Voxer is like SMS except with voice messages instead of text. It’s so nifty I think it should come as firmware on all phones. It made talking with Jason Wendle an ocean and half a continent away this morning wonderfully, dangerously easy.

Why is faith a virtue?

If you ask a believer to focus on God in prayer, the part of their brain responsible for attention and concentration becomes very active. If you ask an atheist to do the same, the characteristic patterns of prayer don’t appear because there’s nothing for the atheist to focus on. Science tells us that the way humans understand God is more a feeling and experience than an idea or set of beliefs. For atheists, the pattern of connections across the brain that create this experience aren’t there. There is no God in their brains. It turns out that some belief in God is vital for people to experience and know God. In some measurable way, you have to leap before you look.

That seems foolish to many people, and I’m one of them. The Bible constantly extolls the virtues of faith and belief in things unseen. I think that reflects an intuitive understanding of what we’ve learned about the neurology of belief in modern times. Many of best things...

I am grateful for the people who made the Make Space.

God help me if anomalies such as healings, NDEs with veridical evidence, and veridical apparitions are ever shown to me to be always false or completely natural. I know many of them are, but it seems like some of them are not. Vonna Wala’s, for instance.

For now, with the Walas’ story and Dale Allison’s apparitions, I have a little peace. What a wacky set of things to base your faith on.

If my intellectual faith—that is, my confident intellectual assent that Jesus is alive, or even that God exists—dies, I do want to keep what faith I can muster along the Richard-Beck definitions supplied below aligned with Jesus. He will always be a great totem, and this way I can continue to celebrate Him with my family.

Sacramental faith: A faith with and through the body. This is the faith of the book of James, the faith of obedience. It’s the faith of discipleship, moving one’s body through life the way Jesus moved his body through life. It is the faith of orthopraxy (“right practice”). The first Christians were called followers of “The Way.” This is the faith of the path, what Eastern religions call the dharma.

Doxological faith: The faith of worship and allegiance. The early Christians confessed that Jesus was Lord, a radical political claim That is, regardless as to whether you believe in the Incarnation or the Resurrection, a Christian...

As Jesus was approaching Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the road begging. Now hearing a crowd going by, he began to inquire what this was. They told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. And he called out, saying, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Those who led the way were sternly telling him to be quiet; but he kept crying out all the more, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’ And Jesus stopped and commanded that he be brought to Him; and when he came near, He questioned him, ‘What do you want Me to do for you?’ And he said, ‘Lord, I want to regain my sight!’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Receive your sight; your faith has made you well.’ Immediately he regained his sight and began following Him, glorifying God; and when all the people saw it, they gave praise to God.”

— Luke 18:35:43

Lord, in my faith/doubt, I am this blind man. Please have mercy on me by restoring my sight.

The thing for which I’m most I’m most grateful—to whom? perhaps I should start saying ‘appreciative’ instead—on this doubtful day is that I remembered that, as it regards the afterlife as well as how to live this life, it doesn’t matter whether God is real. Will the reality or unreality of the afterlife the way I live change? The way I talk about metaphysics will, certainly. But lifestyle? I don’t think so. Either way, I’m going to live well, i.e., love well. Actually, in my mind at this moment, I’d even consider it possible that I’d live better without the idea that I will live forever. One life to live means only one life to give.

I’m grateful to my colleagues and employers at DiamondBack, who made my Friday vacation day possible, and to Carla’s mom, whose presence made other social obligations unnecessary, for a weekend full of rest, reading, remaining at home.

Capsule Review of Mike Licona’s Book

In this painstaking work of historiography, Licona asserts that over five recent, competing, largely sociopsychological accounts, the Resurrection Hypothesis is the strongest explanation for the following three bits of historical data, which are near-unanimously admitted by historians:

• that Jesus died by crucifixion,
• that His disciples had experiences that led them to believe and proclaim that Jesus had been resurrected and had appeared to them, and
• that within a few years of Jesus' death, Paul converted after experiencing what he interpreted as a post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to him.

