The anxiety I feel was I rise some mornings is not due to a threat to my theism. It is due to a feeling of ought and a greed for accomplishment.
Note to self: Don’t spread alternative views, for example about the pseudonymity of Colossians, unless you think those views are worthy alternatives. In the case of Colossians, if stylistic variance is the only thing that advocates of pseudonymity have in their favor, then I don’t think it’s a legitimate argument.
You want to know what I’m grateful for? I’m grateful that I knew just what to do in the face of anxiety-ridden sleeplessness that plagued my eleven- and twelve-o’clock hours: Drink a cup of chamomile tea, give thanks, and sleep in the guest bedroom. I was downright cheery last night as I went to sleep.
You want to know what else I’m grateful for: The present richness of the “little words” I received last year from You, God, to help me through this mind-crippling doubt. Transcendence was risibly thick with metaphor for You, and the realization about my inner skeptic is the H.L. Hunley is very helpful.
This morning I woke up with the words “dipolar theism” in my head. Fascinating, but I’m not sure how to apply the knowledge, except to say I think You’re perfectly capable of all those opposing traits simultaneously. Oh, and I’ll search the text of Satan and the Problem of Evil to make sure I didn’t see it there.
If I am to be the Housatonic, a blockader of doubt-supply, I know what is the H.L. Hunley: my own skepticism. I had trouble getting to sleep last night because of doubt about whether God is real. Nothing external prompted the doubt this time. Well, except doubt about whether Greg Boyd’s theses about freedom, love, and risk in Satan and the Problem of Evil hold.
Is it possible to create a world in which creatures have the freedom to love but not the freedom to harm, contra Boyd? A world in which all harm is prevented? At first glance, I’d say, “Of course! That’s the kind of world I aim to create in my house. If I fail, it is only because I am not fully able, not fully loving (say, in a fit of grumpiness or apathy), or not fully aware. Were I fully all three of those things, there would be no harm in my house.” I’ll have to work on picturing that scenario some more to see how it would play out.
[…]
If I stepped in every time Sullivan were to, say, swing a fist, might he resign me?
I’m grateful for the video Carla shared with me of a young man reciting a poem about his doubt.
I’m grateful that the warmer-than-seasonal weather has returned.
I’m grateful for the spirit of love I find for my very predictable dad, who called today to postpone his intentions to visit to celebrate Sullivan’s birthday until “sometime halfway between Sullivan’s birthday and Éa’s birthday.” I intend to call him tomorrow. God, grant grace on a salty tongue.
Today I’m grateful that somebody thought to invent space heaters, a very small one of which I just purchased and which I expect to arrive Tuesday. I’m getting chilblains on most of my fingers with it being winter and me working in the basement. I mean, some of my fingers look deformed.
I’m grateful for the Peters, whom we visited tonight on my whim. (OK, we had to go to the South Hills for milk from Meyer Dairy.) The long time that passes between when I see them outside a church context means conversation is always a little stilted at first. We just don’t know what to ask each other about. But they’re always welcoming, and once you get going, it’s always so warm. The kids still love going, too—although I’m not sure why: There aren’t many kiddo-friendly things to do there. But give Sullivan and Éa an elliptical machine and then a long sofa with crawlspace behind it, and they’re set for at least one evening.
Finally, I’m grateful for the confidence I feel having just finished Colossians that Paul both wrote it and doesn’t contradicts Jesus much.
I am grateful for a possibly newfound ability to mourn, which I did with Carla tonight when she got a call from Carole saying that the doctors at Geisinger don’t expect Janet to live through the night. It felt good to cry. Faced with death, don’t attempt to console. Simply mourn alongside people. And then when they lose someone, as Janet’s family is about to, help a lot.
Alright, enough Scott-resolution and navel gazing. I am grateful for Janet. She brought gifts for our kids (and sometimes for us) almost every conceivable holiday. She joked a lot. She showed us the value of being friends with your neighbors.
That’s all I want to journal about tonight. Janet’s imminent death overshadows everything else.
“Such people will go on and on about visions they’ve had; they get puffed up without good reason by merely human thinking, and they don’t keep hold of the Head. It’s from Him that the whole body grows with the growth God gives it, as it’s nourished and held together by its various ligaments and joints.”
— Colossians 2:18-19, my emphasis
Paul here—or whoever wrote this wonderful letter—is making a case they the Colossian church shouldn’t listen to people trying to put rules onto them because of visions they’ve had. But I extract a principle here that corrects: Visions are not what will sustain your faith. Connecting to Jesus is what will sustain your faith.
Is Daniel Lanois actually David Ruis? Vocally, I can barely tell them apart.
To an onlooker like me, miracles are intensely distracting.
Carla and I watched Transcendence (2014) last night as per Instructions. It probably couldn’t have been more perfect taken as a message from God: People think Him less than human and misconstrue intentions. But, as Paul Bettany’s character Max says at the end of the film, ”He created this garden for the same reason he did everything. So they could be together”—the “they” being us. His intentions are purely loving and beneficent, even if His methods are foreign to us.
And that’s just the core of what you can take from it. It can get much richer than that.
