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.”

—Stephen Crosby

“Imagine yourself if you weren’t following Jesus. Are you basically the same person? Then you aren’t following Jesus.”

—Nathan Hamm

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!

Mom:

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?”

I need to rest after work.

me:

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.

friend:

I’ll do my best not...

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).

“‘Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty?‘ Job 40:2. God never approves fault finding with God.

— John Piper

Whatever the value of the perspective the book of Job offers to modern readers, the above is certainly worth a thought.

Grape juice is wine for kids. So says Sullivan.

I am grateful to and for the entrepreneurs who started the Sweet Tomatoes salad bar restaurant chain. It’s a salad bar unlike any other I’ve seen, with as many choices in lettuce as some salad bars have in toppings! The cross section of humanity you see there ran the range tonight from white health nuts to overweight, clearly transvestite Hispanics. That, combined with the memory of talking the problem of evil with Brandon at the Sweet Tomatoes in Orlando, makes going there an acutely human experience for me.

I am also grateful for Scott Buchanan having reduced the logical problem of evil for me: Having faith that God has a morally sufficient reason for the evil that exists in the world, whether I understand that reason or not. Isn’t that the point of Job?

I’m also grateful that I’ve started to take the compassion that arose in me last Thursday evening in dealing with Carol out of its atheistic, fatalistic case and spread it out on my theistic, hopeful table. I started to feel it when interacting with the good ol’ boys at Smyrna Truck & Cargo today. Thank You.

Today, I am most appreciative and grateful for having my best friend, wonderful Carla, as my wife. She texted me late into tonight that she prayed that You, God, would tell me that You love me. That brought me to tears and to about twenty minutes of tearful, agreeing prayer that You tell me You love me. No discernible reply yet, but it was still good to pour out my heart honestly and respectfully to you.

But listing my wife as the most is going to happen almost every day. So let me list something unique here: Today, I spoke with Rex Burgher. He corroborated Krista’s account of miraculously speaking Mandarin at a John Wimber meeting in Kelowna, BC in 1995 and was encouraging and tender.

The thing I’m most grateful for today is all the music-making that happened in my house, especially the “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem” with Matt and the three Christmas carols at the piano right before bedtime with Carla and the kids.

My notes from talking with Dave Palmer about my doubt

• It’s about time!
• This doesn’t happen quickly. It’s going to be take time.
• It’s not gonna help to be impatient.
• God is doing something in you that will good fruit will come.
• “Though the mills of God grind slowly / Yet they grind exceeding small / Though with patience he stands waiting / With exactness grinds he all“ (Longfellow)

I’ve noticed the wind is taken out of my sails in getting things done these days. Why? Here are three hypotheses:

1. My mother-in-law is here.
2. I question the existence of God.
3. I’m tired and distracted by my questioning the existence of God.

I’m grateful to the Steve and Casey Wimmer for operating a reasonably priced plumbing business I can rely on.