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...
// read full article →Everyone seems to have more time to read books than I do.
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.
It’s too late to journal this in any detail, but suffice it to say for now that I’ve embraced that suffering and death is a part of everyone’s life. That’ll make me less fearful of death myself, less fearful for what my children will think in the wake of deaths and suffering around them, and more willing to take the risk of becoming a foster dad. Desiring God’s take on Romans 8 helps here. As does the whole Bible, which never once tells the saints they won’t suffer. It assumes suffering, and it assumes it as something to fight against, but also a backwards blessing as well, capable of creating much good character in someone.
This realization is a prayer answer to this morning’s prayer.
Carla: Sullivan, you have to take a shower. I don’t want to hear any more whining about it. Get in there.
Sullivan [walking away into the bathroom]: Aw, maaan! Fuck. Fuck fuck.
Carla: Sullivan, what did you just say?
Sullivan: Haha! I didn’t want to say “shucks” so I disguised it by saying “puck”—or no wait: “fuck.” Yeah, that was it.
Hearing of some Christian acquaintances’ divorce today at church rattled me, especially after extended exposure to my unbelieving friends at last night’s family sleepover with them. I cried today in the sunroom to Carla that their divorce makes me ask, “What difference does Jesus make?” I mean, if the Gospel is not much more than “Jesus is God’s son, therefore God is like Jesus, whom He made king of the universe. And He promises some set of humanity the gift of eternal life,” then it’s still pretty good news, but my internal gospel has always included “glory to glory” and the effect eternal life has on us now. If there is no such thing and, say, the divorce rate among believing Christians is the same as it is among unbelievers, then I grieve the loss of what I thought was a piece of the Good News.
Now, Nas rapped “life’s a bitch and then you die.” And while I disagree with coda of his rhyme (“that’s why we get high”), it comforts me in the face of the above in the same way...
// read full article →I often put my hand over my heart when You and I go for strolls these days. I hope that means I love You, and not merely that I’ve adopted an affectation of loving You.
Deeds will tell, I suppose.
And you could always say: Well, I could have given that money to the missionary. And that is true. Every ice cream cone you buy you could have been sent to somewhere else. But I am thinking: Would you have? Has it gotten in the way of heartfelt calling to do a good thing?
— John Piper, “What Luxuries in My Life Are Sinful?”
The most significant thing today, other than the pumpkin carving all four of did in the kitchen while listening to a Béla Fleck collab folk album, photos of which I’m sure will be taken, is that I am concerned, although not to the point of taking any action, that I am overly distracted from Your kingdom, Lord, by nifty information tools. Today I updated f.lux, set up Day One to have two journal files, one for my journal and one for the record of days, relatedly cleared my Dropbox account, and got invited by the folks who build Remember the Milk to test out their upcoming overhaul. I got mildly excited about each. Is that OK?
“The Lord gave me sixty-two years of joy and prosperity; will I curse him if the last five years are hard?”
— Eileen Anderson, Harps Unhung, xvii, as [quoted by John Piper]((https://twitter.com/johnpiper/status/519895769592393728)
I remind myself how much richer a reading experience is when it is read aloud. I missed Ahab’s boat in Moby Dick; I’m not going to miss Licona’s resurrection train.
Esprit d’escalier after a Spring-Creek-Park conversation about a friend’s experience with You, God, since a conference at Life Center back in February:
“Friend, I realize in retrospect that the reason for my muted reaction to your account of what God has done for you this past year was not jealousy or my own lack of similar experience: It was simply that what you were telling me was news Ethan has been sharing with me repeatedly since you encountered God so powerfully last February. I do remember rejoicing when I first heard the news. I praise God for it.
“It’s true that I don’t know what to say when speaking directly with someone describing an experience such as yours, because it’s true that I haven’t had much in the way of similar experience. But then, my heart is filled with peace and joy and light and has been—increasingly so—since my adolescence. Just because I’m not effervescent about Christ doesn’t mean I don’t love Him. I do always want to love Him with more of me, but I don’t...
// read full article →“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law” (Galatians 3:13a).
Jesus be like, “S’alright. I got this.” And boom, with his execution, fulfills the requirements of the Law once and for all so that we don’t have to worry about it.
No, really. Paul writes that He bought us off a lender who was on our backs. You don’t need to do anything to inherit eternal life. He paid your ticket.
Brandon had us take a Five Love Languages (In The Workplace) test today. My primary language “for feeling appreciated in the work setting is by having others communicate their appreciation for him verbally…in addition, [I] actually [have] two secondary languages of appreciation. One way that he receives encouragement and is motivated is by spending quality time with those he values…an additional way that Scott receives encouragement and is motivated is by receiving gifts…Scott’s lowest language for feeling appreciated in the work setting is by having others help him with projects he is working on. As a result, attempts to motivate or encourage Scott by doing tasks for him will generally not be that effective.”
Just watched: La Grande Illusion (1937) directed and co-written by Jean Renoir.
What is the great illusion? Is it national borders? Is it the idea that this war would be the one to end them all? That war can be gentlemanly? That war is worth it?
Anyway, this movie stands alongside The Best Years of Our Lives, Dr. Strangelove, and The Bridge on the River Kwai as one of the best antiwar films I’ve seen. (I haven’t watched Apocalypse Now yet.) But less like Strangelove and more like Best Years of Our Lives in that all the characters are very human. These are people fighting, dammit. Makes me want to rewatch The Rules of the Game because Renoir is so good. Perfect, transparent acting. Bonding people across class and nationality, yet sometimes having to stick to those, too. In the end, So very human. A perfect film. Definitely worth watching. If this was Jean Renoir’s outlook on people, we could all stand to learn. Finally, a French film and a French director Carla and I enjoy with no...
// read full article →Carla and I sat through our first foster care preservice training class session this evening. I wasn’t surprised by anything the CYS folks said. It was heartening and entertaining to hear from the guest lecturing Pollock family, who have six kids right now. Carla and I thought we disagreed about whether we could proceed, but further conversation revealed that we agree: While she is on Council, we will stick with respite foster care only. She thought I wasn’t even OK with that; I had forgotten respite was all she wants to do at the moment.
The only other notable thing, besides the gratis Smartfood popcorn bags we snagged for the kids’ lunches tomorrow, was that I think every one of the candidates, plus the Pollocks, are motivated by their faith in Jesus Christ.