Carla: [Saint] Paul totally bonked. He was a-bonkin!
Scott: Paul wasn’t bonking.
Carla: C’mon. You know he was bonking!
Scott: You are the strangest Christian wife I could have acquired.
Some notes from Prayer (2006) by Philip Yancey
#On the interconnectedness of everyone and everything:
I live in a web of dependence, at the center of which is God in whom all things hold together (34).
That’s a good way to explain to myself how it is I can be grateful to God for everything that is good, including existence itself.
On prayer as worship:
Prayer is a declaration of dependence upon God (35).
An idea from my girlfriend my freshman year of high school returns: Making requests of God is a form of worship. It has proven one of those stick-with-you, life-shaping ideas. Thanks, Katie.
On emotion being teachable and malleable:
But consider what Rabbi Abraham Heschel said to the members of his synagogue who complained that the words of the liturgy did not express what they felt. He told them that it was not that the liturgy should express what they feel, but that they should learn to feel what the liturgy expressed.
My super-culture insists that emotions just happen and should not be repressed or feared. I agree with the overall message, thanks in no small part to Carla and to Milan and Kay Yerkovich, who wrote How We Love. But I don’t hear much from anyone about directing and changing emotion. Incidentally, I also don’t hear much about directing and changing libido. But these things are subject to the will. The tricks to success in bending one’s emotions and libido are to no hate the feelings when they come, acknowledge weakness, expect failure, eschew shame, and never give up. It reminds me of something I read by Melinda Selmys about the Catholic line on chastity being impossible. She argued that its impossibility doesn’t entail its uselessness. Rather, it serves as a well of gravity, as fuel for an aspirational more asymptote. As long as we avoid legalism, we are the better for the impossible ideal. Life in God is aspirational. I should note that the thing Heschel as quoted by Ben Patterson as quoted by Yancey is trying to say here is it is good to learn unpleasant emotions from the Psalms.
On distractions and desires in prayer:
Distractions [in prayer] are nearly always your real wants breaking in on your prayer for edifying but bogus wants. If you are distracted, trace your distraction back to the real desires it comes from and pray about these. When you are praying for what you really want you will not be distracted.
Twentieth-century Dominican priest, theologian, and philosopher Herbert McCabe wrote that. It jibes well with the “Q: What should I do? A: Do what you want!” mantra that God gave me two decades ago. I should try it. These days, it’s distractions from planning changes to my strength training workouts. What is the real desire there about which I can pray? A long life of good health that makes for a long, wide potential for good deeds as I age.
On conceptual copouts born of the conflict between exegesis and experience:
“Come near to God and he will come near to you,” wrote James, in words that sound formulaic. James does not put a time parameter on the second clause, however.
But I jest. Yes, Yancey’s gloss could be taken as a copout. But I take it as helpful truth.
From British convert Jonathan Aitken:
Trusting in God does not, except in illusory religion, mean that he will ensure that none of the things you are afraid of will ever happen to you. On the contrary, it means that whatever you fear is quite likely to happen, but that with God’s help it will in the end turn out to be nothing to be afraid of.
Again, pap to satiate the naive among us when first confronted with reasons for doubting God’s goodness? Sure. But also good, solid truth.
On psychosomatic healing being no threat in my book:
“It doesn’t diminish my respect for God’s power in the slightest to realize that God primarily works through the mind to summon up resources of healing in a person’s body. The word psychosomatic carries no derogatory connotations for me. It derives from two Greek words, psyche and soma, which mean simply mind (or soul) and body. The cure of such diseases demonstrates the incredible power of the mind to affect the rest of the body…Those who pray for the sick and suffering should first praise God for the remarkable agents of healing designed into the body, and then ask that God’s special grace give the suffering person the ability to use those resources to their fullest advantage. I have seen remarkable instances of physical healing accomplished in this way. The prayers of fellow Christians can offer real, tangible help by setting into motion the intrinsic powers of healing in a person controlled by God. This approach does not contradict natural laws; rather, it fully employs the design features built into the human body” (254)
That’s Dr. Paul Brand. I find piquant novelty in his approach to thanking God for what’s already natural in the human body and for seeing that natural stuff as the stuff of healing. Yancey goes on to report that Brand eventually came around to believing in the utterly miraculous as well, but the man still holds that most healing is psychosomatic. For the longest time, I thought healing being psychosomatic took away from healings as evidence for God. But I suppose it doesn’t have to.
On the limits of healing prayer:
In terms of physical health, you could say that the power of prayer has limits: no prayer will reverse the aging process, banish death, or eliminate the need for nourishment (256).
Several other quotations I don’t have time to comment on:
I have come to see the very selectiveness of biblical miracles as a sign of God’s personhood (258)
I never make a list of what to pray for. I pray instantly, as soon as something comes to mind, and I trust God to bring it to mind (315)
I know not which is most profitable to me, health or sickness, wealth or poverty, nor anything else in the world (324).
“Trusting in God does not, except in illusory religion, mean that he will ensure that none of the things you are afraid of will ever happen to you. On the contrary, it means that whatever you fear is quite likely to happen, but that with God’s help it will in the end turn out to be nothing to be afraid of.”
— Jonathan Aitken, as quoted by Philip Yancey in Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?
“‘Come near to God and he will come near to you,’ wrote James, in words that sound formulaic. James does not put a time parameter on the second clause, however.”
Distractions [in prayer] are nearly always your real wants breaking in on your prayer for edifying but bogus wants. If you are distracted, trace your distraction back to the real desires it comes from and pray about these. When you are praying for what you really want you will not be distracted.
— Herbert McCabe, as quoted by Philip Yancey
But consider what Rabbi Abraham Heschel said to the members of his synagogue who complained that the words of the liturgy did not express what they felt. He told them that it was not that the liturgy should express what they feel, but that they should learn to feel what the liturgy expressed.
