Scott Stilson

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Calvin and Hobbes discuss how conversations often focus on TV and movies rather than real-life interactions, leading to Calvin lamenting about not having a TV in his room.

This is how I feel.

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Doubt baby review:

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I am less self-disciplined, less loving, and less diligent whenever Carla leaves.

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Carla has been peevish recently. But so have I. It’s a cycle. I realized one way to break the cycle is to drop my expectation that anyone, including my wife and kids, act perfectly lovingly all the time. I don’t, so why should I expect them to?

I’ll go further: When a demand is made of me or a disagreement voiced, let my first instinct be to satisfy the demand or come to accord quickly and happily. Obviously, I won’t be a pushover, but I will be a volunteer, a happy second-miler.

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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?

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With apologies to philosophers and neuroscientists who believe there is no such thing as free will, we humans are the only (or perhaps one of just a few) species capable of choosing what we consume and how. We have a huge responsibility.

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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.

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The important thing is not to obsess.

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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.

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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 we had our 72-year-old next-door neighbor Janet Donald over for leftover Stilson rotini dinner, homemade quick bread, a thirteen-year-old shiraz Janet had donated to us a month prior for Carla’s birthday, and some after-dinner Dixit at the kids’ prompting, all while piano jazz played on Spotify and the thermostat was set to a balmy 67°F.

I told her I love having her over.

Did I say it because I love the feeling of moral pride it gives me to know I have my aged next-door neighbor over for dinner and counter her as a friend? In part, yes. But I also said it because I really do like her.

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“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.

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Matt Poehner has the following quotation on his Facebook profile:

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that…will live on in the memories of your loved ones. I am not afraid.

— Marcus Aurelius

I can get behind that.

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If, in my old age, you asked me to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I predict I’d tell you it was the day I metaphorically threw my hands up in the air about whether I have a principled reason for supporting Friends & Farmers Food Co-op: I don’t. I support the co-op because I enjoy hanging out with those kinds of people at the kinds of functions they hold.

I could go into my reasons for suspecting that “buy local” is a slogan with slippery ethical foundations (hint: for a start, it smacks of egogeocentrism), but I think I’ll leave it at this: I buy local for the pleasure of it. That’s all. It is a luxury. It makes my community a smilier, more human place.

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Completism is not a fruit of the spirit.

On God

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Personifying the highest good is very motivating, even if it’s false (which I don’t think it is, but it might be).

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I have decided how to deal with my existential doubt about God: Consider myself married to You.

I have several marriages. In order of strength of commitment, I admit that I am married first to Carla and the kids. But right after that comes You. But despite that order, which is the inverse of how I would have ordered it at this time last year, I am privileged to live in a pluralistic culture where it is hard to imagine those two marriages ever coming into conflict. So we might almost consider these marriages functionally tied in importance, if not in their priority.

After that—and this will help with my concentration problems at work—I am also married to my colleagues at DiamondBack. Then to Houserville. These two marriages are more dissoluble without fault.

But the first two, they are not dissoluble. I tell You, O Lord, the same thing I told Carla and she me: I will never divorce You unless someone can prove Your non-existence. Folks may be able to make strong inferential, probabilistic cases that You don’t exist, but they can never disprove it. And there remains enough evidence out there for a reasonable person to make the inferential, probabilistic conclusion that You are.

Can Your existence be deduced or induced with certainty? No. Even the least explainable miracles, such as Vonna Wala’s healing, can be dismissed by appealing to the possibility of future, non-theistic explanations, and even though that may be unwarranted extrapolation and a fallacious argument to the future, such dismissal can carry weight and eliminate theistic certainty. Short of an intense encounter with the metaphysical, which I hope for but don’t count on, I can never return to thinking Your existence is certain.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t live as though it is certain. And that is my plan.

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My notes from talking with Dave Palmer about my doubt

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Why is faith a virtue?

If you ask a believer to focus on God in prayer, the part of their brain responsible for attention and concentration becomes very active. If you ask an atheist to do the same, the characteristic patterns of prayer don’t appear because there’s nothing for the atheist to focus on. Science tells us that the way humans understand God is more a feeling and experience than an idea or set of beliefs. For atheists, the pattern of connections across the brain that create this experience aren’t there. There is no God in their brains. It turns out that some belief in God is vital for people to experience and know God. In some measurable way, you have to leap before you look.

That seems foolish to many people, and I’m one of them. The Bible constantly extolls the virtues of faith and belief in things unseen. I think that reflects an intuitive understanding of what we’ve learned about the neurology of belief in modern times. Many of best things about Christianity only happen after you know God, but God can’t be proven. That’s why faith is extolled as such a virtue.

— Mike McHargue, “Walking With God Through Doubt”

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If my intellectual faith—that is, my confident intellectual assent that Jesus is alive, or even that God exists—dies, I do want to keep what faith I can muster along the Richard-Beck definitions supplied below aligned with Jesus. He will always be a great totem, and this way I can continue to celebrate Him with my family.

Sacramental faith: A faith with and through the body. This is the faith of the book of James, the faith of obedience. It’s the faith of discipleship, moving one’s body through life the way Jesus moved his body through life. It is the faith of orthopraxy (“right practice”). The first Christians were called followers of “The Way.” This is the faith of the path, what Eastern religions call the dharma.

Doxological faith: The faith of worship and allegiance. The early Christians confessed that Jesus was Lord, a radical political claim That is, regardless as to whether you believe in the Incarnation or the Resurrection, a Christian confesses that Jesus is Lord, the telos of her ethical and political existence. Doxological faith is the claim that, at the end of the day, the teachings of Jesus are the authority in my life, what monastics call the “rule.” Everyone has to make choices in life, big choices and small choices, and we make those choice in light of some conception of what is “good” or “best.” Doxological faith makes Jesus that criterion.

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“If I had to distill it to one issue, I would say it’s that the visible church seems to care more about ideas than people.”

— Derek Webb, in reply to “Is there one thing you see as the biggest issue/blind spot for the church, an area where Christianity is failing to live up to its promise and purpose?” on Rachel Held Evans’ blog

In context, Webb is talking about Christians letting disagreement trump relationships. In true reader-reception form, his offering is broader and more convicting: I care more about having the right ideas than I do about actively loving people. Christianity is less about about having good theology and more about acting like Christ.

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Jesus hung out with rejects on purpose.

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I resolve: On Sundays and holidays, I will rest from my agenda-fulfillment and I will not look at screens proactively.

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“Suffering is the stripping of our hope in finite things, therefore we do not put our ultimate hope in anything finite.”

— Tim Keller

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“Rest is an act of defiance.”

— Walter Brueggemann

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[Psalm 16](Psalm 16) stands as a gleaming promise. And it has this line: “I said to the Lord, ‘You are my Lord; I have no good besides You.’” That’s the attitude I want to have.