“I measured distances by the standard of man, man waling on his two feet, not by the standard of the internal combustion engine. I had not been allowed to deflower the very idea of distance; in return I possessed ‘infinite riches’ in what would have been to motorists ‘a little room.’ The truest and most horrible claim made for modern transport is that it ‘annihilates space.’ It does. It annihilates one of the most glorious gifts we have been given. It is a vile inflation which lowers the value of distance, so that a modern boy travels a hundred miles with less sense of liberation and pilgrimage and adventure than his grandfather got from traveling ten. Of course if a man hates space and wants it to be annihilated, that is another matter. Why not creep into his coffin at once? There is little enough space there” (C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy [1955]).
“To read without military knowledge or good maps accounts of fighting which were distorted before they reached the Divisional general and further distorted before they left him and then ‘written up’ out of all recognition by journalists, to strive to master what will be contradicted the next day, to fear and hope intensely on shaky evidence, is surely an ill use of the mind. Even in peacetime I think those are very wrong who say that schoolboys should be encouraged to read the newspapers. Nearly all that a boy reads there in his teens will be known before he is twenty to have been false in emphasis and interpretation, if not in fact as well, and most of it will have lost all importance. Most of what he remembers he will therefore have to unlearn; an he will probably have acquired an incurable taste for vulgarity and sensationalism and the fatal habit of fluttering from paragraph to paragraph to learn how an actress has been divorced in California, a train derailed in France, and...
I’m very grateful for the walk Uncle Steve and I took today around Mom’s neighborhood. He told me his testimony—it was boredom that led him to Christ—and then about the miraculous healing of his bones following being crushed by a 1200-or-so-lb. steel plate when he was seventeen.
The Peters gave us a bound copy of Stories of the Supernatural today. And we chased Santa down on Hickory Drive, having come home too late from the Peters’ house to see him from our stoop. And we ate at Olive Garden. And I focused at work! And I (mostly) stayed God’s. And Sullivan got sad about Ponyboy and wanted to take better care of his next fish; he wants to breed gobies. And Éa was upset by Sullivan’s gift of a plastic bow and arrow to her.
“A wise enemy will attack you on two fronts: exploit your weaknesses, and undermine confidence in your strength. Don’t be surprised when there is much ‘push back’ against you from all quarters (natural and spiritual) when you set your mind to be authentically who you are in Christ and bless the world by expressing it. Our adversary and Christian religion will tolerate you listening to sermons and singing worship songs, etc. Set your sail to be authentically you in Christ, and war is on.”
I know what’s behind all my doubt-borne anxiety and obsessive, sinful trawling of the Internet in search of God (or not God): It’s a fear of being wrong. And a fear of uncertainty.
Rob Bell just officially loosened up my interpretation of Matthew 7:13-14. This passage isn’t discussing eternal life at all. It’s almost laughable that I used to think so!
Saw this testimony on Youtube. I thought it would be worth your time to watch it. You only need to watch the first 13 minutes of it.
me:
Thanks, Mom! I’ve queued it up for later watching.
I’m concluding, however, that being assiduous about answering my questions and shoring up my faith isn’t healthy. There appears to be a positive correlation between the sedulity with which I approach my questions and the likelihood that my reading and watching will deepen my doubts.
In other words, I’m finding it much healthier and more likely to lead to restored strength of belief to take this whole thing slowly.
But by all means, if you come across other resources you think would be helpful, I’m very good at queueing things up for reading or watching and then following through with reading or watching them later. I’ve just about finished Surprised by Joy, which you graciously sent me last month. Thanks again for that.
Mom:
Sedulity - I had to look that one up. Great word. I think I...
Father, I want to reorient the things I do, the things on my list, toward this: “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35). And toward this one, too: “Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Corinthians 16:14).
God, I want You to be like this dragon: Insistent on being seen and appreciated. (This particular leaf from the book I show only because I think it’s one of the funniest spreads I’ve ever read.)
Today I am grateful for the following realization, which I’ve had before but crystallizes more today: The way to deal with doubt and its related anxiety is not to trawl the Internet looking for evidence of God. That only feeds the anxiety and continues to build my faith in Him entirely on other people’s experiences, arguments, and opinions. My usual intense setting aside of all other things, including work, to set right a system awry is not the way to go here.
A better metaphor for my doubt: It is as if someone has presented a plausible case against Carla being nothing more than a sophisticated simulation or AI.
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,...
“Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?” (Mark 4:40). You, O Lord, have been asleep in the boat of my life as it gets “tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming” (Ephesians 4:14). But in this text, at least, You tell me I have nothing to worry about. “I’m in the boat, aren’t I?”
Thanks for your quick reply. My message is not so urgent that you need feel any friendly responsibility to reply tonight, despite the gravity of the subject, for I’ve already talked this over with more than a handful of friends, all of whom have been supportive. I write you specifically because I understand you to be one of the leftmost Christians, theologically speaking, in my own social sphere.
How am I asking you to reply to [my doubt]? I don’t know, exactly. But I’d be happy if you answered any of the below questions:
Have you doubted?
What specifically have you doubted?
What have you done with your doubt? How do you handle it?
Do you believe that Jesus is alive?
Do you have any ideas about why God seems so hidden?
Why do you pray?
How do you pray?
What sorts of things do you thank God for?
How are you handling child-rearing with an eye toward them believing?
Like I said, please take your time in replying. And/or let’s set a phone date. Your pick.
me:I stumbled across your wife’s healing story while trying bolster my own flagging, increasingly skeptical faith in Jesus. Is she still still symptom-free?# Phil:Yes, I can confirm that Vonna has not had any Multiple Sclerosis symptoms since 10pm on June 8, 2003. My wife and I are both skeptical by nature, and we have been diligently watchful for any hint of a return of the familiar symptoms. 11½ years after the healing, my own skepticism persists, but I can confidently say that in addition to this healing from MS being sudden and complete, I am 11½ years closer to declaring it permanent.But there’s a follow-up to the story, and it’s something we’re walking through right now. Although God chose a sudden and miraculous healing to deal with Vonna’s MS, that has not been the case with her genetic kidney condition (polycystic kidney disease), which has been slowly developing before, during, and after her bout with MS. Her kidneys, which normally weigh about 5 oz....
It is very difficult to parse Mark 4:12 unless you are a universalist. Otherwise, it appears that God is working against His universal desire for all men to be saved, right?
It seems apparent that this passage is an example of “to him who has, more will be given” (v. 25).
