How I Changed My Mind

My change in perspective has come about in several ways.  The first step was in realizing that the doctrine of "inerrancy" that I had been taught and embraced for much of my Christian journey was basically wrong. The aftershocks of that still rumble through me every once in a while. I had become so used to looking at The Bible as a singular "Word of God" in which every word, every story, and every principle had been handed down through perfect, divine revelation that when I began to poke at the concept a little and noticed it crumbling under pressure I was distraught.

When I was younger, I attended a Christian University. I took several religion courses, some as requirements, and some for my own personal interest. I probably would have majored in Religion if I had belonged to a denomination in which women were valued in leadership roles. However, I belonged to the SBC which has been, and continues to be, disproportionately obsessed with enforcing traditional gender roles in the Church. As such, it seemed like getting a Religion degree would serve no purpose in that particular denomination for me. It would be useless as far as pursuing any official role in ministry. I wasn't really open to other denominations at that point, convinced that while the SBC wasn't perfect it was as close as possible to what I thought of at the time as "biblical" Christianity. 

I wasn't ignorant of New Testament studies, or even the knowledge that the compilation of the Canon was not as straightforward as it seemed. I had a divided mind on the issue without realizing it. That divided mind was reinforced and affirmed not only by my fellow students, but by most of my professors. I was blind to the fact that the ways in which we spoke about Scripture were contradictory. On the one hand, we would have great discussions about conflicts surrounding the formation of the Canon, or particular doctrines, noting the uncertainty of what it all meant. On the other hand, each Sunday would find most of us in very conservative churches affirming that Scripture was the "Word of God" in that mystical, magical way that imported great meaning into every verse we read.

Some of my professors were also ministers in local churches who, without a doubt, taught their congregations the doctrine of inerrancy. I didn't think it at all unusual.

The two prongs undergirding inerrancy, without which it can't stand, are the beliefs that everything that happens in history happens by God's purposeful, sovereign will, and secondly that the writers of Scripture were somehow more holy and peculiar in their relationship with God, passing along insights which were given only to a very elite group of people. Without belief in those two ideas, inerrancy cannot hold up.

I've recently connected the first idea to Calvinism, finally understanding the ways in which it interacts with that strain of Christianity. It is no coincidence that Calvinists and the doctrine of inerrancy are so interlocked. It's hard to tell which came first; the belief in inerrancy causing the formation of Calvinist theology, or the idea of God's far-reaching, sovereign, active control of every aspect of the Universe causing a belief in inerrancy. Because the Church assembled these texts, it must be God's will that The Bible we have is the one we were meant to have and has been carefully inspired and preserved by God. In other words, it happened in a particular way, so God must have willed it to happen that way because nothing happens, in this view, that God hasn't willed to happen.

Is that clear as mud?

If you're a Calvinist, then you have no problems that can't eventually be solved through this circular logic. I don't mean to sound uncharitable, because to be truthful I can't find any belief system which doesn't at some level have circular, self-validating logic. We can't know all things, so any comprehensive opinion on the matter will always have some basic presuppositions guiding it. Some presuppositions are simply more sweeping in scale than others.

Now I have long glanced down my nose at Calvinism ever since my freshman year in college when one of my new friends explained that her pastor taught that Christ didn't die for everyone's sins, but only for those whom he chose beforehand. Everyone else was just plain out of luck and better bring some marshmallows to roast during their long stay in Hell. I was outraged, aghast, revolted, and convinced that this was the worst heresy I had ever heard of. Slowly, I began to realize that not only did this particular friend believe this, but so did many other people, including some of the professors I knew. There were variations in how strongly individuals held to TULIP(only follow that link if you're up to tasting some strong Calvinist Kool-Aid), some expressed a weak assent, while others wholeheartedly viewed it as the "theory of everything" making sense of the Cosmos for us lowly humans.

I was young and earnest in my faith. While never completely reconciling myself to Calvinism, I did begin incorporating some of its theology into my view of God. I was proving the principle that humans, despite their best intentions to be objective, are notoriously easily influenced through time, repetition, and the appearance of authority. Because pastors and professors were communicating these concepts, they must be at least partly true...right? 

To concede that they were completely wrong would have shaken my faith to its core. I wasn't at a mature enough age to handle that kind of dissonance and keep any shred of belief intact. It was all or nothing. To believe that the people who were teaching me were gravely mistaken would have called into question any trust I might have had that I  knew anything about God, or that my experiences with Him had any merit to them.

