to be the second (and improved) musical coming of Rich Mullins is a hammered dulcimer.
I got home today. Well, I arrived at our friends’ house first for their annual pumpkin-carving party. And at first, I was disoriented and depressed in seeing my friends and my family. I think that was because I was looking for God in their eyes. I was hoping one of them would be the channel through which I would “find God” again.
But they weren’t.
What’s more, I found the opposite: People content without God. I do not want to live my friends’ life. With no lord other than his own desires, it appears my friend has given himself to a life of hobbies: water rockets, board games, aquaponics, a zip line, making music. That seems empty to me.
That somehow pointed to a possible way of finding God: seeking Him by ministering to the least of these. Seeing God in mission.
On my way home from Florida, I spoke over the phone with the following friends about my doubt:
- Josh,
- Mom,
- Dan,
- Travis,
- Mike, and
- Sam.
Among the many helpful things that were spoken, one evidence of God’s presence strikes me right now: Mike said, referring to his self-image problems and awkwardness prior to finding Jesus, “All I know is that I was blind, and now I see” (see John 9:25).
On my way home from Florida, I spoke over the phone with the following friends about my doubt:
- Josh,
- Mom,
- Dan,
- Travis,
- Mike, and
- Sam.
Among the many helpful things that were spoken, one evidence of God’s presence strikes me right now: Mike said, referring to his self-image problems and awkwardness prior to finding Jesus, “All I know is that I was blind, and now I see” (see John 9:25).
“Don’t worry about the parts of the Bible you don’t understand. Obey the parts you do.”
— a Red Letter Wake Up email newsletter
O Lord, by these things men live, And in all these is the life of my spirit; O restore me to health and let me live! Lo, for my own welfare I had great bitterness; It is You who has kept my soul from the pit of nothingness, For You have cast all my sins behind Your back. For Sheol cannot thank You, Death cannot praise You; Those who go down to the pit cannot hope for Your faithfulness. It is the living who give thanks to You, as I do today; A father tells his sons about Your faithfulness. The Lord will surely save me; So we will play my songs on stringed instruments All the days of our life at the house of the Lord.
— Hezekiah, in Isaiah 38:16-20
I was touched by John Piper tweeting verse seventeen while I was doing nothing on the PestWorld show floor. What Hezekiah says about death, I could say about doubt.
Today I prayed for Todd, the young man at 535 Auto in Orlando who plugged my tire. The muscles controlling his right eye don’t work very well, rendering him virtually blind there since his birth. I handed him my business card and asked him to call me if anything happens.
One thing: Moving forward, it will very difficult for me to assess truth claims.
me:
Do you have a copy of Finger of God, Furious Love, Father of Lights, or Holy Ghost?
Mom:
I’ve seen all four, but only have the first three. I will be getting the Holy Ghost one on October 26th when they show it at the EastGate Philly Service. How’s your trip going?
me:
I ask about the movies for a specific reason: For the first time in my life, I have experienced religious doubt. It’s been acute, soul-threatening, and sleep-stealing. I think the momentum of my soul is in the right direction, but I’m certainly not out of the woods yet.
I’ll be traveling home solo much of the afternoon/evening Friday and morning/afternoon Saturday. Would you free for a longer phone chat sometime in those time windows?
Other than my doubt, we’ve had a great trip. The kids and Carla just touched down at BWI on their way home about an hour ago. Sullivan was apparently more excited about riding the airport tram, which was some kind of maglev or at least monorail, than he was about riding the plane. I’ll tell you more about it over the phone?
Mom:
Glad to hear the trip was a success. All believers struggle with this at times, including myself. Although, when it passes,I find myself even closer to God and my roots grounded even deeper. I’ll be praying and let’s definitely talk this Friday.
Last night was another sleepless one. And this time, I mostly kept the doubt and rumination at bay. It was a residual anxiety—that I still feel a bit sometimes even now—zapping my heart and traveling southward toward my bowels that kept me awake.
Whether He is a figment or not, I would be foolish to abandon God when He has been so good to me over the past twenty-five years. He has “worked” for me, so to speak. Why would I shun such a felicitous lodestar in the name of intellectual coherence? That would be to elevate reason above God, or at least to put Reason above pragmatism. I’d rather stick with What works.
Oh what a lovely thought!
