“…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.
— 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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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?”
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.
