What to make of Jesus’ extreme and embarrassing statements about the efficacy of faithful prayer, such as “All things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive”? There
“Jesus is speaking hyperbolically.” This seems to me the most likely, or at least the most acceptable, option. Greg Boyd would claim this one.
“Jesus was speaking literally, but ‘believing’ means something different from what I think it means, perhaps something closer to the ‘just knowing’ I used to get when prompted to pray for people’s headaches to go away.” This is C.S. Lewis’ take on the matter, at least as I remember one of his letters to Malcom on prayer.
“Jesus didn’t say that.” Liberal Christians would claim this one.
All three options are plausible and don’t require me to abandon my faith in Jesus.
The most significant thing that happened was that Sullivan and I finally managed to get the Yankee into the sky. It helps that I had to climb fifteen feet up into the first oak on the right side of the paved park path to retrieve the rocket after the launch.
We will both continue the hobby. That bodes well for our relationship. With Éa, I’ll always have music, but with Sully, I’ve been searching for a material thing to serve as a connecting point for us. May we be like that pair of clips on either side of the starter, side by side launching stuff into the sky.
I wanted to write briefly to update you: I have set my face to follow Jesus. But I have to tell you, the uncertainty about Him still undercuts my overall confidence and my prayer life. How do I talk with a still-invisible God of whom I’m unsure? The problem of evil makes me less likely to praise Him, the problem of divine hiddenness makes me less likely to thank Him, and the problem of unanswered prayer makes me less likely to ask of Him.
Moving through life with a foundation I’m unsure of is a novel experience for me. Whatever the benefits of the doubt—and I do intend to read that book—I think I was happier without it.
Why I’m unsure about Him after hearing miracle claims from close friends is a mystery to me. I do know doubt is very social, so I’m going to do what I can to avoid reading material from the dark side. And I have a lot of reading and video-watching to do to shore up my faith. One of the few things I’ve gotten to already is the McHargue article series you sent. I...
How do good things in the ekklesia end up going bad? Often the road to corruption is paved with stones of well-intended pragmatism. Virtue is not always practical, nor profitable. Love is not pragmatic. There is no love column on a profit-loss statement or a balance sheet. Love cannot be analyzed. Love can be entered in to. Doing what is right does not always have an immediate practical outcome of benefit. When a spirit of pragmatism enters a community (especially regarding money) little incremental steps are taken choosing the practical and the profitable over the virtuous and honorable. Those little bricks of making pragmatism our God, pave the highway to corruption. Pragmatism wants to assure that a course of action turns out well for me/mine and ours. Love wants to make sure it turns out well for others, even if it costs me/us.
Dad left a voice message for me yesterday afternoon asking whether we were still coming to stay at his house this weekend. This after me having asked him twice about 2 months ago whether we could come, only to get the standard, “Let me talk to Lorraine and I’ll let you know.”
We talked about it afterwards, and he, as usual, said that “it was OK” and that “we’ll both do better next time.” He is pitiably pathological in this regard: I did nothing that needs to be improved.
Nevertheless, I miss him and Lorraine and genuinely want to see him. Everyone is happier when we have seen each other. So, I’m going to start treating making plans with him the same way I treat following up on sales prospects: Contact them regularly in an attempt to meet your goals, and don’t let up until your goals have been met. Even after that point, I will confirm plans.
Briefly reflecting on Luke Muehlhauser, the “Common Sense Atheist,” and his dedication to preparing for the “intelligence explosion” he fears, it occurs to me that it might be best if I focused my charitable efforts like he does. Now, I won’t be concentrating on defending against the singularity, but I could stand to narrow things down. Currently, it’s Water.org, Young Life, the Pregnancy Resource Clinic, Food for the Hungry, the State College Food Bank, and Clearwater Conservancy we donate to. I like all those organizations. But if I want to make a difference, perhaps I need to get behind one in particular.
But where I want to make a difference is interpersonally. If I’m going to change the world, I want to change it through friendship. The problems I’m solving? Well, I imagine many might be solved this way, at least for the people I’m interpersonal-ing. But first among them is loneliness.
Reflecting on my knee-jerk thoughts when faced with criticisms of the Lewis trilemma—“Wait, what? People find problems with the Lewis trilemma? I thought that was open-and-shut! Man, this apologetics stuff is doomed.”—it occurs to me that so much religious doubt and anxiety might be preempted if we acknowledged up front that:
We might be wrong about our religious beliefs. But it’s still OK to hold them, and to do so very passionately, provided they aren’t motivation for hatred or violence. In fact, for many people, it’s more than OK: it’s joyful and vital.