So what changed?

Well, I could never get around the Calvinist version of God's Sovereignty and the horrific tragedies throughout history. There are really only two ways to reconcile them.  One way is to dispassionately declare that God willed even the most terrible things to happen because he had some higher purpose, or just because he wanted to. He has some master plan going on and even The Holocaust was a part of that plan.  Another way is to consider that much of what transpires on this blue planet is in no way connected to God's divine will. Evil is perpetuated by people who make evil choices. Not everything that happens occurs on the basis of God's active choosing.

I could never, in any way, make God the author of Evil in the way that Calvinism does. Calvinists will say that's not what Calvinism teaches, going to great lengths and producing voluminous works to try and redefine very basic ideas of good and evil and causes in order to portray God as both Sovereign and guiltless of evil.

It doesn't matter how many words are used to do this. Even my 9 and 7 year old children would be able to see through that kind of reasoning in a few minutes....see my last post for more evidence of that. (As an aside, I think it's funny that people always tell us to "be as little children" when we question things, implying that children readily believe whatever they are told.  My experience with children is that they are the most severe critics and detectors of BS....hardly unquestioning drones.  They naturally poke and prod at most everything they are told.)

If God doesn't cause everything to happen...if circumstances aren't the way they are because God caused them to be...if events happen in history which aren't God's will....then on what basis can we declare Divine intervention in the compilation of the Canon? It doesn't mean that God couldn't have intervened and caused the Church to assemble this particular set of Scriptures. It doesn't mean that God couldn't have inerrantly inspired the biblical writers. However, it does mean we can't appeal to the logic of " it happened in this way, so it must have been by God's will."

So, if you're not fully Calvinist in scope, you can't rely on that presupposition to support inerrancy.

I'll work on another post about the second prong of upholding inerrancy next.

Great Expectations

While chatting with a friend and her husband in the middle of Chuck E. Cheese, children racing by to the sounds of 100 video games bleeping and whirring, her husband asked if she had told me that her father had recently become an atheist. This not being the usual content of a Chuck E. Cheese conversation, it took me a minute to process that before they began their story.

Apparently, despite having attended church all his life and even avidly studying his Bible for many years....he has recently, and without much warning, decided that he no longer believes anything. Not a single speck of what he used to believe.  He has been writing e-mails to all of his friends and family members, desperate to convince them of their religious folly. He has become an atheist evangelist--his own self-description.

The only reason he gives for his sudden change of heart is the existence of so much suffering in the world.

There wasn't much for me to say to my friend.  I said I was sorry and hoped that, maybe after some time had passed, her father would become slightly less gung-ho in his approach.  What could I say to her?  As a Christian, it's a devastating and bewildering blow to her and to the image she had of her father.

One of the things her father told her was that he was happier than he had ever been.  He didn't worry about things anymore. I understood what he meant, and wondered if it might have something to do with his attraction to atheism in the first place.  If God is out of the equation, the world can still be an evil, awful place, but at least we wouldn't be pressed to find some noble, God-inspired reason for it.

When DH and I were first married, I had a certain narrative in my head about our relationship and how God had brought us together.  I truly believed that there were very specific reasons that we had found each other. These reasons were quite spiritualized and heady. They made me feel as if I was on the right track with my life and that I knew exactly what it meant to know God's will.

Fast forward a couple years.  I realized that I had been dead wrong.  The story in my head did not match up with reality. This is not an indictment of DH, or me, or our marriage.  We are quite happy and usually work through our marital issues in a relatively healthy way. However, when trouble hit us early in our marriage, it was a double blow to me.  Not only was I having to struggle with the normal marital strains of the newly married, but I also had to come to terms with how off I had been in assigning specific meanings to our relationship.

It shook me to the core to realize that I could be so wrong about ideas of which I had been so certain. I began to question every decision associated with any trace of certainty similar to what I had experienced. Unsettling emotions washed over me.

The intersection of arbitrary expectations and reality lay at the crux of my crisis. I had constructed an unsustainable scenario from my assumptions about God and what it meant to follow Him. 

As I continued talking with my friend, I wondered whether her father had experienced a similar disappointment. When we are told that there is always a "reason for everything" that happens in life, we're put in the position of finding a reason for the most awful things. Inevitably, all our reasons regress back to God: 

God has decided to cause or allow A, B, or C in our lives.  A, B, or C in our lives causes a lot of pain and doesn't seem to have any bright side or purpose to it. We declare that it has a purpose, we just don't know what it is. 

