O Lord, by these things men live,
And in all these is the life of my spirit;
O restore me to health and let me live!
Lo, for my own welfare I had great bitterness;
It is You who has kept my soul from the pit of nothingness,
For You have cast all my sins behind Your back.
For Sheol cannot thank You,
Death cannot praise You;
Those who go down to the pit cannot hope for Your faithfulness.
It is the living who give thanks to You, as I do today;
A father tells his sons about Your faithfulness.
The Lord will surely save me;
So we will play my songs on stringed instruments
All the days of our life at the house of the Lord.
— Hezekiah, in Isaiah 38:16-20
I was touched by John Piper tweeting verse seventeen while I was doing nothing on the PestWorld show floor. What Hezekiah says about death, I could say about doubt.
the Tower of Terror, which as a virtual brush with death was probably good for my anxious heart
Rock n Roll Coaster, a fast-start roller coaster that I was terrified of at the beginning but loved after it began, as usual.
a beautiful voice message from Carla and the kids telling me they love me.
an often goofy but somehow touching The Great Movie Ride. It may have been the glimpse of George Bailey being embraced by his children during a rapid-fire montage at the end of the ride.
Today I prayed for Todd, the young man at 535 Auto in Orlando who plugged my tire. The muscles controlling his right eye don’t work very well, rendering him virtually blind there since his birth. I handed him my business card and asked him to call me if anything happens.
I’ve seen all four, but only have the first three. I will be getting the Holy Ghost one on October 26th when they show it at the EastGate Philly Service. How’s your trip going?
me:
I ask about the movies for a specific reason: For the first time in my life, I have experienced religious doubt. It’s been acute, soul-threatening, and sleep-stealing. I think the momentum of my soul is in the right direction, but I’m certainly not out of the woods yet.
I’ll be traveling home solo much of the afternoon/evening Friday and morning/afternoon Saturday. Would you free for a longer phone chat sometime in those time windows?
Other than my doubt, we’ve had a great trip. The kids and Carla just touched down at BWI on their way home about an hour ago. Sullivan was apparently more excited about riding the airport tram, which was some kind of maglev or at least monorail, than he...
Last night was another sleepless one. And this time, I mostly kept the doubt and rumination at bay. It was a residual anxiety—that I still feel a bit sometimes even now—zapping my heart and traveling southward toward my bowels that kept me awake.
Whether He is a figment or not, I would be foolish to abandon God when He has been so good to me over the past twenty-five years. He has “worked” for me, so to speak. Why would I shun such a felicitous lodestar in the name of intellectual coherence? That would be to elevate reason above God, or at least to put Reason above pragmatism. I’d rather stick with What works.
For perhaps the first time in my life, it feels like a metaphor like this might apply to me. Father, it is my prayer that my recent acute affliction of metaphysical doubt about You make me kintsukuroi.
I could either let the unanswerable theological questions win and spend the next five to ten years in likely miserable reorganization of my entire thought life, or I could settle for mystery.
This one shouldn’t be so hard. When did intellectual coherence become so important to me?
Religious doubt is beginning to be one of those things I need to write a long, well-considered entry about to help organize my thoughts for my own sake and for posterity.
In the absence of having made time to do so, here are another few bits:
The whole struggle comes down to this: Plausibility structures are very powerful. I can be thrown just by hearing an articulate person say he doesn’t believe in God. It has come to the point where I have considered and Carla has independently suggested we not get together for a sleepover with the Lundins again anytime soon.
I am now faced with two competing accounts: there is a God, and there isn’t. The latter hypothesis provides automatic resolution to all the heavy philosophical problems posed by theism. Want a satisfying end to your theodical questions? Just stop believing in God!
But the atheistic account also offers little in the way of explaining most of the supernatural phenomena I’m familiar with.
It is good to remember, especially with the specter of doubt still haunting my soul, that cogitation is terribly inefficient after bedtime. When tempted to mull in bed, don’t.