I saw an IMDb post entitled, “Humanity Lucks Out With A Benevolant AI God, And They End Him?!?” Isn’t that just what we’re doing with God?
I am grateful for the peace of mind that I have after a cathartic, hollering walk-and-stand with God near the far sheep barn earlier today.
Every miracle has an explanation that competes with the theistic one. For example, Saul’s conversion, Krista’s xenoglossy, Emma McKinley’s healing, Joshua’s dual word of introduction—they are all explicable in terms other than God. Most of the best ones (e.g., the last three above) require the use of explanatory mechanisms yet unknown to science. But some combination of things we do understand—mere coincidence, hallucination, wishful thinking, confirmation bias, misreporting, misdiagnosis, placebo, and hoax—and things we do not understand—extraterrestrials, poorly understood psychosomatic power, the possibility of telepathy—could get the job done in every case.
Following Richard Beck’s lead, I will attempt to answer in quick, bulleted form why I pray, even if and when most prayer requests go unanswered. I pray because in prayer:
- amplifies, directs, and actionizes my empathy,
- pledges my allegiance to God (or, if He isn’t real, the idea of Him and the virtues it represents to me),
- develops self-control,
- helps me sort out my thoughts,
- gets me outside,
- is generally healthy, like meditation, for the mind, and
- does, particularly on those rare occasions when I feel like God is directing me to pray something very specific, lead to answers!
Thinking about prayer and remembering Luke 11 and Luke 18, it seems to be Luke’s assumption that God will seem very often seem unresponsive and unjust to us in His delay in answering prayer. It’s probably the norm. We should not be surprised that most prayers appear to go unanswered. But God won’t delay forever: At most, it’ll be the wait of a single lifetime before all begins to made right in the life of the elect (AKA, all of us). Because when we’re in His arms, everything will be A-OK.
This could hold even if Jesus was mistaken about when He was coming back and that’s the quickness to which He was referring.
It certainly won’t hold if God is a fabrication. But if you read the next entry in this journal, you’ll see that most of my reasons for praying hold even if God is a fabrication.
Everything I pray for must lead to action on my part as well.
Boy, does my desire to journal nightly wax and wane.
Anyway, today I am grateful for the time Éa and I spent before a magnetic board at Schlow Library with magnetic letters. She was sorting the letters when I walked up, then we started a game in which I would spell a new word to her and she would read it. I got to introduce her to words like “anodyne” and “arachnid.” She enjoyed it—and read everything very well. Later, after I had gone upstairs to pick up a LEGO architecture book for Sullivan and a copy of Wally Pfister’s film Transcendence, I returned to find she had spelled the word “xilafone” all by herself. She was just so chipper and engaged about the whole thing. I like Éa very much.
I am also grateful for rebound from a first hour-and-a-half at work today of distraction (Michael Shermer, Keith DeRose, John Piper) that started as I wanted to corroborate Ethan’s report that members of ISIS are converting to Christianity because they have visions of Jesus. I found new clarity and decisiveness to stay on task and be efficient at work—and it felt great.
Finally, I am grateful for the continue distillation of Christianity in my head and heart as a Way and not a set of beliefs. I still hold those beliefs and them galvanize my commitment to the Way, but my priorities lie in imitating Christ (or our distilled, inherited version of Him), not believing the right things about Him. Meanwhile my confession that my beliefs might be false strengthens my commitment to them.
I want to list the commands of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament, plus the commands of the other New Testament writers.
Father, thank You for all good things: the College Township Bikeway, a family that enjoys walks, the Rookes, the rest of church, a healthy family, enjoyable music, good food, travel plans, gratitude, and so on, and so forth.
Father, please restore Janet’s health that she may live out the remainder of her days happy and well-related to her family, friends, and neighbors. Please hear Éa’s prayer at dinner today that our neighbor might come home from the hospital.
One could make a formula that would calculate the solidity of my conviction that God is real. The formula’s elements?
- the amount of sleep I’ve gotten,
- the degree of self-control I’ve been exercising, and
- the last time I prayed.
With my current apathy toward orthodoxy and my uncertainty about the whole thing at all, I hope He is moving me toward faith-as-action. I hope this uncertainty is moving me toward action. But whither? In what fields shall I imitate Jesus? How will my imitation be different from before, when I was 100% certain of all my theology? Is He removing my certainty, or am I? Am I just making up this move to console myself as my faith withers? Or is it real?
How do I sing to Him I do not know?
Well, I asked to see Jesus: My Peruvian friend César got evicted from the defunct Internet café where he was sleeping two days before Christmas. Then, on New Year’s Eve when he was sleeping under a bridge, he was attacked and robbed. He is without food or money, and he was prescribed and charged for some medical cream that he obviously cannot afford.
Father, grant César, Carla, Roberto, and the folks at Misión Familiar Internacional compassion and wisdom.
Actually, while we’re at it, a healing miracle or a miracle of provision—or really any direct touch from You—would be swell.
“Housatonic” means “beyond the mountain place,” and to me it means that my source of life and faith must come directly from You, not mediated by reading others.
You’re daring me to find You by helping others (Matthew 25:31-46).