You want to know something amazing? Doubting God has made more room in my mind for me to actually follow Jesus. Like, with my actions. I come from a tradition that doesn’t emphasize that.
And I am part of the body of Christ. If someone needs empathy, help, listening ear, money, websites, whatever—if there is a need, let me fill it. I am His hands. (Cue St. Francis prayer.) Jesus doesn’t usually ride in on the clouds and save the day that way. He saves the day through us.
Today I am grateful for Richard Biever, who works an awful lot under the auspices of his proprietorship FUSE Productions to bring the joys of taking in—and participating in—high-quality theatre to State College. I visited his house midday today to run through “O Holy Night” and suggest that I also sing “The Restroom Door Said Gentleman.”
I am also grateful for Carla, who continues to apply herself assiduously to making a happy Christmas for everyone in her social circle. Unfortunately, she said on our midday drive to HobbyTown USA today that she feels like she is losing God through it all.
Maybe Paul tells us to pray without ceasing because without prayer, it’s hard to believe in God. That’s my experience, anyway.
Don’t worry about the obvious physicality—and thus susceptibility to brain damage—of the mind, and therefore the self. God, the one who created everything from nothing, can surely un-disease those who have sustained brain damage.
I found great relief on this question as I started my evening walk by asking myself two questions:
I am grateful today for a son who grows in maturity and relatability. It was my honor to bring him to Panera this evening to share in a cherry pastry with him. We agreed it’d be good to learn computer programming together as father and son. I set a reminder for myself to look into the best, most child-friendly among the free starter courses that are cropping up seemingly everywhere online these days. We also played chess with a Super Mario set that Schlow Library had on hand.
I am grateful today for the evening of dress-up, make-up, dancing, and bathing together that Carla tells me she and Éa shared. I am glad they got to enjoy one another.
I am grateful for Greg Boyd, whose God at War Travis is reading at my recommendation while I re-read Satan and the Problem of Evil. Travis texted me this evening to chat briefly about how much he enjoyed Boyd’s use of quantum theory in the opening pages.
“Where God closes His holy mouth, I will desist from inquiry.”
— John Calvin
Now there’s a thought.
Hanging out with people is the only way to save the poor in spirit. Do I remember the two wall-to-wall days I spent with Uncle Chris? What a joy, and it touched his soul. It’s the only way—at least, the only way conceivable for me—for people like him and César to make their way out of moral and circumstantial poverty. But what am I to do? If I were a single man, I think I’d keep my job at DiamondBack and take it with me as I went on medium-term mission trips to live with César in Callao and with anyone I met who was a pariah, and I would hang out with them.
I have spent thought and lament the past several evenings trying to understand what exactly Jesus accomplished by dying on the Cross and, more acutely, how He accomplished it. And as if prompted by my worries, one of my favorite bloggers wrote a piece called, “Why Did Jesus Have to Die?” In it he provides the most comprehensive list of understandings of the Atonement I’ve ever seen in one place before.
And none of them are striking to me as it.
Still, there’s enough there to go on, I guess. And more important, I believe Jesus is the promised Jewish Messiah and the living lord of all. And I am going to follow Him.
Doubt baby review:
I think we could resolve some problems if we simply renamed the secular holiday, so that there’s the Christian holiday, “Christmas,” and the secular, gift-giving holiday, “Festivus”.
I’m in no mood to journal: I feel disappointed in myself today for underaccomplishing, mostly because I didn’t make time to exercise today and haven’t managed to wheel back to get any post-launch work done on Frank’s website.
But Ethan and I had a stimulating conversation about how to live our lives following Jesus while we watched Sullivan and Everley take swim lessons and Éa and Anthem clamber around the bleachers. Unfortunately, it makes me want to get Carla to quit her jobs so we can more readily foster children.
Being a Christian family man can be confusing (see 1 Corinthians 7:32–35).
For this reason we don’t lose heart. Even if our outer humanity is decaying, our inner humanity is being renewed day by day. This slight momentary trouble of ours is working to produce a weight of glory, passing and surpassing everything, lasting forever; for we don’t look at the things that can be seen, but at the things that can’t be seen. After all, the things you can see are here today and gone tomorrow; but the things you can’t see are everlasting (2 Corinthians 4:16-18, KNT).
