“The Christian apologetic isn’t in argumentation/debate; it’s in love.”
— Danny Cortez, as quoted by Rachel Held Evans
It’s possible that my recent spate of dreams I remember, which includes:
- Jami and I at the airport, possibly representing her moving back into faith more easily than I
- me introducing Micah to Rachel Held-Evans
- me dismissing a spirit of hatred from my father’s house, represented by an anonymous old woman who furiously kicked a cat of of his house
- seeing Luke N.
is completely nothing. It probably is. Any feeling to contrary is probably superstition. And I feel slightly ashamed for it feeling it.
But it’s been every night.
I got goosebumps this evening when I read…
“…Sing for joy in the Lord, O you righteous ones; Praise is becoming to the upright. Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre; Sing praises to Him with a harp of ten strings. Sing to Him a new song; Play skillfully with a shout of joy. For the word of the Lord is upright, And all His work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice; The earth is full of the lovingkindness of the Lord.
[…]
“Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, On those who hope for His lovingkindness, To deliver their soul from death And to keep them alive in famine. Our soul waits for the Lord; He is our help and our shield. For our heart rejoices in Him, Because we trust in His holy name. Let Your lovingkindness, O Lord, be upon us, According as we have hoped in You” (Psalm 33:1-5,18-22).
And I think I got goosebumps because I’m supposed to have this same attitude in me. And I’m supposed to sing to Him.
“Rooted in hatred of the light, our blindness is not exculpatory, but blameworthy. It does not remove our guilt. It is our guilt.”
— John Piper, in a tweet that sits very well with me. I am such a chimera: I love so much of what Piper brings to the table, but hate so much of it, too. I think he’s right about human blindness, but I think he is wrong about it, too. Does the above formulation strike me as true and good merely because it’s what I’m used to, merely because it feels like home? Am I, are we, indeed guilty for not being able to see Him?
“When you are convinced it’s broken, read the manual. Your interpretation of ‘obvious’ my differ from its designer.”
— Mike McHargue, in a tweet he left ambiguous as whether he was talking about actual technical documentation, the Bible, or something else. I do think there is something helpful in his formulation in settling the problem of evil.
“Love God and do what you want.”
— Andrew Shearman, as reported by Ethan, with whom a visiting Jason and I sat with at Happy Valley Brewing and discussed many things, including, but this topic of how to govern and steer one’s life being the most salient and edifying. I rephrased Shearman’s idea in a way that was helpful to both my friends: “Unless you have a specific calling—which you’ll know when you feel it—whether you move to Cambodia to end sex slavery or stay here and love people well, you can’t go wrong as long as you love God.”
As I got dressed this morning, I realized that the main source of the doubt-borne anxiety I felt so frequently starting in May last year is identity. That explains why not acting Christian scares me: If I’m not acting Christian, that’s the final evidence to me that who I am has changed. Combine that with the fact that the doubt was only very partially volitional meant that I was losing who I am against my will.
Same thing applies at the other loci of my doubt-borne anxiety: I’ve always been one who feels God in nature, so if I find I am able to look at a sunset without feeling God, I’m no longer me. I’ve always been one to stare death in the face and think “no big deal,” so when I find that I’m uncertain about the afterlife, I’m no longer me. I’ve always been a Christian confident of what he believes—including a happy afterlife—and able to communicate it all unashamedly and unalloyedly, including to my children, so when I find that has changed, I’m no longer me.
So, I must honestly add to my forthcoming believe/disbelieve table not only that I want to believe, but also that I want to believe because Christianity is my identity, and therefore disbelief causes excruciating anxiety.
“Faith in the ‘crucified God' is …a contradiction of everything [people] have ever…desired to be assured of by the term.”
—Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God
While on an evening prayer-walk, I noticed a shadowy smoker sitting on the bench along the bike path just on the other side of the Puddintown Road Spring Creek bridge. He would have heard me praying for Frank’s infirmities to be gone. After passing him, the thought occurred to me that I should turn around and offer to pray for the shadowy, silent sitter. I did not.
Why do acts of faith have to involve strangers? Is that merely a product of my charismatic background? Why aren’t I ever sure it’s You in that type of situation?
“To read without military knowledge or good maps accounts of fighting which were distorted before they reached the Divisional general and further distorted before they left him and then ‘written up’ out of all recognition by journalists, to strive to master what will be contradicted the next day, to fear and hope intensely on shaky evidence, is surely an ill use of the mind. Even in peacetime I think those are very wrong who say that schoolboys should be encouraged to read the newspapers. Nearly all that a boy reads there in his teens will be known before he is twenty to have been false in emphasis and interpretation, if not in fact as well, and most of it will have lost all importance. Most of what he remembers he will therefore have to unlearn; an he will probably have acquired an incurable taste for vulgarity and sensationalism and the fatal habit of fluttering from paragraph to paragraph to learn how an actress has been divorced in California, a train derailed in France, and quadruplets born in New Zealand” (C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy [1955]).
He may have missed the potential parallels skeptics would surmise between the news and the Gospel accounts, but nevertheless, it is good to find a kindred spirit in my eschewing of the news.
“Heart versus head (spirit versus mind) is a cliché, and false dichotomy.”
Here’s an interesting cartoon.
“It is your responsibility to stop listening to voices that hinder your ongoing growth and maturity.”
— Rob Bell
The uncertainty surrounding death informs me and is useful: Love well, and love always.
I’m very grateful for the walk Uncle Steve and I took today around Mom’s neighborhood. He told me his testimony—it was boredom that led him to Christ—and then about the miraculous healing of his bones following being crushed by a 1200-or-so-lb. steel plate when he was seventeen.