Other people have looked at virtually the same evidence to the deity of Jesus and come to very different conclusions, often rationally, and sometimes motivated by love, or at least Polonian honesty. While this might challenge our soteriology or our Christology, it doesn’t have to assail our faith in God or even in Jesus.
I have journaled enough today. So briefly, the most important thing that happened today is that I have regained some footing in my soul. Spending my DiamondBack vacation time to expose myself to the writings of Mike McHargue, Gary Habermas, Michael Licona, Dale Allison via the Internet has helped me regain the company of the thoughtful-but-still-Christian. Faith and doubt are very social.
Again, I remind myself: Exposing myself to skeptical writings from the other side is not healthy for me in any way at this time in my life.
“For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life” (Galatians 6:8).
I think this applies only partially to earthly life. I think Paul is referring to the afterlife.
I had asked You last night, God, for an account of the Cross that makes it good news to me, not just to ancient Jews who were covenantally bound to blood sacrifice for atonement. And here is an answer: You showed that the afterlife is real.
you entered my thoughts this morning, and I thought I would encourage you. I was listening to the radio and working out your salvation was mentioned (completely incorrectly as I currently see it), so I asked God what was up with you. I received back that you were in a drawing in period. So I asked what that means and what needs to be done. I got back that you need to relax into the uncomfortableness (unanswered questions, anxiety) and ride it out. That sounds very uncaring since “how do you do that?”. I got the picture of a woman in labor. She has these uncomfortable contractions and seemingly nothing is happening, but that baby is moving. So, relax into you contractions, deal with them the best you can. Your baby is coming on its (God’s) schedule.
me:
You spark hope and give me a strategy. Thank you. My natural tendency is not to relax in the face of uncertainty, but to bear down. In this stage, I can see easily the advantages of the latter.
To fight off this crippling doubt, I should become parochial in my thinking, for nothing in my actual social sphere seriously challenges my faith. Some friends’ newborn fatal birth defects don’t challenge my faith. My other friend’s ectopic pregnancy and brush with death don’t bother me. It’s arguments, not actual experiences, that challenge my faith. And for the actual experiences, some combination of Greg Boyd’s and Richard Beck’s theodicies gets the job done for me.
I guess the third pair of friends’ divorce bothered me, but all it really did was show that human will and defects can override the grace of God. A sobering thought, for sure, but not one to slow my faith down too much.
I remind myself of two things that will help me set the problem of evil down:
Theodicy is much easier when death isn’t taken as final and when what comes after it is believed to be very good. Both those things are part of Christian belief, especially if you’re at least at the inclusivist point on the soteriological spectrum, like I currently am. (This does leave me curious to pick back up my project about what the Bible actually says about who receives eternal life.)
Also, I must admit that the problem of evil will, in all likelihood, remain unresolved during this lifetime. We are, after all, arguing about an invisible deity. Nevertheless, as tempting as it may be, trading my faith for a facile resolution to this and the other two related problems (divine hiddenness and unanswered prayer) would be foolish.
If I’m not careful, I’m going to petrify a habit of mine that has developed in the past few weeks and become such a temptation as to displace the role seeking online infotainment or titillation has at times played in my life: reading theological articles on the Internet during the workday. If I allow this habit to solidify, it will have two detrimental effects: I will lose my job, and I will lose my faith.
“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6). That’s the only faith worth having. And it’s the only faith I can have through some of this terrifically doubtful season. Specific religious practice is questionable. Faith expressed in love is not.
I tire of writing about religious doubt and anxiety. So let’s try something else: The thing I most remember about today is the delicious onion & spinach pizza Carla made for our dinner with flaxseed, oregano, and red pepper cooked into the dough. The consistency of the dough was perfect.
The most important thing to happen to me today is that I asked the church to pray for me that my anxiety that lingers and pops up unbidden (for instance, upon looking at an old photograph in the CD insert for Down the Old Plank Road, I felt anxious that the people in the photograph weren’t alive any more), that You, God would take it away. Most memorable among the prayers was that Dave asked you to “talk loud.”
Oh, and I want to watch all ninety episodes of Curious George with the kids via Greta’s Netflix account. And I won a few golf passes by winning the donut-on-a-string contest at Millbrook Marsh’s annual Historic Harvest Festival.
Curiously, my not getting everything done today that I wanted to get done as I stood up to leave to go to the Potters’ house for dinner and trick-or-treating elicited feelings of anxiety and disappointment. In addition, and somewhat laughably, it led to doubt of God’s existence. What a silly thing to hang it on.
