Thanks for your quick reply. My message is not so urgent that you need feel any friendly responsibility to reply tonight, despite the gravity of the subject, for I’ve already talked this over with more than a handful of friends, all of whom have been supportive. I write you specifically because I understand you to be one of the leftmost Christians, theologically speaking, in my own social sphere.
How am I asking you to reply to [my doubt]? I don’t know, exactly. But I’d be happy if you answered any of the below questions:
Have you doubted?
What specifically have you doubted?
What have you done with your doubt? How do you handle it?
Do you believe that Jesus is alive?
Do you have any ideas about why God seems so hidden?
Why do you pray?
How do you pray?
What sorts of things do you thank God for?
How are you handling child-rearing with an eye toward them believing?
Like I said, please take your time in replying. And/or let’s set a phone date. Your pick.
friend:
I’ll do my best not to ramble too much here as it’s taken me so long to write and I’m sure you are busy too! I’ve had this conversation with many of my friends who grew up at Life Center or similar places.
Have you doubted?
Your story is not dissimilar to mine. To be brief, my doubts (primarily about the congruence of OT God with Jesus, Biblical authority, and then a near complete unravel) came to head in the midst of serving at the worship arts pastor for a church plant about five years ago. These issues long brewed beneath the surface but they were, unintentionally, pushed through by the lead pastor (a good friend) who was making an issue of this ad: electexiles.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/u… and what he thought was purposterous about it. Anyway, I pulled out for a while dealing with it all landing as a follower of Jesus where my previous issues were largely moot. I can unpack that more if you want, but that’s up to you. So, yes, I’ve doubted and still doubt but my “belief” is a different now where doubt is more of a tool than a disability.
What specifically have you doubted? What have you done with your doubt? How do you handle it?
The two things I mentioned earlier were the frays to start the unravelling. From there I’ve doubted everything about everything, including the potential waste of my most of my life, time, and even money holding to these beliefs.
Maybe I should say the one thing I’ve never really tossed out the window: following Jesus' way is unequivocally the best possible way to live. Even if nothing else is true in the Bible and even if Jesus was a completely fictional character (we assume in this scenario that there probably isn’t a God) Jesus is still the way I would choose and the world could choose to make all of life so much better.
It was from that idea that I was able to rebuild my “faith”/ “belief” / center. I made a core that worked under any circumstance that I could understand given years of thinking about it. Is that the best way? The most powerful spirit filled way to go? I imagine many would say not, but given the options it is the one I knew would be least likely to unravel. (I am realizing some of this as a write it so bear with me.) There is not room in this center for people to tell me made up platitudes to make me feel good in a cyclical pattern of warm Abba Father love thinking while sidestepping issues. As you can guess, I don’t think most church literature and their approach takes doubt seriously in that it actually wants to answer the questions with answers. Instead they take stuff that can be fine and use it to redirect which in people like me (and you I think) only breeds further doubt down the road and even distrust. THIS has to end…. Anyway.
As I see the next question, let me say that I have a few different types of belief now. However, I am not talking about the “this is true for me” hardcore simplistic postmodernist thought. All of these types of belief, for me, leave the door open to other voices.
Belief that something is true, but not necessarily at the expense of some other truth.
Belief that something is certainly untrue, but without necessarily a true substitution to put in its place.
Belief that is more like a leaning but enough to work with.
Belief that something probably can’t be known.
I probably have more types, but I have trouble articulating without present examples.
Do you believe that Jesus is alive?
Yes I do, believe that. Though I to be fair I should ask two questions back. (1) What do YOU mean by “alive”? (2) How important is this answer to your own beliefs and are other types of “alive” weighted differently?
Ok, I’m going to leave it there for the moment so I have SOMETHING to send you and plus I asked a few questions there. Ask any others and I PROMISE to write again within 8 days of receiving your next email. If I don’t read back I’ll send what I’ve completed soon.
me: Thank you. Especially for the care and time you took, especially for someone like me whom you barely know. I agree with so much of what you’ve written. It sounds like we have indeed traveled down similar rivers, although for me, dissatisfactory church experiences were not at the headwaters (though I’ve swum through those, too); I’m never surprised to hear that even well-meaning people fall short of what is good and true. For me, the doubt has been metaphysical from the get-go.
