Scott: So, Sullivan what laws of physics do you know?
Sullivan: Newton’s laws of physics!
Éa: Nudists know all physics?
He’s such a dick! No offense, Scott.
— Carla, c. 2005, while watching The Last of the Mohicans, presumably referring to Magua
Sullivan: Was there a time when doctors recommended smoking?
Carla: Maybe somebody recommended it at some point, I don’t know.
Scott: Certainly not since the ’50s.
Sullivan: The ’50s haven’t even come yet, people!
Scott: We’re talking about the 1950s, Sullivan.
Your bellybutton looks a bit like Moshulu’s butt.
— Sullivan, comparing Scott’s navel to our calico’s anus
Scott [after Carla suffers a seemingly neverending sneeze attack]: What is your body trying to get rid of?
Carla [sniffling]: My face.
You know what Miss Leigh calls a picture? “Pitcher.” Picture. Pitcher. She’s a very complicated woman.
— Éa, on a quirk of her teacher’s pronunciation
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).
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.
Brandon took me to Disney World Hollywood Studios this evening as a token of appreciation. The highlights for me were:
- the Tower of Terror, which as a virtual brush with death was probably good for my anxious heart
- Rock n Roll Coaster, a fast-start roller coaster that I was terrified of at the beginning but loved after it began, as usual.
- a beautiful voice message from Carla and the kids telling me they love me.
- an often goofy but somehow touching The Great Movie Ride. It may have been the glimpse of George Bailey being embraced by his children during a rapid-fire montage at the end of the ride.
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.
One thing: Moving forward, it will very difficult for me to assess truth claims.
me:
Do you have a copy of Finger of God, Furious Love, Father of Lights, or Holy Ghost?
Mom:
I’ve seen all four, but only have the first three. I will be getting the Holy Ghost one on October 26th when they show it at the EastGate Philly Service. How’s your trip going?
me:
I ask about the movies for a specific reason: For the first time in my life, I have experienced religious doubt. It’s been acute, soul-threatening, and sleep-stealing. I think the momentum of my soul is in the right direction, but I’m certainly not out of the woods yet.
I’ll be traveling home solo much of the afternoon/evening Friday and morning/afternoon Saturday. Would you free for a longer phone chat sometime in those time windows?
Other than my doubt, we’ve had a great trip. The kids and Carla just touched down at BWI on their way home about an hour ago. Sullivan was apparently more excited about riding the airport tram, which was some kind of maglev or at least monorail, than he...
// read full article →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.”