A few critical notes as I dive back in to Matthew McCormick’s book:
Wife and I share a concern that wherever this doubt and I end up, that I don’t end up lacking in the strength and security that I’ve given her and the kids with my faith in Jesus.
Is it not possible that the strength and security I’ve given comes not from being a conduit for Jesus but rather from my having certainty about my purpose and mission, a surety of a unifying guide, a lodestar principle? If I have a lodestar principle and mission I can settle on other than Jesus—what am I writing?!?—perhaps I can still lend strength to my family even if I end up a doubting Thomas.
I just wanted to let you know that my thoughts have been with you after hearing about your sleepless night. I think I understand the sort of turmoil you are in; I’ve been deep in it for a while!
I would be delighted to talk more…and/or to let ideas and feelings percolate as needed.
Thank you for your sympathy. You and your husband are good people.
That it wasn’t until thirty-three years old for this devout Christian to experience his first pangs of doubt probably accounts for why it was so intense. It was a doubly novel experience for me: my first doubts and my first involuntarily sleepless night. A doozy I don’t hope to relive.
But now that I’ve slept some and my thoughts have settled, one could say in summary that not much has changed: I am simply less sure of all my Christian beliefs. Still, it’s strange to pray to a god you’re less sure exists. His hiddenness used to be a source of knowing laughter in prayer. Now it’s a bit more serious than that.
Anyway, I...
// read full article →When I restart my reading of Atheism and the Case Against Christ, I plan to actively take critical notes along the way. To fight back, as it were.
Scott: What would life be like without screens?
Carla: Buggy.
[pause]
Scott [slightly annoyed]: Could you just answer the question, please?
[pause]
Carla [gathering what he meant]: Well, we know what life would be like without screens. We didn’t have screens the first year of our marriage.
Scott: What did we DO?
Carla: We fought.
Carla: Are you ready for your [chickens] meeting tonight?
Scott: Yeah, it’s just a brainstorm and catch-up meeting.
Sullivan: Ketchup? Ketchup is for eggs. Ketchup? Ketchup is for eggs.
Scott [discussing trends in interior design] : Our culture…we highly prize…clean.
Carla: Yeah…it’s disgusting.
The wind and snow were whipping around my house like a SNOW-NADO!
— Sullivan in his weather journal for school
Mommy, I love music more than chocolate chips, more than cookies, and more than princesses and beautiful ponies.
— Éa on hearing Vanhal’s Double Bass Concerto in E flat major on WPSU in the car with Carla
Carla and I are both very happy today.
We’re in the groove, so to speak. I remained calm and focused the entire day at work. She enjoyed a lunch date at Panera with Éa during which she heard several other OCC moms complaining that they’re lonely and without close friends, which caused her to reflect that she is full of friends. I enjoyed a brisk walk in polar temperatures to and from lunch at Ethan’s house for forty-five minutes of conversation with the single friend of mine who is closest in outlook and makeup to me. Éa and I enjoyed me dancing with her in my arms during “25 or 6 to 4” and “Tusk.” Carla volunteered to clean up the sewage solids from the basement floor tomorrow morning.
About the worst thing you can say about today is that we finished up the coffee banana chocolate chip scones.
I could go on and on. O God, that we be very grateful.
The most significant thing to happen to me today was the realization by contrast that taking regular breaks and approaching work levelheadedly and results in better, more thorough work, especially when deadlines loom or demands careen my way. When I worked on the small version of the Visualforce contact form for the DiamondBack Direct pages today, as if Father Time himself was harrying me and as if urgency disallowed 5-minute breaks, my work was slower, sadder, and sloppier. When I calmed down, my work was higher-speed, happier, and haler.
(Please pardon the forced alliteration. I could scarcely resist.)
What’s more, you don’t learn anything when you hurry.
Hopefully I’m not just trying to be noble for my own sake.
Today was Salesforce migration day at DiamondBack. Lots of phone calls and IMs about what to do, at least an hour of screensharing with Jerry. Cuh-razy. But fun.
It also was a day when our wastewater line backed up to form a roughly 6’-diameter irregular puddle of in the basement, we suspect because the chemical “sponging” that S. Wimmer & Son gave our toilets—an act that should improve our quality of life by all but eliminating our frequent need to plunge the toilets (I broke the plunger today), along with embarrassment that comes with a toilet bowl hat has urine solids built up inside—probably loosened up a bunch of junk that got stuck in the trap just outside the house.
Carla and I got to poke around outside in search of the UAJA cleanout and our own trap, vent & cleanout. In 12°F weather on snow. Hence I thought Carla’s NPR find of ice music worth posting as well.
Remind them to be subject to rulers, to authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good deed, to malign no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing every consideration for all men. For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
— Titus 3:1-8
Methinks we cannot be qualified for salvation by our works, but we can be disqualified.
I’m tired. I didn’t enjoy learning Bach’s St. John Passion this evening at Choral Society rehearsal. I’ve been working hard on DiamondBack’s migration to Salesforce. I carry a slight dread of singing lessons. Why?