After several years of trying to console ourselves that there is a purpose to A, B, or C, we begin to suspect that it really is purposeless.

Our disillusionment isn't based on the terrible things that happen, it's based on the idea that terrible things shouldn't happen. When they do happen, we have to resolve the dissonance caused by our misplaced expectations.

I have changed the way I look at my life.  I try to never fall back into assuming that there is a specific reason for circumstances in my life.  Instead, I try and think about how God would want me to respond to the circumstances I encounter...whatever they might be.

It's a subtle difference, but it has an enormous effect on how I see God, the world and myself. Releasing the need to determine the cause and meaning of every misfortune in life is freeing.

I'm curious if my friend's father had considered altering his view of God, rather than rejecting Him outright. 

Resurrection Sunday

This weekend we made an impromptu trip up to visit DH's parents. We had a great time, but came back late last night in order to make it to church this morning.  Having recently made the decision to commit to this church, we wanted to spend Easter morning there.

The church sits on a tract of land adjacent to a lazy, brown river. Every Easter they have an early morning service under the canopy of palm fronds, oak leaves and Spanish moss dripping from the branches overhead, swaying in the breeze off the river.  It was beautiful.

As I sat listening to the pastor reading from John and delivering his Easter message, I pondered all the themes I've been thinking about and which have begun to solidify within me over the last few months. 

I thought of the sermon that I always want to hear preached each Easter, but never seem to get. Some speakers get closer than others, but few have managed to mark Easter as the joyful occasion it should be.

And what is this Missing sermon?

Life.  New Creation. Transformation.  Hope.

These are the legacies of The Resurrection.

Jesus was not only our savior and redeemer, but our life-giver, the new pattern for those who believe.  God was not content to leave the world as it was.  He was not content to let so many perish in their sins.  He was not satisfied to allow all that He had made crumble under the weight of evil that man has wrought upon the earth.

Mankind, as wretched as it can be and often is, was too valuable to Him.

During Jesus' ministry, many of the miracles he performed were directly tied to regeneration and to sustaining life. Blind eyes were made to see.  Deformed limbs were made whole. Leprosy was healed. The dead were raised. God's creative, life-giving power was being poured out through Jesus as a testimony to his authority.  

Ultimately,  The Resurrection is a reminder that all life comes from God.  Not only does all life come from God, but it pleases Him to create and sustain life. 

Death and destruction are the antithesis of God. The consequences of our sin, and the evil we perpetrate upon the world, are actions that lead to death.  Though God's judgment is a very real thing, his love and desire for life has overcome it, for he takes no pleasure in death, and has no satisfaction in condemnation:

As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.  Ezekiel 33:11

His promise is eternal life; life uninterrupted by sin, evil, sickness, and death. He is remaking us.  He is transforming us.  Jesus' death and Resurrection has reoriented us away from death and destruction and toward God making us part of the new creation He is bringing to pass.

One day the seed of our faith will reap the fruit of God's promise. We will "be like him[Jesus]".  

The God of all that is, the only eternal Spirit with no beginning and no end, draws us to Himself.

Just as Jairus' daughter and Lazarus lay "sleeping" in the clasp of death, waiting only for Jesus to reawaken them, so we will one day wait for that voice to call us up out of death and into eternal life. 

That's good news worth sharing.

1 Corinthians 15

¹Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. ²By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

 ³For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, ⁵and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. ⁶After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. ⁷Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, ⁸and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

 ⁹For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. ¹⁰But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.¹¹Whether, then, it was I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.

The Resurrection of the Dead

 ¹²But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? ¹³If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. ¹⁴And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.¹⁵More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.¹⁶For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. ¹⁷And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. ¹⁸Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. ¹⁹If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

 ²⁰But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.²¹For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.²²For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. ²³But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. ²⁴Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. ²⁵For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. ²⁶The last enemy to be destroyed is death. ²⁷For he "has put everything under his feet." Now when it says that "everything" has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. ²⁸When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.

 ²⁹Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them? ³⁰And as for us, why do we endanger ourselves every hour? ³¹I die every day—I mean that, brothers—just as surely as I glory over you in Christ Jesus our Lord. ³²If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus for merely human reasons, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised, 

   "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." ³³Do not be misled: "Bad company corrupts good character." ³⁴Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God—I say this to your shame.