Perhaps if we communicate in bullet points, albeit admittedly disorganized ones, it’ll help us correspond without spending inordinate time on it:
- You call doubt a “tool.” To what use?
- I can get fully behind your reductionist take on Jesus-following as the best way regardless of the reality of His existence. I certainly hope that my doubt leads to my faith comprising more action. But it seems to me that so much of what Jesus preached was about putting faith in Him, not just His way.
- I’ve found Mike McHargue’s Doubt Series helpful, taking his “AT LEAST…EVEN IF…” axioms as Gungor lists them about halfway down this blog post as my irreducible kernel of faith-practice, a “core” like the one you made. Perhaps you could add those axioms to the resources you use, too?
- One thing I’ve found helpful are a handful of occurrences that defy the possibility of (even eventual) naturalistic explanation, like this two-part healing story from a new and very helpful Internet acquaintance of mine, or like the time a close, anglophone-only American friend of mine spoke Mandarin for a half-hour with a Chinese national. (I’m still investigating the latter, although it is multiply attested.) At the same time, investigating other miracles has fed the doubt because it seems likely to me that much of what passes for miracles is mere coincidence or hypnotism at work.
- I agree 100% that church needs to be a safe, fruitful place to express and process doubt. I, for one, have tried to be very open about
- How do you handle spurts of doubt now?
- By “alive” I mean that His consciousness actually exists as its own independent agent in the cosmos. Whether that consciousness is in a physical body doesn’t matter to me. But it is substantially different to say He is alive in a metonymical way, as in, saying He is alive to mean merely that His teachings and ethos have survived in His people.
- The second half of my questions are still salient to me:
- Do you have any ideas about why God seems so (committed to being) hidden?
- Why do you pray?
- How do you pray?
- What sorts of things do you thank God for?
- How are you handling child-rearing with an eye toward them believing?
- I’m very eager to hear your Steve Schallert album in its entirety.
If I may say it to a virtual stranger: Much love. And happy, faithful Christmas to you.
me:I stumbled across your wife’s healing story while trying bolster my own flagging, increasingly skeptical faith in Jesus. Is she still still symptom-free?# Phil:Yes, I can confirm that Vonna has not had any Multiple Sclerosis symptoms since 10pm on June 8, 2003. My wife and I are both skeptical by nature, and we have been diligently watchful for any hint of a return of the familiar symptoms. 11½ years after the healing, my own skepticism persists, but I can confidently say that in addition to this healing from MS being sudden and complete, I am 11½ years closer to declaring it permanent.But there’s a follow-up to the story, and it’s something we’re walking through right now. Although God chose a sudden and miraculous healing to deal with Vonna’s MS, that has not been the case with her genetic kidney condition (polycystic kidney disease), which has been slowly developing before, during, and after her bout with MS. Her kidneys, which normally weigh about 5 oz. each, are now estimated to be in excess of 12 pounds apiece, and her kidney function is down to about 25%. This coming Monday, December 8, she will undergo surgery to have the larger and more painful of the two kidneys removed. This will put her in need of a transplant or dialysis within the next few months.In the case of Vonna’s kidney disease, we are content in knowing that a miraculous healing is not going to occur. We are learning to trust God to provide in other ways, through the wisdom and skill of medical professionals, and through the gracious provision of a willing and compatible live kidney donor. But here, we are seeing a different type of miracle: I just “happen” to share Vonna’s relatively rare blood type, and in spite of not being blood relatives, have already passed the crossmatch test to be a donor. Sometime next year, I expect to have the privilege of giving one of my kidneys to my wife.So my own skepticism continues to be exercised. Why does God sometimes choose not to heal miraculously? Is there even a line between the “miraculous” and what we consider “natural”? Does the nature of God’s interaction with the physical universe imply some sort of incarnational submission to physical laws which render some conditions “unhealable”? These are the kinds of questions that fuel my own skeptical faith. But while some see skepticism as a negative, I value my own skepticism and encourage it in others. Skepticism is a process of taking truth claims, especially those we ourselves hold, and examining them from all angles. Faith sometimes requires accepting things without proof, but it doesn’t mean accepting them without examination. The process of examining, testing, and re-examining our beliefs is a necessary part of discarding beliefs that may be faulty, and strengthening those which stand up to the examination.You didn’t mention where you read my wife’s story, but I’ve shared much of my own perspective on that healing on my blog at faithforthinkers.com. I invite you to check it out, if you haven’t already. The site also contains links to many other items of interest to those with a healthily skeptical Christian faith.Thanks for contacting me, Scott. I’d like to hear more about your own personal journey, and any other questions you might have.