“Imagine yourself if you weren’t following Jesus. Are you basically the same person? Then you aren’t following Jesus.”
I know what’s behind all my doubt-borne anxiety and obsessive, sinful trawling of the Internet in search of God (or not God): It’s a fear of being wrong. And a fear of uncertainty.
Rob Bell just officially loosened up my interpretation of Matthew 7:13-14. This passage isn’t discussing eternal life at all. It’s almost laughable that I used to think so!
Mom:
Saw this testimony on Youtube. I thought it would be worth your time to watch it. You only need to watch the first 13 minutes of it.
me:
Thanks, Mom! I’ve queued it up for later watching.
I’m concluding, however, that being assiduous about answering my questions and shoring up my faith isn’t healthy. There appears to be a positive correlation between the sedulity with which I approach my questions and the likelihood that my reading and watching will deepen my doubts.
In other words, I’m finding it much healthier and more likely to lead to restored strength of belief to take this whole thing slowly.
But by all means, if you come across other resources you think would be helpful, I’m very good at queueing things up for reading or watching and then following through with reading or watching them later. I’ve just about finished Surprised by Joy, which you graciously sent me last month. Thanks again for that.
Mom:
Sedulity - I had to look that one up. Great word. I think I understand what you’re saying.
I would have sent you the video link regardless, as it’s such a great testimony! (as well as 2 others, but I didn’t want to send too much). Yet there’s something about a radically changed life that’s hard to argue with.
There will always be unanswered questions. For most, I think it gets down to ‘you see what you believe’ - you can choose to see God in everything and you will or you can choose not to see Him, and you won’t and you’ll find ‘proof’ that he doesn’t exist. I can see God in a snowflake or an orchid or a colorful sunset. I can hear Him in the ocean, the breeze, or the birds singing. I can sense His pleasure and joy when I do something nice for someone, or just hang out with Him. It’s fun; it’s wonderful; it’s full of hope and peace. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
My relationship with God is based on my love for Him and His awesome love for me in soooo many ways. I haven’t heard you mention anything about loving God? Just wondering where you’re at with that?
Was ‘Surprised by Joy’ a good book? I’m praying that He surprises you. :) Much love and can’t wait to see you all soon!
“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world… " Psalm 19:1-4a
me:
I’m 3/4 of the way through Surprised by Joy and Lewis has yet take his turn toward theism. So the book has been occasionally interesting, but mostly a semi-dry memoir of his childhood and youth. Still, a worthwhile read that’s much less heady than some stuff he wrote.
I’m praying He surprise me, too.
Psalms are very helpful, although the psalm you quote has at times been a source of anxiety, as sometimes in the past several months when I look at the skies, I don’t hear them declaring His glory, and that has worried me.
I do love God. That’s why the prospect of losing Him to has been so anxiety-ridden.
But since part of loving Him is pleasing Him, and the writer of Hebrews says that it’s impossible to please Him without faith (v. 6), and that to come to Him I must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him, I do feel like I’m making a turn toward a firm decision to believe and stay put, as in a marriage. Even if my seeking of Him isn’t leading to the promised reward in the timing or way I prefer, it is still leading there. If I’ll only hold on.
Like I said, keep sending me whatever you want to send me. (You’re right that it’s hard to argue about a radically changed life.) Just know that I won’t necessarily read, watch, or listen to it right away.
Can’t wait to see you.
Father, I want to reorient the things I do, the things on my list, toward this: “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35). And toward this one, too: “Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Corinthians 16:14).
God, I want You to be like this dragon: Insistent on being seen and appreciated. (This particular leaf from the book I show only because I think it’s one of the funniest spreads I’ve ever read.)
Today I am grateful for the following realization, which I’ve had before but crystallizes more today: The way to deal with doubt and its related anxiety is not to trawl the Internet looking for evidence of God. That only feeds the anxiety and continues to build my faith in Him entirely on other people’s experiences, arguments, and opinions. My usual intense setting aside of all other things, including work, to set right a system awry is not the way to go here.
A better metaphor for my doubt: It is as if someone has presented a plausible case against Carla being nothing more than a sophisticated simulation or AI.
I have decided how to deal with my existential doubt about God: Consider myself married to You.
I have several marriages. In order of strength of commitment, I admit that I am married first to Carla and the kids. But right after that comes You. But despite that order, which is the inverse of how I would have ordered it at this time last year, I am privileged to live in a pluralistic culture where it is hard to imagine those two marriages ever coming into conflict. So we might almost consider these marriages functionally tied in importance, if not in their priority.
After that—and this will help with my concentration problems at work—I am also married to my colleagues at DiamondBack. Then to Houserville. These two marriages are more dissoluble without fault.
But the first two, they are not dissoluble. I tell You, O Lord, the same thing I told Carla and she me: I will never divorce You unless someone can prove Your non-existence. Folks may be able to make strong inferential, probabilistic cases that You don’t exist, but they can never disprove it. And there remains enough evidence out there for a reasonable person to make the inferential, probabilistic conclusion that You are.
Can Your existence be deduced or induced with certainty? No. Even the least explainable miracles, such as Vonna Wala’s healing, can be dismissed by appealing to the possibility of future, non-theistic explanations, and even though that may be unwarranted extrapolation and a fallacious argument to the future, such dismissal can carry weight and eliminate theistic certainty. Short of an intense encounter with the metaphysical, which I hope for but don’t count on, I can never return to thinking Your existence is certain.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t live as though it is certain. And that is my plan.
“Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?” (Mark 4:40). You, O Lord, have been asleep in the boat of my life as it gets “tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming” (Ephesians 4:14). But in this text, at least, You tell me I have nothing to worry about. “I’m in the boat, aren’t I?”