The Resurrection Body

 ³⁵But someone may ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?"³⁶How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. ³⁷When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. ³⁸But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. ³⁹All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. ⁴⁰There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. ⁴¹The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.

 ⁴²So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; ⁴³it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; ⁴⁴it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.

      If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. ⁴⁵So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. ⁴⁶The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. ⁴⁷The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. ⁴⁸As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. ⁴⁹And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.

 ⁵⁰I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. ⁵¹Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— ⁵²in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. ⁵³For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. ⁵⁴When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."  ⁵⁵"Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" ⁵⁶The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. ⁵⁷But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Peter's Mother-in-Law

There's a story in Luke 4:38-39 in which Jesus heals Peter's mother-in-law.

It's brief:

Jesus left the synagogue and went to the home of Simon. Now Simon's
mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked Jesus to help her.
So he bent over and rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up at once
and began to wait on them.

I've always been slightly irritated by this story. This woman has been sick for who knows how long, Jesus comes over, heals her, and then she gets up and starts taking care of everybody....waiting on company immediately after recovering.

It bristles against my feminist leanings.

Men.

Always expecting us to take care of them.

I understand Peter's mother-in-law, now.

I woke up today feeling the tide turning in my typical, week-long suffering from chemo. I was still physically weak, but I had a mental alertness and an energized will to get out of bed and do things....anything. It had been a restless night of achy joints and inconsistent sleep, but I knew the worst was over. Instead of laying in bed, waiting for DH to get up with the kids and get them ready for school, as he has done during my bad days, I sprung out of bed and decided to make pancakes for everyone.

I felt well enough to be of service to someone else. I had a desire to care for my family because I haven't been able to when I have been in the depths of side effects. I wanted to wait on them out of gratitude and love for them.

So.....I won't read about Peter's mother-in-law with a haughty sneer any longer.

I get it.

Fear-Based Theology

thinking more about the inerrancy thing..

One of the ideas that fuels a fundamentalist view of inerrancy is the fear of what will happen if people don't believe in inerrancy. If people don't believe the Bible is perfect in every way and circumstance, then what will hold the Christian faith together? How will we cling to Jesus if everything we know about Him comes from a tainted book? Won't people begin to slowly peel away all the theology we have, all the while reminding us that the Bible is not inerrant?

It's true. That can happen. First one doctrine is questioned and then another, and another, until what's left doesn't bear much resemblance to Christianity as it has been practiced for thousands of years. We're left with a bland pile of goo that really isn't good for anything.

It is false to say that not believing in inerrancy is equivalent to saying that the Bible is tainted or unreliable. A document can be completely truthful while having some errors in it. Reading an inventory for a regiment during the Civil War, and discovering that they claimed to have more artillery than they really did, in no way disproves that the regiment existed, fought in battle, and sustained casualties. It just means someone wrote down the wrong number or miscounted. W would consider it ridiculous for someone to base a conspiracy theory about the falsification of the Civil War on such a minor type of error. Yet, that is exactly how we treat Scripture. Fearing that those who don't affirm Christianity will use such types of errors to defame our faith, we come up with ways to protect it.

I understand the desire to cement what we believe into a perfectly preserved specimen, immovable and indestructible. It provides a comforting level of security to be able to say; "I don't understand it, but I believe it because I'm supposed to."

However, the solution is not to arbitrarily declare theological truth out of a fear of what might happen if we don't formulate a pre-emptive doctrine. That's horrible methodology for theology and for life in general.

That sort of thinking is what makes Christian parents pull their kids out of school and keep them at home--a fear about what could happen in the public system dictates the choice, not a confidence or faith in God's ability to move in the lives of our kids and their classmates and teachers. It leads Christians to push for abstinence-only sex education even in the face of evidence that it doesn't work. The fear of what teenagers might do if they know too much about sex trumps the knowledge that telling kids not to have sex, and giving them very valid reasons for why they shouldn't have sex, will not really stop many of them from doing it anyway.

But, we're afraid. We're afraid that if we don't perfectly control the way things are said and interpreted, be it about the inerrancy of Scripture or the social lives of our children, then everything will fall part and disaster will befall us all. So we construct rules, paradigms, and explanations to hide behind and give us reasons for our actions. We judge those who don't affirm those same paradigms and explanations very harshly because of their dangerous thinking, once again inciting the spectre of fearful consequences in place of thoughtful discussion.