# me:I’m gratefully surprised for your quick and thorough reply. Thank you.That is such good news about the MS. And although the kidney disease is potentially confounding and certainly no fun, how beautiful that your kidney will be hers. I wish and pray you both long, happy, loving lives together.I agree with you about skepticism in general. The problem with my skepticism is that it’s not what you or I would consider healthy: The truth claim under examination is not a specific attribute of God or the way He works. It’s the claim that He exists. Here’s how my doubt began:In May, I began a formal evangelistic effort toward some formerly Christian friends. It comprised reading with them The Case for Christ, Atheism & the Case Against Christ, and The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach. (They have not read the latter.) Serious consideration of the thoughts in the Atheism volume led to further reading on the Internet, which gave room for three theological “why?" questions to burrow into my soul:1. Why, if God is all-good and all-powerful, does the world contain apparently meaningless suffering and evil?2. Why, if God wants a relationship with His creatures, doesn’t He make Himself more obvious?3. Why, if prayer is supposed to work the way I understand the Bible to describe it working, doesn’t it work more often?These questions led to serious religious doubt back in May, which led to anxiety, which led to a sleepless night, despite my anguished cries for rest. Since then, I had mostly been able keep conscious doubt at bay. The only manifestations were anxiety as I contemplated how to talk about death and God with my kids, and anxiety about not seeing God as obvious in nature like I’m “supposed to” according to the Bible (cf. Romans 1:20, Psalm 19:1).But playing too sympathetic to my friends’ doubt at a “family sleepover” with them, I relapsed into doubt pretty heavily starting on about 10/12. Along the way, I have relied heavily on three primary defenses to keep my faith alive:1. The Bible anticipates suffering of all kind, including doubt and anxiety (e.g., Psalm 77), and has prescriptions on what to do about it (e.g., James 1:2-5, Hebrews 3:12-15).2. God has “worked” as a central organizing concept for my life for twenty-five years. It would be foolish to drop Him in favor of easy, atheistic answers to my three theological questions.3. My friends (and many others, like you) have had experiences that are difficult to dismiss with naturalistic explanations.But I feel those defenses weakening. Currently—and this changes week to week, although I’m not sure I can stand the flux forever—philosophical naturalism seems so much tidier an account of reality than theism. In the case of your wife’s wonderful healing, might we not propose that there’s an as-yet poorly understood, partially genetic, powerful psychosomatic potential for people’s bodies to heal themselves at certain, often religious, triggers?I guess the answer to that question doesn’t matter: The trigger for your wife was faith in Jesus, whether He is actually alive or not. So faith in Jesus remains a very good thing in her case.But for me, it’s nevertheless unsettling yet enticing-because-of-Occam’s-razor to contemplate that your wife’s healing may have been the result of a glorified, amazing placebo effect.You see my problem?# Phil:Perhaps the time waiting around hospital rooms in the next few days will give me more time to carry on this conversation. I appreciate your candidness, and want you to know that what I consider to be my “healthy” skepticism absolutely includes speculation about the very existence of God, although in my case, my wife’s healing from MS does give me something to hold onto. The circumstances of that healing have confounded every other explanation I can come up with. Our skepticism about miraculous healings was due in large part to the “placebo” effect we’d seen so often. That’s why we were so cautious about claiming a healing until it had been thoroughly tested by doctors' evaluations and the passage of time. The fact that we were so skeptical about this particular “faith healer”, and the fact that the healing didn’t occur until after he had apparently “failed” and she had gone home and started to fall asleep, resigned to the fact that she wasn’t going to be healed, also argues against the placebo effect. She was startled awake when she felt the changes taking place in her body, a process she estimated took about five minutes. I have also investigated a number of purported healings from MS that have come from causes other than prayer, including meditation, positive thinking, diet, etc. Invariably, they result in a recovery from symptoms that takes place gradually, over the course of years, and is arguably something short of a complete and permanent healing. Nothing matching a five minute transition from crippling disability and partial paralysis to 100% symptom-free.But yet, the questions about God’s existence linger. In my case, I accept that fact that there is “something” far beyond our understanding that was responsible for what happened. I accept the fact that the timing and circumstances of the healing point to that something being, in some sense, a personal something. And I accept the fact that however we define that something as being “God”, we don’t even come close to understanding the reality of what that means.But I’ve also become comfortable with not understanding. And I’ve become comfortable with accepting that my Christian faith somehow forms enough of a framework for interacting with that entity we call “God”, that even though it is, in some sense wrong (just as Newtonian physics without relativity is “wrong”), I can base my life on that assumption.
