I think we could resolve some problems if we simply renamed the secular holiday, so that there’s the Christian holiday, “Christmas,” and the secular, gift-giving holiday, “Festivus”.
I’m in no mood to journal: I feel disappointed in myself today for underaccomplishing, mostly because I didn’t make time to exercise today and haven’t managed to wheel back to get any post-launch work done on Frank’s website.
But Ethan and I had a stimulating conversation about how to live our lives following Jesus while we watched Sullivan and Everley take swim lessons and Éa and Anthem clamber around the bleachers. Unfortunately, it makes me want to get Carla to quit her jobs so we can more readily foster children.
Being a Christian family man can be confusing (see 1 Corinthians 7:32–35).
For this reason we don’t lose heart. Even if our outer humanity is decaying, our inner humanity is being renewed day by day. This slight momentary trouble of ours is working to produce a weight of glory, passing and surpassing everything, lasting forever; for we don’t look at the things that can be seen, but at the things that can’t be seen. After all, the things you can see are here today and gone tomorrow; but the things you can’t see are everlasting (2 Corinthians 4:16-18, KNT).
We look at the things that can’t be seen. That’s a religious paradox strict empiricist might choke on. But besides being poetic, it’s true, and whether the objects of our gaze are real or not, our hope in them has real sustaining power.
It’s also leads to a thought we as believers ought to remember: We are, in the end, talking about Someone invisible. Why balk at the idea that some folks don’t believe?
As this first day of my sprint toward getting a minimum viable website up for Frank and PolyGreen America ends, I am reminded that hobbies are happiest when they are not only enjoyable, but also seen as a form of generosity. In the case of web-development-on-the-side-that-disturbs-my-schedule-equilibirum, the enjoyment is possible only when I view it as such.
So Lord, let me renew that vantage on this work—and all work, really.
If, when I’m old, you were to ask me to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I predict I’d tell you it was I day I think—I hope—I turned a corner in my character. You see, since screening the finale of the second season of Gatiss & Moffatt’s Sherlock this past Saturday, entitled “The Reichenbach Fall” (and probably a good bit before then), I had been obsessing over the show: obsessing about its plot, obsessing about its characters, obsessing about its actors, and obsessing about its writers. I was obsessing about my decision to stop watching it because of my obsession.
I needed to be rescued from all this.
And it’s more than Sherlock: In recent months, I have spent far too much time and attention setting up operating systems, selecting an iPhone case, and other such minutiae. I prioritize trivialities. And it robs me of life (and steals from DiamondBack).
We have overcome perfectionism. We have overcome stoniness. We have overcome self-distraction at work. We have overcome religious doubt. (All of the above are still works in progress, but they are works well on their way with clear paths to completion.) Perhaps now we can take on obsessiveness and the resulting misprioritization.
Deliberation, yes: You do that about problems and decisions. Cogitation, yes: You do that about profundities. Obsession, no: You do that, by definition, with things you ought not to. And I know what it feels like.
If you’re going to obsess about anything, do it about giving yourself for the benefit of other people.
“Now you together are the Messiah’s body” (1 Corinthians 12:27, KNT). In other words, I extrapolate, we are how Jesus acts on this earth.
As much as I’d like to start posting about what is lost when we use transliterations like ‘baptism’ and ‘apostle’ instead translating them “immersion” and “emissary,” I am inspired to start thinking in terms of positive formulations of my faith, rather than critical ones. OK, Scott, we know what you don’t believe: What do you believe?
Clinging to a Man who is no longer perceptibly with us is not a sufficient ethic, as the very fact that we have the term “aberrational Christian or Bible-based groups” attests. It’s too loosy-goosey. People can make stuff up about what He is saying. Therefore, we must hermeneutically extract principles from His biographies.
Completism is not a fruit of the spirit.
I shall not be ashamed of saying God healed the people I read about or that God spoke to Carla about such-and-such. I may have to fall back on one of McHargue’s maxims, but still. It’s better than shying away from calling it God. And I need You, God. It used to be a luxury I was requesting; now it is a necessity. I need to experience You. I can point to my good life and say You gave them to me, but that’s not the same thing.
On God
#Personifying the highest good is very motivating, even if it’s false (which I don’t think it is, but it might be).
I wake up almost every morning these days with a shot of anxiety running through my middle. My inkling is that it stems from always doing and never resting. Is that it?
Carla says when she feels that way, she takes it as a prompt to pray.
There’s plenty of high-quality Christian music out there. Why not spin it more often? Listening to a few Jars and Crowder tracks this evening reminds me that I need not be shy.
Dad! In heaven, I bet that don’t have any rifles.
