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 the day we visited our Bellefusian friends the Lundins for the first time this calendar year. We joined them at their house for a dinner comprising their leftover vegetable soup and our homemade dessert-pretzels, and for a discussion of their recent roller coaster ride in shopping for houses in State College. I’ll say that the reason I choose this as the one thing I’d tell you about is that when Rebecca recommended Nature and the Human Soul by Bill Plotkin, I shivered in my soul at the thought of there being a coherent alternative morality that is superior to the Christian morality. The prospect—yet unfounded, but still—the prospect that a secular philosophy might be capable of making not just good people, but better people on average than Christian philosophy, rattled me a little this evening.
“Oh boy, I hope I was right…”
— Bart Ehrman, responding to the following interview question: “In the For-All-Eternity category, what will be your final thought?”
A winsome set of last words, if there ever was one. On my deathbed, I know I’ll have hope, and I know I’ll have fear. I also want the levity I read in Ehrman’s response.
Stop looking for God on the Internet.
If you asked me in my old age to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I would tell you that I wasted hours of my workday trawling the Internet for religious certainty.
What prompted it was, I think, my wanting to test the strength of the Intelligent Design argument after reading some of Eric Metaxas’ attempt to cast all of existence as a miracle in Miracles, his popular volume which my mother sent me late last year when she first heard about my doubts. What kept me at it for what must have easily accumulated to half the workday was…I’m not sure what: An inner drive for certainty and stable identity? A proud wish to test my faith, which was renewed through the Christmas holiday at my mom’s house? A masochistic streak?
Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t love. My willful diversion today was unloving to my colleagues at DiamondBack, our customers, Carla, the kids, our church, and God. Even if atheists are right, exposing myself to their thinking in this way, via this medium, does nothing but enervate me. Even if I end up an atheist myself, I’m not going to end up an atheist via a failure to love and a squandering of time. Atheism-by-Internet-reading—or faith-by-Internet-reading, for that matter—is on the whole too fast, too shallow, too addictive, too hung up on miracles, too obsessive to be healthy for anyone.
I confessed my sin to Carla. (She had suspected as much based on my spiritlessness. I told her that if her emotional intuition fails her next time, she can always use tea: If I am sitting with a mug of chamomile, it’s a dead giveaway that I’m doubting. I drink it ward off the prospect of anxiety-induced insomnia.) She encouraged me stop seeking absolute certainty for the whole world, and simply make a decision for myself. She gently scolded me for emailing follow-up questions to Krista about her having spoken Mandarin at a meeting in Kelowna when she was 15. We prayed. I confessed that I am powerless by myself to resist the temptation of trawling the Internet like I did today and asked for God’s help. Carla and I experience sweet human connection.
Sweet human connection is one good thing that has come and will come out of this doubt.
Jesus, help me connect with You.
“In themselves and rightly used, the basic things of life are sweet and good. What spoils them is our hunger to get more out of them than they can give.”
— Derek Kidner, The Message of Ecclesiastes, hitting the nail on the head about why I need to stop turning to the Internet in a quest for religious certainty. If I don’t watch out, I won’t spoil the Internet; I’ll spoil me!
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
— Robert Jastrow, The Enchanted Loom: The Mind of the Universe (1981), as quoted in Eric Metaxas’ Miracles (2014)
“’Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?’ Genesis 18:25 is the last resting place of perplexed and godly minds.”
If you asked me in my old age to tell you one thing about January 11, 2015 in my life, I would tell you it was the day I discovered a way to do something about the goosebumps I felt the other day reading Psalm 33: get out the new Kala KA-T] ukulele my mother gave me for Christmas and start making music to God, learning the instrument as I go.
I discovered this as a I sat on the love-seat in our living room this evening, clumsily strumming along with the chord sheet for “Jesus Is Yours” up on my computer, which sat on the seat of the rocking chair across from me while the kids drifted off to sleep in their bunk bed and Carla watched a television program on her computer from the living room sofa.
In time, I hope to write my own songs and perhaps sing-pray with this uke.
I would also tell you that today was the day I was proud of Éa and Carla for working hard enough on learning to read to be able to read the words “creek,” “shrug,” “wreck,” and “recent,” which my dad spelled in bathtub letters perched on a wooden rack and displayed to her via Skype.
I would also tell you that through the same exercise with Sullivan, the kids learned what the word “conscience” means—a word Carla had suggested my dad spell to try to stump Sullivan, and incidentally the word that got me booted from my fifth-grade spelling bee.
Finally, I would also tell you that I enjoyed a game of hide-and-seek with Sullivan and Éa at the Peters’ house—an excellent house for the game—after house church today. I would tell you about the inviting peace I sensed upon entering the Peters’ den, where a wood stove roared, and the joy I felt by hiding from the kids by sitting under Carla on a recliner in the middle of the Peters’ living room.
“There should be a sign on every website in the world over the comments section that reads, ‘Here there be dragons.’”
“Faith & doubt are not enemies. Faith & doubt are dance partners.”
“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.
I woke up Sunday morning with Max von Sydow’s name in my head and an inkling that this name might be a hint from God. All I remembered upon waking was that he was an actor or a director. On Wikipedia that morning I discovered he played the knight in The Seventh Seal, Jesus in The Greatest Story Every Told, the villian in Minority Report, and Karl-Oskar in Troell’s 1971 film adaptation of Moberg’s The Emigrants. I read no further in the Wikipedia entry because I felt the reason I was to be thinking about von Sydow was contained in this opening paragraph’s list of his most notable movies.
I wasn’t sure at first what God might be getting at and asked Him to clarify which film was of interest to Him. It became clear upon further reflection: It was The Emigrants. Carla has recently enjoyed three of the four novels in that series and often talks of how she wishes I could read the books she reads so we could share in them. And I had just the other night and several recent nights before asked God to restore the love between us and help me to love Carla well. Watching the film adaptation of these novels that Carla so appreciated with her would be a away to proactively, creatively love her.
So I set to finding a copy. All I found were a few VHS copies in a libraries across the Commonwealth. But later that morning I opened one of the blue desk/TV stand drawers looking for software for Éa’s new keyboard and found along with the CD-ROM I sought a pair of DVD-Rs that Greta had given us for Christmas that contained The Emigrants and The New Land!
Could Greta have mentioned von Sydow’s name upon presenting the gift to us a few weeks ago and my subconscious mind surfaced it on its own, either in self-answer to my prayer or totally randomly? Yes. Do nonetheless I believe that it was the Holy Spirit giving Carla and me—especially me—a little gift in answer to my prayers about loving Carla and about Him talking to me and making Himself more real to me? Yes.
“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.