The Bible does acknowledge the problem of the selectivity of miracles in Luke 4:23-27.
Religious faith is a virtue only in that it constitutes trust and trustworthiness, the former of which is virtuous only if there is Someone worth trusting. So it’s no wonder atheists question its virtue.
Don’t extort, don’t slander: Easy. Be content with your wages: A little harder. Redistribute your wealth: Um, really? Yet John the Baptist appears to assign similar moral value to all of them.
My aversion to academic writing under deadlines is what doomed any thought of me becoming an academic myself, but a love for academic reading could make this book the first in a long run tomes that pass through my house by way of my friends-of-Penn-State library card.
A few critical notes as I dive back in to Matthew McCormick’s book:
- Concision carries rhetorical power. And McCormick is concise.
- I agree that miracles don’t happen nearly as often as I wish they would or think they should. But that doesn’t mean they don’t happen. How do I account for some of the miracles my friend Marshall describes (i.e., the rain stopping, the word of knowledge for the divorcée, and the healed tumor)? How do I explain the healing ministry of Heidi Baker?
Wife and I share a concern that wherever this doubt and I end up, that I don’t end up lacking in the strength and security that I’ve given her and the kids with my faith in Jesus.
Is it not possible that the strength and security I’ve given comes not from being a conduit for Jesus but rather from my having certainty about my purpose and mission, a surety of a unifying guide, a lodestar principle? If I have a lodestar principle and mission I can settle on other than Jesus—what am I writing?!?—perhaps I can still lend strength to my family even if I end up a doubting Thomas.
friend:
I just wanted to let you know that my thoughts have been with you after hearing about your sleepless night. I think I understand the sort of turmoil you are in; I’ve been deep in it for a while!
I would be delighted to talk more…and/or to let ideas and feelings percolate as needed.
self:
Thank you for your sympathy. You and your husband are good people.
That it wasn’t until thirty-three years old for this devout Christian to experience his first pangs of doubt probably accounts for why it was so intense. It was a doubly novel experience for me: my first doubts and my first involuntarily sleepless night. A doozy I don’t hope to relive.
But now that I’ve slept some and my thoughts have settled, one could say in summary that not much has changed: I am simply less sure of all my Christian beliefs. Still, it’s strange to pray to a god you’re less sure exists. His hiddenness used to be a source of knowing laughter in prayer. Now it’s a bit more serious than that.
Anyway, I currently plan to pause on the McCormick volume until Sunday or so. We’ll see what happens as I continue reading. You still plan to finish, yes? In the apparent absence of a volume directly responding to it, I still plan to read this Licona volume from 2010 as its companion. I have requested a copy from Schlow via interlibrary loan.
One thought I don’t want to forget jotting down: McCormick speaks of an amazingly powerful, biologically seated Urge in people that’s at the genesis of all religions. I say if the we have the Urge, whether it’s God-given, biologically endowed, or both, why not find its best outlet instead of trying to stuff it?
Another thought: Historically, I have a very low tolerance for being unsettled: I’m the guy who unpacks all his belongings into the hotel dresser drawers for a two-night stay just for a sense of settledness. So I don’t plan to stay here long. Hopefully our exploring this together will help you, too, to leave this turmoil and reach solid ground—whether that’s at the mouth of an miraculously vacant tomb or not.
Finally, let me reciprocate: Send me thoughts, ideas, feelings whenever you wish at whatever pace you wish. I have a deep love for deliberation and collaboration as a means of truth-getting.
When I restart my reading of Atheism and the Case Against Christ, I plan to actively take critical notes along the way. To fight back, as it were.
Carla: He looks like the beggar at the Beautiful Gate.
Éa: Who?
Scott: One of the people Jesus healed. One of many.
Éa: Killed?
Scott: HEALED.
Carla: And THAT. is why I don’t want our children to read Bible stories yet.
We played a good bit of a modified version of the game above today in the Stilson house. But goshdarn if Sullivan couldn’t manage to let previous answers shape his subsequent questions.
Anyway, two important things today:
- I had my first singing lesson with Norman Spivey today.
- Ethan and I got together for the first of what I think will be a long, mutually beneficial series of weekly lunches.
In some sense, both of the above are a return to the past. But they’re different: I’m mature enough now to actually avoid melting down in a singing lesson even though Norman and I are working on very basic stuff like “vocal hygiene.” And Ethan and I are less naive about God and life.
Perhaps the retributive justice by proxy understanding that I’ve inherited is only true for people who need it to be true. Some people, like Carla’s cousin Diana, are looking for their sins to be “paid for” in a karmic sense. Others, like the ancient Hebrews, sought a scapegoat upon whom they could lay their sin.
I don’t sense either of these needs myself. Not that I’m without sin. Rather, I see You, God, as perfectly able to forgive without having to make someone pay first. That’s what makes it hard for me to “understand the Atonement” as I’ve been saying recently. And it’s still hard for me to suss out what parts of the “traditional” view of the Atonement are merely my upbringing and what is Scripture.
My primary question is this: if penal substitution and guilt reassignment was merely an optional accessory to the Atonement, what (does the Bible say) was Jesus Himself trying to accomplish that could only be accomplished by being executed?