— Ben Patterson, as cited in Philip Yancey’s Prayer
Carla cried “tiring” to hear my say that yet another purely social gathering was without a point. But I stand by it: I don’t want to invest time in people except insofar as it builds Your kingdom, God. I feel excited to cultivate our relationships with some folks because the growth of Your kingdom among us when we gather is effortless. I’m not looking for people with whom I simply have an enjoyable time; I’m looking for people with whom I can say, Look! God is among us doing stuff.
“Prayer is a declaration of dependence upon God.”
— Philip Yancey
“We are sending our young people into the marriage bed as virgins (good) but also as morons (bad).”
Dad! In heaven, I bet that don’t have any rifles.
— Sullivan, without prompting, while being towed along through Spring Creek Park on a snow saucer
I got home today. Well, I arrived at our friends’ house first for their annual pumpkin-carving party. And at first, I was disoriented and depressed in seeing my friends and my family. I think that was because I was looking for God in their eyes. I was hoping one of them would be the channel through which I would “find God” again.
But they weren’t.
What’s more, I found the opposite: People content without God. I do not want to live my friends’ life. With no lord other than his own desires, it appears my friend has given himself to a life of hobbies: water rockets, board games, aquaponics, a zip line, making music. That seems empty to me.
That somehow pointed to a possible way of finding God: seeking Him by ministering to the least of these. Seeing God in mission.
On my way home from Florida, I spoke over the phone with the following friends about my doubt:
- Josh,
- Mom,
- Dan,
- Travis,
- Mike, and
- Sam.
Among the many helpful things that were spoken, one evidence of God’s presence strikes me right now: Mike said, referring to his self-image problems and awkwardness prior to finding Jesus, “All I know is that I was blind, and now I see” (see John 9:25).
“Don’t worry about the parts of the Bible you don’t understand. Obey the parts you do.”
— a Red Letter Wake Up email newsletter
O Lord, by these things men live, And in all these is the life of my spirit; O restore me to health and let me live! Lo, for my own welfare I had great bitterness; It is You who has kept my soul from the pit of nothingness, For You have cast all my sins behind Your back. For Sheol cannot thank You, Death cannot praise You; Those who go down to the pit cannot hope for Your faithfulness. It is the living who give thanks to You, as I do today; A father tells his sons about Your faithfulness. The Lord will surely save me; So we will play my songs on stringed instruments All the days of our life at the house of the Lord.
— Hezekiah, in Isaiah 38:16-20
I was touched by John Piper tweeting verse seventeen while I was doing nothing on the PestWorld show floor. What Hezekiah says about death, I could say about doubt.
Today I prayed for Todd, the young man at 535 Auto in Orlando who plugged my tire. The muscles controlling his right eye don’t work very well, rendering him virtually blind there since his birth. I handed him my business card and asked him to call me if anything happens.
Last night was another sleepless one. And this time, I mostly kept the doubt and rumination at bay. It was a residual anxiety—that I still feel a bit sometimes even now—zapping my heart and traveling southward toward my bowels that kept me awake.
Whether He is a figment or not, I would be foolish to abandon God when He has been so good to me over the past twenty-five years. He has “worked” for me, so to speak. Why would I shun such a felicitous lodestar in the name of intellectual coherence? That would be to elevate reason above God, or at least to put Reason above pragmatism. I’d rather stick with What works.
Oh what a lovely thought!
— [Rachel Lopez on Twitter](https://twitter.com/GreaterBombay/status/523899334207619073/photo/1(https://twitter.com/GreaterBombay/status/523899334207619073/photo/1%5D)
For perhaps the first time in my life, it feels like a metaphor like this might apply to me. Father, it is my prayer that my recent acute affliction of metaphysical doubt about You make me kintsukuroi.
I could either let the unanswerable theological questions win and spend the next five to ten years in likely miserable reorganization of my entire thought life, or I could settle for mystery.
This one shouldn’t be so hard. When did intellectual coherence become so important to me?
Q: How do you account for evil?
A: I don’t. I fight it.
Sophisticated or not, the mere presence of scoffers does not a legitimate doubt a make.
Religious doubt is beginning to be one of those things I need to write a long, well-considered entry about to help organize my thoughts for my own sake and for posterity.
In the absence of having made time to do so, here are another few bits:
The whole struggle comes down to this: Plausibility structures are very powerful. I can be thrown just by hearing an articulate person say he doesn’t believe in God. It has come to the point where I have considered and Carla has independently suggested we not get together for a sleepover with the Lundins again anytime soon.
I am now faced with two competing accounts: there is a God, and there isn’t. The latter hypothesis provides automatic resolution to all the heavy philosophical problems posed by theism. Want a satisfying end to your theodical questions? Just stop believing in God!
But the atheistic account also offers little in the way of explaining most of the supernatural phenomena I’m familiar with.
The fact is, we’re arguing about the existence of a Thing which even the Bible calls invisible (Colossians 1:15, 1 Timothy 6:16, John 1:18, John 6:46, 1 John 4:12). It makes sense that we not be able to fully grasp It.
Doubt about God is like doubt about a spouse or doubt about your country in a war you’re fighting.
“Everywhere in the Bible you see God saying that his aim is his own glory, see love. For only this will satisfy our souls.”
It is good to remember, especially with the specter of doubt still haunting my soul, that cogitation is terribly inefficient after bedtime. When tempted to mull in bed, don’t.
Have a philosophical problem? You’re not going to solve it lying in bed. So don’t try. Stuff it and go to sleep.
Not that I experienced this last night or anytime recently. But I might again someday soon.
Understanding creation as a war zone, with God having delegated to us the authority to fight, helps greatly to steel one’s faith and motivate one toward good works.