I used to feel guilty about everything, not overwhelmingly so, but just enough that I would feel a pang of "ooh...should I have said/thought/done that?" over relatively minor things. I used to think that was the Holy Spirit telling me where I'd gone wrong, and it surely was sometimes. One day I realized that it was fear frequently poking at me--fear that I was less than what I should be, fear that I was disappointing to God, fear that if I didn't perfectly follow through in every way that I'd be just scraping by as far as God was concerned. I know from experience that many Christians feel that way.

But we don't need to.

1 John 4:15-16a and 18

"If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in hi and he in God. And so we rely on the love God has for us.."

"There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love."

If we have faith in Jesus, then we are accepted by God. Constantly fearing His punishment and disapproval is an indicator that our faith needs some perfecting. Constantly fearing what will will happen if we don't do A, B, or C, as far as fighting in culture wars or developing theology, is another indicator that we're focused on controlling ourselves and those around us rather than transforming ourselves and those around us.

The point of the Gospels is not to create a checklist that we can keep to make us holy and acceptable in God's eyes, and to make us falsely secure in our right thinking. The point is to know we have been released from such checklists and welcomed into God's kingdom.

The transformation comes from the inside out, not from the outward constraints inward.

The Damage We Do To Each Other

"We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us."

--Samuel Johnson

I have been struggling with my faith for the last year or so. That is not to say that I am struggling with the concept of God or whether there actually is one. Instead, I have been struggling with what it means to be a follower of Christ. Which of the many beliefs that have been imparted to me over the years, through some sort of spiritual osmosis, do I actually believe...and why? I have never been one to accept part and parcel of whatever someone has told me to believe. I have always had the need to look over things for myself and come to my own conclusions, which sometimes were the same and sometimes drastically different from those around me.

When we left our church about two and a half years ago, it left me with a lot of collateral damage. Although there had been a tipping point, which ultimately made us make the painful decision to leave, things had been brewing for about 6-9 months previously. The church had started pursuing a doctrine of deliverance from demons that was disturbing on many levels. This particular doctrine held that all the Old Testament generational curses still had effect in the present world. One could be a Christian and simultaneously controlled by a demonic force of some sort. Careful to try and not run everybody out the doors in a mad stampede, the leadership pastor labeled this control "oppression", avoiding the highly charged term "possession".

The teaching went something like this--If you, or your parents/grandparents, had participated in some sort of occult activity, or habitual sin, then you had some sort of "hook" within you that could be used by Satan to "oppress" you and cause you to struggle with the same sin or let Satan have a portion of control within your life.

It was based on Exodus 20:4b--

"I the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me."

and Deuteronomy 5:9--

"You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me"

An intricate theology was built around these verses, replete with detailed descriptions of "soul ties", how to rid people of them, and what might happen when praying for people who were demonically "oppressed". Needless to say, such a dramatic turn in theology at a non-charismatic, biblically conservative, evangelical church caused enormous problems. It wasn't helped by the fact that the pastor had begun teaching these principles in a very under-the-radar kind of way, beginning with a small session on Sunday nights, and later beginning a prayer group on Wednesday nights to implement this new spiritual practice of praying for people's "deliverance". He was very careful in the way he introduced things to the congregation. Some would say he was being cautious, others would say manipulative was the right term.

I have come to believe the latter is closer to the truth.

Once the pastor had developed a core group, who had come to accept this new teaching, he was emboldened to begin introducing it in the normal Sunday morning service; even inviting the proponent and originator of this particular doctrine to use our church as a "school" for teaching lay leaders how to "deliver" others in their respective congregations. That was pretty much the beginning of the end as far as the health of the church went.

As the rest of the congregation became aware of the intricacies of the teaching being presented, several important questions began to arise.

1. Does the regeneration of a Christian break all claims that Satan has on an individual?

2. Is the individual Christian really at the mercy of the actions of their forefathers?

3. Is it true that committing some type of sin "opens the door" for Satanic influence and control in the life of the believer?

There were many more nuanced questions, but these were the biggies.

What made things worse was that the congregation had been covertly divided. In any church, there will always be members who disagree on doctrinal issues. Most of the time, they are not important in the big picture and there is room for a certain amount of freedom in the individual's life and spiritual bent. As long as members don't make it their mission to "convert" everybody into their identical way of believing, peace and diversity can be had. Of course, the essentials of Christianity must be held in common--Jesus as the Son of God and Savior, Sin, Forgiveness. A standard reading of the Apostles' Creed or even the Nicene Creed conveys the roots at the core of Christianity. Anything more detailed than that is usually up for grabs.