In brief, je me suis surmené. And I think my heart, having been dragged along for years now in my mind’s crusade for productivity, order, self-control, and a final end to absent-mindedness, is flagging. Or perhaps it has been flagging a long while before this, but I hadn’t enough self-awareness to notice.
God, Your word to me about how to handle the human heart from Scripture is, I think, another monument along this now 16-month-long, post-Fiddler journey into letting my heart come alive. Thank You. And please keep going.
Carla drew the above Mr. Funny collaboratively with the kids. We all thought it hilarious.
Alas, the rest of my day was tiring. At DiamondBack, I’m working on hooking up our contact-us forms to Salesforce via something they call “Visualforce.” And at home, I’m about three million miles away from finishing the Choral Society website.
Web development feels more and more like writing formal papers, the bane of my academic career.
But then, it is by definition always easier to enjoy the facile, isn’t it? Let’s face it: I just don’t like projects whose work isn’t like water falling down a sluice.
Carla: He looks like the beggar at the Beautiful Gate.
Éa: Who?
Scott: One of the people Jesus healed. One of many.
Éa: Killed?
Scott: HEALED.
Carla: And THAT. is why I don’t want our children to read Bible stories yet.
Perhaps the retributive justice by proxy understanding that I’ve inherited is only true for people who need it to be true. Some people, like Carla’s cousin Diana, are looking for their sins to be “paid for” in a karmic sense. Others, like the ancient Hebrews, sought a scapegoat upon whom they could lay their sin.
I don’t sense either of these needs myself. Not that I’m without sin. Rather, I see You, God, as perfectly able to forgive without having to make someone pay first. That’s what makes it hard for me to “understand the Atonement” as I’ve been saying recently. And it’s still hard for me to suss out what parts of the “traditional” view of the Atonement are merely my upbringing and what is Scripture.
My primary question is this: if penal substitution and guilt reassignment was merely an optional accessory to the Atonement, what (does the Bible say) was Jesus Himself trying to accomplish that could only be accomplished by being executed?
Perhaps forgiveness was not Your primary goal in Jesus’ execution?
We started dating the kids again. I took Éa to the Creamery, where we shared a vanilla cone. We then headed to Schlow Library for a storybooks, violins & pajamas event put on by four undergrads in the Downsborough Community Room.
(My five favorite ice cream flavors are currently Meyer Dairy Grape-Nut, Creamery Death by Chocolate, Turkey Hill All Natural Vanilla Bean, Meyer Black Raspberry, and Turkey Hill Mint Cookes ‘n Cream Frozen Yogurt.)
On a different, sadder subject, Rich Biever told me today in a reply to an email inquiry I sent him about his production of Les Misérables that he lost his job at the State Theatre and that LES MIS is therefore not happening.
It’s a disappointment to me, but a relief to Carla.
S. Wimmer & Son came over today to have a look at three problem areas in our plumbing: toilets that won’t flush, a kitchen sink drain outlet that’s busted, and a water heater that’s fritzy.
It turns out that “if it’s yellow, let it mellow” is a surefire way to stop your toilet from working. But with the modern chemistry available to plumbers, at least we won’t have to have two new toilets installed!
After the make-up concert for the snowed-out Choral Society Christmas concert, during the second half of which I had no high notes to speak of, Janet joined us for dinner at Harrison’s, where we continued our quest to eat at all the restaurants in College Township. All the food was tasty, but either the ambiance or the value leaves me wanting. I’m not sure which.
Further evidence that I just need do what I want to do: I felt lighthearted and happy when Carla and the kids returned from hanging out at Peters’ house and I was just wrapping up my Saturday to-do list.
By why should a list of tasks weigh on me so?
Anyway, we capped an evening of work on the Choral Society website and a watercolor portrait from a photo of Éa with the perfectly oneiric, rightly acclaimed, but not all that entertaining Un chien andalou. We’re nearing the end of the silent film era in our quest to watch our chronological way through the BFI Sight & Sound 2012 Critics’ Poll.
Without an interpreter, my workday with Alexander Amelchev and his family visiting would have been a drag. As it was, with our Svitlana Budzhak-Jones in tow, we had a great time touring the factory, eating lunch at Retro Eatery in Philipsburg, playing at Discovery Space, and eating again at Happy Valley Brewing.
At the risk of sounding like a monster, I must report that today I lashed out in anger without warning at Sullivan by throwing his flying paper dragon hard at his upper chest after he flew it past my face a few times while I was trying to master parts of the above Choral Society piece.
He was astonished and on the verge of tears. Thankfully, I realized my error immediately, apologized quickly and profusely, and embraced him. He forgave me without hesitation.
In the end, it’ll be a good example to him of how to deal with sin. But aie, that look on his face.
I’ve got to get back to rehearsing when no one is around.
Carla was sworn in as a councilwoman today. I am proud. I only wish I wasn’t in a sprint toward completion of the State College Choral Society website so I could celebrate with her more appropriately. As it was, she walked in from the (very) cold night, all smiles and beautiful, thinking she did great (because she did). And I was tracking with her and happy for her for about five minutes before I begged off so I could get back to website work. Sigh.