It is very difficult to parse Mark 4:12 unless you are a universalist. Otherwise, it appears that God is working against His universal desire for all men to be saved, right?
It seems apparent that this passage is an example of “to him who has, more will be given” (v. 25).
I am grateful to and for the entrepreneurs who started the Sweet Tomatoes salad bar restaurant chain. It’s a salad bar unlike any other I’ve seen, with as many choices in lettuce as some salad bars have in toppings! The cross section of humanity you see there ran the range tonight from white health nuts to overweight, clearly transvestite Hispanics. That, combined with the memory of talking the problem of evil with Brandon at the Sweet Tomatoes in Orlando, makes going there an acutely human experience for me.
I am also grateful for Scott Buchanan having reduced the logical problem of evil for me: Having faith that God has a morally sufficient reason for the evil that exists in the world, whether I understand that reason or not. Isn’t that the point of Job?
I’m also grateful that I’ve started to take the compassion that arose in me last Thursday evening in dealing with Carol out of its atheistic, fatalistic case and spread it out on my theistic, hopeful table. I started to feel it when interacting with the good ol’ boys at Smyrna Truck & Cargo today. Thank You.
Today, I am most appreciative and grateful for having my best friend, wonderful Carla, as my wife. She texted me late into tonight that she prayed that You, God, would tell me that You love me. That brought me to tears and to about twenty minutes of tearful, agreeing prayer that You tell me You love me. No discernible reply yet, but it was still good to pour out my heart honestly and respectfully to you.
But listing my wife as the most is going to happen almost every day. So let me list something unique here: Today, I spoke with Rex Burgher. He corroborated Krista’s account of miraculously speaking Mandarin at a John Wimber meeting in Kelowna, BC in 1995 and was encouraging and tender.
My notes from talking with Dave Palmer about my doubt
It’s about time!
This doesn’t happen quickly. It’s going to be take time.
It’s not gonna help to be impatient.
God is doing something in you that will good fruit will come.
“Though the mills of God grind slowly / Yet they grind exceeding small / Though with patience he stands waiting / With exactness grinds he all“ (Longfellow)
If you ask a believer to focus on God in prayer, the part of their brain responsible for attention and concentration becomes very active. If you ask an atheist to do the same, the characteristic patterns of prayer don’t appear because there’s nothing for the atheist to focus on. Science tells us that the way humans understand God is more a feeling and experience than an idea or set of beliefs. For atheists, the pattern of connections across the brain that create this experience aren’t there. There is no God in their brains. It turns out that some belief in God is vital for people to experience and know God. In some measurable way, you have to leap before you look.
That seems foolish to many people, and I’m one of them. The Bible constantly extolls the virtues of faith and belief in things unseen. I think that reflects an intuitive understanding of what we’ve learned about the neurology of belief in modern times. Many of best things about Christianity only happen after you know God, but God can’t be proven. That’s why faith is extolled as such a virtue.
God help me if anomalies such as healings, NDEs with veridical evidence, and veridical apparitions are ever shown to me to be always false or completely natural. I know many of them are, but it seems like some of them are not. Vonna Wala’s, for instance.
For now, with the Walas’ story and Dale Allison’s apparitions, I have a little peace. What a wacky set of things to base your faith on.
If my intellectual faith—that is, my confident intellectual assent that Jesus is alive, or even that God exists—dies, I do want to keep what faith I can muster along the Richard-Beck definitions supplied below aligned with Jesus. He will always be a great totem, and this way I can continue to celebrate Him with my family.
Sacramental faith:
A faith with and through the body. This is the faith of the book of James, the faith of obedience. It’s the faith of discipleship, moving one’s body through life the way Jesus moved his body through life. It is the faith of orthopraxy (“right practice”). The first Christians were called followers of “The Way.” This is the faith of the path, what Eastern religions call the dharma.