The pastor's decision to make this a new article of belief for the church, and any newly appointed elders, and to have certain ministries dominated by these questionable teachings had upset the balance of co-existence. Also, it is hard to argue against a teaching that states that believers can be controlled and influenced by demonic forces. Objecting to the teaching instantly places you in a category of a possibly "oppressed" individual being used to cause strife and division in God's Kingdom. Nothing like head games to cast doubt on other people, their motives, and their spiritual state--a very useful tool in the hands of someone pushing an agenda.

The problem with all of this was that by the time the teaching had wormed its way into the church, several couples/families who were devoted, godly, salt-of-the earth kind of people had fully embraced it. Their motives were pure. They were loving people. How do you look people you respect--and have come to know over the course of seven years--in the eye and say that they have bought into something that is not only wrong, but damaging to the church and to an individual's spiritual life? How do you pray with people who think you are less spiritual or demonically influenced because you haven't accepted the "truth" they believe in? How do you listen to a pastor who has begun to use the pulpit manipulatively, in one sermon comparing those who reject his new teaching to the people of Gerasenes who asked Jesus to leave when he healed some demon-possessed men.

You can't. You worry about what visitors who just walked into the church are thinking. You wonder how an elder board, half of which doesn't believe the teaching, can be persuaded to sign a statement that says that everything is hunky-dory. You wince as a member is asked to leave because he is a vocal opponent of the teaching. So, you make the painful decision to leave people you care about because you no longer feel comfortable inviting people to the church you attend. You walk out the door, your spirit torn asunder and bloody from the most disillusioning experience in your life. You lick your wounds.

The damage my faith has sustained has been extensive. It isn't based in my belief in God, or disappointment with my life. I do not falter when things go wrong, because I have no expectation that following Christ means that I will never suffer or never have obstacles to overcome. However, my faith in others' abilities to "hear from God" or "be led by the Holy Spirit" has taken a huge beating. I don't even completely trust myself and my own experiences at times. I look back at things I have believed or said and question which ones were "true" and which ones were merely some form of emotional rationalization.

It's been hard. There have been a few things I have flip-flopped on--decisions that sometimes seem providential, and at other times mere flukes. I have had to rethink what it means to be "inspired" and what the purpose of my experiential spiritual life is. I'm still uncovering and examining the layers within and without me.

I have come to the conclusion that the most damaging thing to most people's faith is not our relationship with God, but the relationship we have with other Christians.

Reading "The Dawkins Delusion" Introduction

In July, I read through Richard Dawkins The God Delusion. I did an initial post after the first three chapters and meant to continue to do more posts about it, but as usual, life had its own ideas.

There was actually quite a bit I had to say about the book, but it was hard to know where to start. There was just so much wrong with it that I couldn't find the right jumping off point. At the time that I received the book from the library, I put myself on the waiting list for The Dawkins Delusion, by Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicut McGrath. I knew it was a refutation of Dawkins' book, but the library wouldn't have it for months. I was curious to see what it would have to say.

I must say that when I read Dawkins, he quoted McGrath and a few other theologians in his book and I wasn't impressed. "Wow, if this is the response from the religious community, they are really daft, " I thought. I should have realized at the time that Dawkins would have portrayed them in the same way he portrayed many of his arguments; out of context, with great liberty of interpretation and not much scholarship.

So much of his writing seems so logical, but if you peel back even the tiniest layer, the cracks begin to appear. For instance, in part of the book Dawkins goes into a lengthy explanation of memes, the ideas or groups of ideas or information that are culturally passed from one generation to the next. He examines this theory in great detail, postulating that memes reproduce in the same way that genes in natural selection work. It sounds very intriguing and plausible in some ways. To back up his arguments about this he quotes several people who have advanced this theory of memes and written books about it.

I found it all a little confusing because he deals with this theory of memes with such certainty. Here was an entire field that I had hardly heard of and all of these people who spent a great deal of time analyzing it. Where had I been, scientifically speaking?

It wasn't until I decided to learn more about what memes were and the "science" behind this theory that I discovered the very concept of memes had been originated by Dawkins himself many years before; a fact that he conveniently does not mention in The God Delusion.

Why does it matter?

