self:
Exactly one year ago today, I have down in my journal that you told me in a videochat that you were wanting a supernatural experience to help you firmly believe that Jesus is alive. I share that desire. Any luck? I’m reading a book on the subject you might find interesting.
friend:
An interesting question. If I’m honest, no, that hasn’t happened yet. I do, however, feel a bit less inner conflict between my desire for rational truth about the way the universe works and my faith, or culture, or whatever it is. Maybe I’m becoming more content with my inner discontent. Maybe I do have a relationship with God. We’re working it out.
For whatever it’s worth I’m meandering my way through Richard Rohr’s Everything Belongs and think it’s pretty interesting. One of the appealing aspects of modern Catholic thought is that they reconcile faith and thinking as a dualism rather than a battle. His book sometimes feels a little close to the edge of my tolerance for meaningless easternisms, but it’s worth the read.
How are you?
self:
Historically, God’s hiddenness has been a source of laughter between Him and me. Only very recently has it become an occasional source of doubt and discontent. But I remain convinced that He has largely hidden Himself on purpose. I’m still sussing out His reasons…something to do with developing people and having them be the ones to give revelation, help, and prayer answering. Even in the New Testament, encounters with God were almost all mediated. There must be something to it.
I pray we all work this Relationship out.
Faith and thinking have always gone hand in hand for me. I’ve never understood the battle. May it end.
I’ll add the Rohr book to my functionally infinite list of books to read.
As for me, other than the novel experience of doubt—which, oddly enough, came because of some reading I’m doing as part of an exploratory, evangelistic effort with a good friend—life is as peachy as can be.
Missed you at our anniversary party!
An unfinished verse about the problem of divine hiddenness
O, invisible God, whom I cannot see,
Please, please reveal Yourself to me.
I don’t understand what you gain by hiding,
Blah-biddy blah, biddy-blah biddy fighting.
But I know You are love, if you are anything all,
Blah-biddy blah, biddy-blah biddy fall. ✏️ 🎤 🎵
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.