We look at the things that can’t be seen. That’s a religious paradox strict empiricist might choke on. But besides being poetic, it’s true, and whether the objects of our gaze are real or not, our hope in them has real sustaining power.
It’s also leads to a thought we as believers ought to remember: We are, in the end, talking about Someone invisible. Why balk at the idea that some folks don’t believe?
As this first day of my sprint toward getting a minimum viable website up for Frank and PolyGreen America ends, I am reminded that hobbies are happiest when they are not only enjoyable, but also seen as a form of generosity. In the case of web-development-on-the-side-that-disturbs-my-schedule-equilibirum, the enjoyment is possible only when I view it as such.
So Lord, let me renew that vantage on this work—and all work, really.
If, when I’m old, you were to ask me to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I predict I’d tell you it was I day I think—I hope—I turned a corner in my character. You see, since screening the finale of the second season of Gatiss & Moffatt’s Sherlock this past Saturday, entitled “The Reichenbach Fall” (and probably a good bit before then), I had been obsessing over the show: obsessing about its plot, obsessing about its characters, obsessing about its actors, and obsessing about its writers. I was obsessing about my decision to stop watching it because of my obsession.
I needed to be rescued from all this.
And it’s more than Sherlock: In recent months, I have spent far too much time and attention setting up operating systems, selecting an iPhone case, and other such minutiae. I prioritize trivialities. And it robs me of life (and steals from DiamondBack).
We have overcome perfectionism. We have overcome stoniness. We have overcome self-distraction at work. We have overcome religious doubt. (All of the above are still works in progress, but they are works well on their way with clear paths to completion.) Perhaps now we can take on obsessiveness and the resulting misprioritization.
Deliberation, yes: You do that about problems and decisions. Cogitation, yes: You do that about profundities. Obsession, no: You do that, by definition, with things you ought not to. And I know what it feels like.
If you’re going to obsess about anything, do it about giving yourself for the benefit of other people.
“Now you together are the Messiah’s body” (1 Corinthians 12:27, KNT). In other words, I extrapolate, we are how Jesus acts on this earth.
As much as I’d like to start posting about what is lost when we use transliterations like ‘baptism’ and ‘apostle’ instead translating them “immersion” and “emissary,” I am inspired to start thinking in terms of positive formulations of my faith, rather than critical ones. OK, Scott, we know what you don’t believe: What do you believe?
Clinging to a Man who is no longer perceptibly with us is not a sufficient ethic, as the very fact that we have the term “aberrational Christian or Bible-based groups” attests. It’s too loosy-goosey. People can make stuff up about what He is saying. Therefore, we must hermeneutically extract principles from His biographies.
Completism is not a fruit of the spirit.
I shall not be ashamed of saying God healed the people I read about or that God spoke to Carla about such-and-such. I may have to fall back on one of McHargue’s maxims, but still. It’s better than shying away from calling it God. And I need You, God. It used to be a luxury I was requesting; now it is a necessity. I need to experience You. I can point to my good life and say You gave them to me, but that’s not the same thing.
Personifying the highest good is very motivating, even if it’s false (which I don’t think it is, but it might be).
I wake up almost every morning these days with a shot of anxiety running through my middle. My inkling is that it stems from always doing and never resting. Is that it?
Carla says when she feels that way, she takes it as a prompt to pray.
There’s plenty of high-quality Christian music out there. Why not spin it more often? Listening to a few Jars and Crowder tracks this evening reminds me that I need not be shy.
If you asked me in my old age to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I’d tell you that it was a day I remembered that chills had suggested back in January that I start building a habit of singing new songs to God.
As I revisited Psalm 33, where I had found the chills about singing new songs and becoming skilled at making music to You, I found some other new things:
As I read these healing stories from gate A22 a few minutes ahead of boarding for Las Vegas, it occurs to me that there is a singular inner focus I can carry in life that will make for healing prayers and acts of mercy and friendliness and whatever good and God I can do: keep the foot washing in mind.
These are the first four lines of William Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence” (1803). I encountered them at the Desert Botanical Gardens on solo mini-spur stroll while visiting with Jessica and Brooklyn. I take it as an exhortation to view God not only in the supernatural, but also in the natural.