Perhaps forgiveness was not Your primary goal in Jesus’ execution?
The above leaf dates from thirteen years ago. Kris sent it to me yesterday. A lot in me has changed since then. And a lot sure hasn’t. :)
Speaking of things changing in me, I relapsed into not trusting Carla to by my ally today as the weekend time she was spending on her first council meeting stretched into its third or fourth hour this morning. DON’T DO THAT.
On another note, one of the several reasons I’d like to stick hard to my bedtimes is that I want to put a tad more thought into this journaling. I won’t be leaving much for posterity if I rush through this.
Nevertheless, it’s 10:36pm, and I need to get to bed.
“Cease and know that I am God.”
— Psalm 46:10
Today what was supposed to be a prayerful walk through Mom’s neighborhood ended up a reestablish who I am, who I’d like to be, and how to go from point A to point B: Follow the impulses of your heart and the desires of your eyes, yet know that God will judge you in the end. Don’t let what you’re not doing distract you from you are doing. (I’m especially prone to be guilty of that last one when the what-I’m-not-doing is the kids. I seem to forget that the best way to get back to the kids is to concentrate fully on what I’m doing.) Whatever you do, do it heartily.
I feel a certain loneliness today, a longing for fellowship. It’s probably because Carla is sick and spent most of the day in bed, although it feels like I’ve been missing something for a while now, a need for a best friend with whom I share not only interests, proximity, and mutual affection, but also approach to God, approach to self-conduct, and way of thinking. No friend of mine thinks like I do. Ethan is the closest I can think of. Perhaps I need to drop him a line.
Nonetheless, Carla and I did finally finish Greed (1924) this evening together. It was an excellent film that prompted me to pray, “Lord, please keep us from being deceived by money.”
Jordan and Stephen divulged to me on our way up to Philipsburg for DiamondBack Christmas party day that playing vertical music for Keystone was the worst experience in their worship-playing careers. The motif of their report was that the people there were “mean.”
As Carla said upon my report of that revelation later this evening, “It’s good when wolves are wolves.”
Now may our God and Father Himself and Jesus our Lord direct our way to you; and may the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another, and for all people…so that He may establish your hearts without blame in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints.
— Paul in 1 Thessalonians 3:11-13
A gentle sense of Your presence in my life suffused my soul today after work as I reflected on the verse above. Life was good today, and the verse above indicates that love makes us majestically holy. Wow.
While shopping for a Christmas gift for my mom, I found online lists of the best worship albums of the year. I felt convicted: Why have I not been more avid a seeker of music that is not only musically marvelous but thematically rich? Why have I not more frequently combined my favorite medium (music) with my favorite theme (God)?
Grumpiness is a sign that I have not properly handled some other negative emotion. Today, for instance, I didn’t properly handle my feeling tired, having run from to grocery shopping with Éa to unpacking the car to choosing a Christmas tree to decorating for Christmas with Janet over, all without taking a breath.
Put another way, I didn’t guard my heart, tending to it when it was tired, and as a result, it, my wellspring of life (Proverbs 4:23) started to taste bad.
I need to start exploring and expressing negative emotions before they herniate as grumpiness.
(Once again, this mini-revelation came after I asked God to speak to me.)
Shortly after praying tonight that God help me connect with Him, I was reminded that I feel most connected to Him when I apply deliberate, singular concentration to whatever it is I’m doing. I’m so easily distracted by other things I want that I think this serial single-mindedness good practice regardless of its capacity for facilitating divine connection.
NB: Not only concentration, but might. As it’s written: “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men” (Colossians 3:23) and “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might; for there is no activity or planning or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol where you are going” (Ecclesiastes 9:10).
“You don’t know in advance whether God is going to set you to do something difficult or painful, or something that you will quite like; and some people of heroic mould are disappointed when the job doled out to them turns out to be something quite nice.”
— C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock (p. 53–54), in response to “Is it true that Christians must be prepared to live a life of personal discomfort and sacrifice in order to qualify for ‘Pie in the Sky’?”
The recent thing You’ve been emphasizing to me is the part he says about folks with the ‘heroic mould.’
At Barb’s prompting at church today with some help from having talked with Ethan last night, I recapped what I meant by church last week having changed my life: In the same way that I’ve ceased wanting to be a great singer and begun just singing, blowing away my received application of Matthew 24:14 has finally allowed me to cease wanting to be a great Christian and begin just Christ-ing.
“Beloved, I pray that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John 2).
This is for you, friend: This verse is a greeting and general prayer for well-being for Gaius, not unlike what we would write in a letter today (if we really meant it), not evidence that all Christians should be wealthy.
“I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth” (3 John 4).
This is my prayer for my children. Please hear it.
“For they went out for the sake of the Name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles. Therefore we ought to support such men, so that we may be fellow workers with the truth” (3 John 7-8)
God, I want to be a fellow worker with the truth. That’s why I want to join in Your work in the Maldives somehow. (And this is a good, healthier replacement for great, self-sacrificial interpretation of Matthew 24:14 that the church obliterated for me last week.)