— Sullivan, without prompting, while being towed along through Spring Creek Park on a snow saucer
A new interpretation of Hebrews 11:6, which reads, “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him,” just came to me: The writer is saying, in effect, “You can’t do these crazy things I’m telling you about Abel, Enoch, Abraham, and so on without trusting God. It just can’t be done. If you don’t think He is and that He rewards those who seek Him, you obviously won’t be able to do the kinds of things in this list.
Here is a great reinterpretation of Luke 11:9, which reads, “Ask and it will be given to you…”:
It’s tempting (and lucrative, for some preachers) to treat this nugget of Scripture as an ironclad promise. Whatever you ask for—promotion, wealth, the spouse of your dreams—God will give it to you.
Unless, of course, Luke 11:9 is part of a larger narrative in which Jesus has already told us what to ask for. After a brief episode in which he defends Mary over her sister Martha for choosing what matters most—being a disciple, a citizen of his kingdom—Jesus’ followers ask him how to pray. Jesus tells them to ask for things like daily bread, the advent of his kingdom, forgiveness for sin. Only then does he say, “Ask and it will be given to you.”
It’s not, “Ask for anything you want.” It’s more like, “Ask for my kingdom, and you will have it.”
If you asked me in my old age to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I’d tell you that it was the day we visited our Bellefusian friends the Lundins for the first time this calendar year. We joined them at their house for a dinner comprising their leftover vegetable soup and our homemade dessert-pretzels, and for a discussion of their recent roller coaster ride in shopping for houses in State College. I’ll say that the reason I choose this as the one thing I’d tell you about is that when Rebecca recommended Nature and the Human Soul by Bill Plotkin, I shivered in my soul at the thought of there being a coherent alternative morality that is superior to the Christian morality. The prospect—yet unfounded, but still—the prospect that a secular philosophy might be capable of making not just good people, but better people on average than Christian philosophy, rattled me a little this evening.
“Oh boy, I hope I was right…”
— Bart Ehrman, responding to the following interview question: “In the For-All-Eternity category, what will be your final thought?”
A winsome set of last words, if there ever was one. On my deathbed, I know I’ll have hope, and I know I’ll have fear. I also want the levity I read in Ehrman’s response.
Stop looking for God on the Internet.
If you asked me in my old age to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I would tell you that I wasted hours of my workday trawling the Internet for religious certainty.
What prompted it was, I think, my wanting to test the strength of the Intelligent Design argument after reading some of Eric Metaxas’ attempt to cast all of existence as a miracle in Miracles, his popular volume which my mother sent me late last year when she first heard about my doubts. What kept me at it for what must have easily accumulated to half the workday was…I’m not sure what: An inner drive for certainty and stable identity? A proud wish to test my faith, which was renewed through the Christmas holiday at my mom’s house? A masochistic streak?
Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t love. My willful diversion today was unloving to my colleagues at DiamondBack, our customers, Carla, the kids, our church, and God. Even if atheists are right, exposing myself to their thinking in this way, via this medium, does nothing but enervate me. Even if I end up an atheist myself, I’m not going to end up an atheist via a failure to love and a squandering of time. Atheism-by-Internet-reading—or faith-by-Internet-reading, for that matter—is on the whole too fast, too shallow, too addictive, too hung up on miracles, too obsessive to be healthy for anyone.
I confessed my sin to Carla. (She had suspected as much based on my spiritlessness. I told her that if her emotional intuition fails her next time, she can always use tea: If I am sitting with a mug of chamomile, it’s a dead giveaway that I’m doubting. I drink it ward off the prospect of anxiety-induced insomnia.) She encouraged me stop seeking absolute certainty for the whole world, and simply make a decision for myself. She gently scolded me for emailing follow-up questions to Krista about her having spoken Mandarin at a meeting in Kelowna when she was 15. We prayed. I confessed that I am powerless by myself to resist the temptation of trawling the Internet like I did today and asked for God’s help. Carla and I experience sweet human connection.
Sweet human connection is one good thing that has come and will come out of this doubt.
Jesus, help me connect with You.
“In themselves and rightly used, the basic things of life are sweet and good. What spoils them is our hunger to get more out of them than they can give.”
— Derek Kidner, The Message of Ecclesiastes, hitting the nail on the head about why I need to stop turning to the Internet in a quest for religious certainty. If I don’t watch out, I won’t spoil the Internet; I’ll spoil me!
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
— Robert Jastrow, The Enchanted Loom: The Mind of the Universe (1981), as quoted in Eric Metaxas’ Miracles (2014)
“’Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?’ Genesis 18:25 is the last resting place of perplexed and godly minds.”
“There should be a sign on every website in the world over the comments section that reads, ‘Here there be dragons.’”
“Faith & doubt are not enemies. Faith & doubt are dance partners.”