Doxological faith:
The faith of worship and allegiance. The early Christians confessed that Jesus was Lord, a radical political claim That is, regardless as to whether you believe in the Incarnation or the Resurrection, a Christian confesses that Jesus is Lord, the telos of her ethical and political existence. Doxological faith is the claim that, at the end of the day, the teachings of Jesus are the authority in my life, what monastics call the “rule.” Everyone has to make choices in life, big choices and small choices, and we make those choice in light of some conception of what is “good” or “best.” Doxological faith makes Jesus that criterion.
As Jesus was approaching Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the road begging. Now hearing a crowd going by, he began to inquire what this was. They told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. And he called out, saying, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Those who led the way were sternly telling him to be quiet; but he kept crying out all the more, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’ And Jesus stopped and commanded that he be brought to Him; and when he came near, He questioned him, ‘What do you want Me to do for you?’ And he said, ‘Lord, I want to regain my sight!’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Receive your sight; your faith has made you well.’ Immediately he regained his sight and began following Him, glorifying God; and when all the people saw it, they gave praise to God.”
— Luke 18:35:43
Lord, in my faith/doubt, I am this blind man. Please have mercy on me by restoring my sight.
The thing for which I’m most I’m most grateful—to whom? perhaps I should start saying ‘appreciative’ instead—on this doubtful day is that I remembered that, as it regards the afterlife as well as how to live this life, it doesn’t matter whether God is real. Will the reality or unreality of the afterlife the way I live change? The way I talk about metaphysics will, certainly. But lifestyle? I don’t think so. Either way, I’m going to live well, i.e., love well. Actually, in my mind at this moment, I’d even consider it possible that I’d live better without the idea that I will live forever. One life to live means only one life to give.
In this painstaking work of historiography, Licona asserts that over five recent, competing, largely sociopsychological accounts, the Resurrection Hypothesis is the strongest explanation for the following three bits of historical data, which are near-unanimously admitted by historians:
that Jesus died by crucifixion,
that His disciples had experiences that led them to believe and proclaim that Jesus had been resurrected and had appeared to them, and
that within a few years of Jesus' death, Paul converted after experiencing what he interpreted as a post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to him.
I find Licona’s work here persuasive enough. To me, it would be only presuppositions against theism, perhaps reached via reflection on some of the philosophical problems posed by theism—some of which I admit I sometimes find tempting or threatening—that would lead someone to conclude differently.
I put my primary practical problem with my Christian faith—and a real threat to its continuance—to Carla this way as she got my back in bed this evening: I attempt to interact with God interpersonally almost every day. He seems to barely make a reciprocal effort ever.
“If I had to distill it to one issue, I would say it’s that the visible church seems to care more about ideas than people.”
— Derek Webb, in reply to “Is there one thing you see as the biggest issue/blind spot for the church, an area where Christianity is failing to live up to its promise and purpose?” on Rachel Held Evans’ blog
In context, Webb is talking about Christians letting disagreement trump relationships. In true reader-reception form, his offering is broader and more convicting: I care more about having the right ideas than I do about actively loving people. Christianity is less about about having good theology and more about acting like Christ.
Here is what I should have said: “Sullivan, everyone dies. But the writers of the Bible tell us that Jesus promises eternal life to, at least, all those who cling to Him (see John 3:16, John 11:25, 1 John 2:25, Titus 1:2, 1 Peter 1:3-6, etc., etc.). I’ve never seen heaven. But I believe it. Mommy believes it. Billions of people believe it. Some people have even had near-death experiences in which they almost die but somehow doctors revive them; during the time in between, they see something like heaven.
So don’t worry: God loves you so much that He won’t let death be the end of you. You will go to heaven.
A call-and-response greeting for Thanksgiving that came out of a brief SMS exchange with Daniel Perea today in which he expressed confusion about what greeting to give on Thanksgiving: “Give thanks to the Lord / for He is good / and His love endures forever.”
[Psalm 16](Psalm 16) stands as a gleaming promise. And it has this line: “I said to the Lord, ‘You are my Lord; I have no good besides You.’” That’s the attitude I want to have.
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and will then repay every man according to his deeds” (Matthew 16:24-27).
I am challenged by these words of Jesus this morning. In what ways am I trying to save my life? In what ways am I losing it for Jesus’ sake?