I find Licona’s work here persuasive enough. To me, it would be only presuppositions against theism, perhaps reached via reflection on some of the philosophical problems posed by theism—some of which I admit I sometimes find tempting or threatening—that would lead someone to conclude differently.

I put my primary practical problem with my Christian faith—and a real threat to its continuance—to Carla this way as she got my back in bed this evening: I attempt to interact with God interpersonally almost every day. He seems to barely make a reciprocal effort ever.

“If I had to distill it to one issue, I would say it’s that the visible church seems to care more about ideas than people.”

— Derek Webb, in reply to “Is there one thing you see as the biggest issue/blind spot for the church, an area where Christianity is failing to live up to its promise and purpose?” on Rachel Held Evans’ blog

In context, Webb is talking about Christians letting disagreement trump relationships. In true reader-reception form, his offering is broader and more convicting: I care more about having the right ideas than I do about actively loving people. Christianity is less about about having good theology and more about acting like Christ.

Here is what I should have said: “Sullivan, everyone dies. But the writers of the Bible tell us that Jesus promises eternal life to, at least, all those who cling to Him (see John 3:16, John 11:25, 1 John 2:25, Titus 1:2, 1 Peter 1:3-6, etc., etc.). I’ve never seen heaven. But I believe it. Mommy believes it. Billions of people believe it. Some people have even had near-death experiences in which they almost die but somehow doctors revive them; during the time in between, they see something like heaven.

So don’t worry: God loves you so much that He won’t let death be the end of you. You will go to heaven.

Jesus hung out with rejects on purpose.

I resolve: On Sundays and holidays, I will rest from my agenda-fulfillment and I will not look at screens proactively.

That porthole has taken on new meaning: Friends. It gratifies me to no end to contemplate how faithful my friends were to me. How when I needed them (Carla, Sullivan, Janet, the Rookes), they were there. My physical suffering, like my doubt-borne anguish last month, becomes a reason for thanksgiving: I have friends who love me.

A call-and-response greeting for Thanksgiving that came out of a brief SMS exchange with Daniel Perea today in which he expressed confusion about what greeting to give on Thanksgiving: “Give thanks to the Lord / for He is good / and His love endures forever.”

What does it mean to ‘draw near’ or ‘approach’ God like James says?

“Happy Thanksgiving! Let’s hear it for a people (Wampanoag Indians) who embraced a few undocumented immigrants (Pilgrims) over a meal!”

—Evan Wickham

“Suffering is the stripping of our hope in finite things, therefore we do not put our ultimate hope in anything finite.”

— Tim Keller

Faith is trust manifested in action.

“Rest is an act of defiance.”

— Walter Brueggemann

I will dedicate more temporal resources toward getting Nextdoor off the ground. It is being well-received so far, although no one has really used it.

[Psalm 16](Psalm 16) stands as a gleaming promise. And it has this line: “I said to the Lord, ‘You are my Lord; I have no good besides You.’” That’s the attitude I want to have.

In the middle of a game of toss during our after-church socializing today in the sunroom, Sullivan sent a Nerf football upon onto the valance, knocking the 3.2-lb. porthole Carla got from her dad down and onto my head, edge first. It opened a quarter-inch-wide gash in the crown of my head. It hurt like you’d expect such a wound to hurt, and I walked out of the room for some privacy, but Carla and the Rookes stopped me because I was bleeding profusely.

Long story short, Matt took me to the hospital and chatted happily with me while we waited for the parade of health professionals to come through my ER room. A medical student named Alex was the one to put the six staples in. He put in at least one too many because of what he claimed was some inaccuracy in the stapler.

It felt good to be the center of attention. But more precisely, it felt good to be personally helped in a time of need. Over the course of the episode, Carla put my socks on and cleaned my bloody head in the shower after I...

Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and will then repay every man according to his deeds” (Matthew 16:24-27).

I am challenged by these words of Jesus this morning. In what ways am I trying to save my life? In what ways am I losing it for Jesus’ sake?