Have a philosophical problem? You’re not going to solve it lying in bed. So don’t try. Stuff it and go to sleep.
Not that I experienced this last night or anytime recently. But I might again someday soon.
Understanding creation as a war zone, with God having delegated to us the authority to fight, helps greatly to steel one’s faith and motivate one toward good works.
It’s too late to journal this in any detail, but suffice it to say for now that I’ve embraced that suffering and death is a part of everyone’s life. That’ll make me less fearful of death myself, less fearful for what my children will think in the wake of deaths and suffering around them, and more willing to take the risk of becoming a foster dad. Desiring God’s take on Romans 8 helps here. As does the whole Bible, which never once tells the saints they won’t suffer. It assumes suffering, and it assumes it as something to fight against, but also a backwards blessing as well, capable of creating much good character in someone.
This realization is a prayer answer to this morning’s prayer.
Carla: Sullivan, you have to take a shower. I don’t want to hear any more whining about it. Get in there. Sullivan [walking away into the bathroom]: Aw, maaan! Fuck. Fuck fuck. Carla: Sullivan, what did you just say? Sullivan: Haha! I didn’t want to say “shucks” so I disguised it by saying “puck”—or no wait: “fuck.” Yeah, that was it.
Hearing of some Christian acquaintances’ divorce today at church rattled me, especially after extended exposure to my unbelieving friends at last night’s family sleepover with them. I cried today in the sunroom to Carla that their divorce makes me ask, “What difference does Jesus make?” I mean, if the Gospel is not much more than “Jesus is God’s son, therefore God is like Jesus, whom He made king of the universe. And He promises some set of humanity the gift of eternal life,” then it’s still pretty good news, but my internal gospel has always included “glory to glory” and the effect eternal life has on us now. If there is no such thing and, say, the divorce rate among believing Christians is the same as it is among unbelievers, then I grieve the loss of what I thought was a piece of the Good News.
Now, Nas rapped “life’s a bitch and then you die.” And while I disagree with coda of his rhyme (“that’s why we get high”), it comforts me in the face of the above in the same way...
I often put my hand over my heart when You and I go for strolls these days. I hope that means I love You, and not merely that I’ve adopted an affectation of loving You.
And you could always say: Well, I could have given that money to the missionary. And that is true. Every ice cream cone you buy you could have been sent to somewhere else. But I am thinking: Would you have? Has it gotten in the way of heartfelt calling to do a good thing?
The most significant thing today, other than the pumpkin carving all four of did in the kitchen while listening to a Béla Fleck collab folk album, photos of which I’m sure will be taken, is that I am concerned, although not to the point of taking any action, that I am overly distracted from Your kingdom, Lord, by nifty information tools. Today I updated f.lux, set up Day One to have two journal files, one for my journal and one for the record of days, relatedly cleared my Dropbox account, and got invited by the folks who build Remember the Milk to test out their upcoming overhaul. I got mildly excited about each. Is that OK?
I remind myself how much richer a reading experience is when it is read aloud. I missed Ahab’s boat in Moby Dick; I’m not going to miss Licona’s resurrection train.
Esprit d’escalier after a Spring-Creek-Park conversation about a friend’s experience with You, God, since a conference at Life Center back in February:
“Friend, I realize in retrospect that the reason for my muted reaction to your account of what God has done for you this past year was not jealousy or my own lack of similar experience: It was simply that what you were telling me was news Ethan has been sharing with me repeatedly since you encountered God so powerfully last February. I do remember rejoicing when I first heard the news. I praise God for it.
“It’s true that I don’t know what to say when speaking directly with someone describing an experience such as yours, because it’s true that I haven’t had much in the way of similar experience. But then, my heart is filled with peace and joy and light and has been—increasingly so—since my adolescence. Just because I’m not effervescent about Christ doesn’t mean I don’t love Him. I do always want to love Him with more of me, but I don’t...
