Reflecting on my knee-jerk thoughts when faced with criticisms of the Lewis trilemma—“Wait, what? People find problems with the Lewis trilemma? I thought that was open-and-shut! Man, this apologetics stuff is doomed.”—it occurs to me that so much religious doubt and anxiety might be preempted if we acknowledged up front that:
We might be wrong about our religious beliefs. But it’s still OK to hold them, and to do so very passionately, provided they aren’t motivation for hatred or violence. In fact, for many people, it’s more than OK: it’s joyful and vital.
Other people have looked at virtually the same evidence to the deity of Jesus and come to very different conclusions, often rationally, and sometimes motivated by love, or at least Polonian honesty. While this might challenge our soteriology or our Christology, it doesn’t have to assail our faith in God or even in Jesus.
I have journaled enough today. So briefly, the most important thing that happened today is that I have regained some footing in my soul. Spending my DiamondBack vacation time to expose myself to the writings of Mike McHargue, Gary Habermas, Michael Licona, Dale Allison via the Internet has helped me regain the company of the thoughtful-but-still-Christian. Faith and doubt are very social.
Again, I remind myself: Exposing myself to skeptical writings from the other side is not healthy for me in any way at this time in my life.
“For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life” (Galatians 6:8).
I think this applies only partially to earthly life. I think Paul is referring to the afterlife.
I had asked You last night, God, for an account of the Cross that makes it good news to me, not just to ancient Jews who were covenantally bound to blood sacrifice for atonement. And here is an answer: You showed that the afterlife is real.
you entered my thoughts this morning, and I thought I would encourage you. I was listening to the radio and working out your salvation was mentioned (completely incorrectly as I currently see it), so I asked God what was up with you. I received back that you were in a drawing in period. So I asked what that means and what needs to be done. I got back that you need to relax into the uncomfortableness (unanswered questions, anxiety) and ride it out. That sounds very uncaring since “how do you do that?”. I got the picture of a woman in labor. She has these uncomfortable contractions and seemingly nothing is happening, but that baby is moving. So, relax into you contractions, deal with them the best you can. Your baby is coming on its (God’s) schedule.
me:
You spark hope and give me a strategy. Thank you. My natural tendency is not to relax in the face of uncertainty, but to bear down. In this stage, I can see easily the advantages of the latter.
To fight off this crippling doubt, I should become parochial in my thinking, for nothing in my actual social sphere seriously challenges my faith. Some friends’ newborn fatal birth defects don’t challenge my faith. My other friend’s ectopic pregnancy and brush with death don’t bother me. It’s arguments, not actual experiences, that challenge my faith. And for the actual experiences, some combination of Greg Boyd’s and Richard Beck’s theodicies gets the job done for me.
I guess the third pair of friends’ divorce bothered me, but all it really did was show that human will and defects can override the grace of God. A sobering thought, for sure, but not one to slow my faith down too much.
I remind myself of two things that will help me set the problem of evil down:
Theodicy is much easier when death isn’t taken as final and when what comes after it is believed to be very good. Both those things are part of Christian belief, especially if you’re at least at the inclusivist point on the soteriological spectrum, like I currently am. (This does leave me curious to pick back up my project about what the Bible actually says about who receives eternal life.)
Also, I must admit that the problem of evil will, in all likelihood, remain unresolved during this lifetime. We are, after all, arguing about an invisible deity. Nevertheless, as tempting as it may be, trading my faith for a facile resolution to this and the other two related problems (divine hiddenness and unanswered prayer) would be foolish.
If I’m not careful, I’m going to petrify a habit of mine that has developed in the past few weeks and become such a temptation as to displace the role seeking online infotainment or titillation has at times played in my life: reading theological articles on the Internet during the workday. If I allow this habit to solidify, it will have two detrimental effects: I will lose my job, and I will lose my faith.
“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6). That’s the only faith worth having. And it’s the only faith I can have through some of this terrifically doubtful season. Specific religious practice is questionable. Faith expressed in love is not.
The most important thing to happen to me today is that I asked the church to pray for me that my anxiety that lingers and pops up unbidden (for instance, upon looking at an old photograph in the CD insert for Down the Old Plank Road, I felt anxious that the people in the photograph weren’t alive any more), that You, God would take it away. Most memorable among the prayers was that Dave asked you to “talk loud.”
Oh, and I want to watch all ninety episodes of Curious George with the kids via Greta’s Netflix account. And I won a few golf passes by winning the donut-on-a-string contest at Millbrook Marsh’s annual Historic Harvest Festival.
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 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.
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).
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.