— [Rachel Lopez on Twitter](https://twitter.com/GreaterBombay/status/523899334207619073/photo/1(https://twitter.com/GreaterBombay/status/523899334207619073/photo/1%5D)
For perhaps the first time in my life, it feels like a metaphor like this might apply to me. Father, it is my prayer that my recent acute affliction of metaphysical doubt about You make me kintsukuroi.
I could either let the unanswerable theological questions win and spend the next five to ten years in likely miserable reorganization of my entire thought life, or I could settle for mystery.
This one shouldn’t be so hard. When did intellectual coherence become so important to me?
Q: How do you account for evil?
A: I don’t. I fight it.
Sophisticated or not, the mere presence of scoffers does not a legitimate doubt a make.
Religious doubt is beginning to be one of those things I need to write a long, well-considered entry about to help organize my thoughts for my own sake and for posterity.
In the absence of having made time to do so, here are another few bits:
The whole struggle comes down to this: Plausibility structures are very powerful. I can be thrown just by hearing an articulate person say he doesn’t believe in God. It has come to the point where I have considered and Carla has independently suggested we not get together for a sleepover with the Lundins again anytime soon.
I am now faced with two competing accounts: there is a God, and there isn’t. The latter hypothesis provides automatic resolution to all the heavy philosophical problems posed by theism. Want a satisfying end to your theodical questions? Just stop believing in God!
But the atheistic account also offers little in the way of explaining most of the supernatural phenomena I’m familiar with.
The fact is, we’re arguing about the existence of a Thing which even the Bible calls invisible (Colossians 1:15, 1 Timothy 6:16, John 1:18, John 6:46, 1 John 4:12). It makes sense that we not be able to fully grasp It.
Doubt about God is like doubt about a spouse or doubt about your country in a war you’re fighting.
“Everywhere in the Bible you see God saying that his aim is his own glory, see love. For only this will satisfy our souls.”
It is good to remember, especially with the specter of doubt still haunting my soul, that cogitation is terribly inefficient after bedtime. When tempted to mull in bed, don’t.
Have a philosophical problem? You’re not going to solve it lying in bed. So don’t try. Stuff it and go to sleep.
Not that I experienced this last night or anytime recently. But I might again someday soon.
Understanding creation as a war zone, with God having delegated to us the authority to fight, helps greatly to steel one’s faith and motivate one toward good works.
It’s too late to journal this in any detail, but suffice it to say for now that I’ve embraced that suffering and death is a part of everyone’s life. That’ll make me less fearful of death myself, less fearful for what my children will think in the wake of deaths and suffering around them, and more willing to take the risk of becoming a foster dad. Desiring God’s take on Romans 8 helps here. As does the whole Bible, which never once tells the saints they won’t suffer. It assumes suffering, and it assumes it as something to fight against, but also a backwards blessing as well, capable of creating much good character in someone.
This realization is a prayer answer to this morning’s prayer.
Hearing of some Christian acquaintances’ divorce today at church rattled me, especially after extended exposure to my unbelieving friends at last night’s family sleepover with them. I cried today in the sunroom to Carla that their divorce makes me ask, “What difference does Jesus make?” I mean, if the Gospel is not much more than “Jesus is God’s son, therefore God is like Jesus, whom He made king of the universe. And He promises some set of humanity the gift of eternal life,” then it’s still pretty good news, but my internal gospel has always included “glory to glory” and the effect eternal life has on us now. If there is no such thing and, say, the divorce rate among believing Christians is the same as it is among unbelievers, then I grieve the loss of what I thought was a piece of the Good News.
Now, Nas rapped “life’s a bitch and then you die.” And while I disagree with coda of his rhyme (“that’s why we get high”), it comforts me in the face of the above in the same way Ecclesiastes comforts me: “time and chance overtake them all” (Ecclesiastes 9:11b). The Bible basically admits that at some level, there will be no difference. Shit will happen to Christians and non-Christians alike. God intervenes in miraculous ways sparingly. An earthly life that is better than before, less seemingly random, and less prone to error is not a guarantee of becoming a Christian.
This also helps me appreciate the good fortune I currently enjoy, knowing that it is just that: good fortune. Many others do not share in my good fortune, and it is an in-built assignment to all who call on the name of Christ to relieve that suffering and do what we can to human flourishing.