It matters because if you are going to quote people who happen to be favorable to a view that you, yourself, have created, it is hardly objective opinion and evidence. It's one thing to say, "I have this idea and here are others who agree with me," and quite another to imply that there is a strong theory that happens to confirm your conclusions and is independent of yourself. I think it's all a little hinky.


I received The Dawkins Delusion today. It is a slim book. I wasn't sure what I would find in its pages because of the unfavorable view I had of McGrath from the few references to him in Dawkins' work. I haven't read anything other than the introduction so far, but I already have found myself saying "Yes!...Exactly!...that is SO true!"

My favorite quote as of this moment:

"...Dawkins simply offers the atheist equivalent of slick hellfire preaching, substituting turbocharged rhetoric and highly selective manipulation of facts for careful, evidence based thinking. Curiously there is surprisingly little scientific analysis in The God Delusion. There's a lot of pseudoscientific speculation, linked with wider cultural criticisms of religion, mostly borrowed from older atheist writings." (page 11--The Dawkins Delusion)

I hope the rest of the book follows suit in laying out the ways in which Dawkins' work falls short.
I obviously misjudged McGrath.

More Later.

There are times when you wish you could open up your skull, pluck out a few thoughts and directly fuse them to another person's mind. It seems the only way to really convey the feeling and thoughts that words only weakly express. Such was my desire tonight as I read a blog that I frequently visit; the blog of a Christian young woman who has been strugggling with her faith for some time.

I want to tell her it's OK.

I want to tell her that God has not abandoned and will not abandon her.

I want to express that emotions do not convey God's presence, and often mislead us in the dark night, as we lay awake pondering the desolate moments of our souls.

I want to tell her to run from any church that is more about pointing out all the ways we don't measure up and find a place where the people understand God's love in a real way, not while thinking "I say God loves everybody, but I don't really believe it, because all I ever hear about are the ways that I am a disappointment to Him."

My heart hurts for her.

I want to express God's truth to her without resorting to dusty cliches that seem to have lost any power and effectiveness as a result of their thoughtless and constant use.

I want to giver her hope and encouragement.

I am a stranger to her...a commenter who pops in from time to time, but I feel for her. She is my sister in Christ, though she may not feel it. I pray for her as if I knew her. May God grant her peace, rest and revelation

Simple, Complicated, Sometimes Unanswerable

Internet Monk wrote a post about dying with unconfessed sin, what it means to many Christians, and how the typical person answers questions about it. I left a comment, not specifically about the issue, but in response to his reply about salvation being "by simple faith alone in Jesus Christ alone". I don't disagree with that statement. I do think that the further along one goes in their faith journey, the more one tries to fully understand the "simple" answers to the big questions.

People are uncomfortable with the concept of unconfessed sin partly because some denominations teach that faith plus works is what you gets you through Heaven's gates--saying you believe counts for nothing if you live like a heathen. For others it's a question of reconciling the act of God's work through Jesus' death and resurrection, with verses that warn of God's judgment, making our election sure, and warning about not falling away. Those are uncomfortable verses to read. Throw in a parable about goats and sheep or Jesus telling others they never knew Him, and you have yourself some nice little conundrums to work through.

Of course, there are lots of people and preachers who like to give out the canned, pat answers they learned in Seminary or from the church they attended in junior high in response to someone's heartfelt wondering. That can be very frustrating. It's along the lines of the "just pray more" answer, or the "don't think about it" answer. It may work for a few months, but it will inevitably pop up again as you try to make sense of your own life and the experiences you have in the church and in the world.

Truth has to be felt and understood at the core of your being before you'll ever really be comfortable with it. It has to make sense to us. That doesn't mean that we can reshape God's truth to suit us, but it does mean that we can't rely on someone else's confident answer. We have to earn that confidence ourselves by wrestling through what the Scriptures mean, how we incorporate them into our lives, and the impact it has upon our spirits.

Maybe I'll take a crack at elaborating on some of those things sometime this week.

Distrusting God

I am a distrustful person.

I try not to let people catch on to this cynical trait that lurks within me, lest I offend their sensibilities. I'm not mean or rude about it, but you can be sure I am secretly evaluating your trustworthiness as a person, especially if you have some sort of control or influence in my life. You're going to interact with my kids? Evaluation mode kicks into high gear. I'm going to join your church? Not until I have attended for many months and seen it from the inside out. You have a great investment opportunity for me? Let's see what Google has to say about you and your company.

Being suspicious has served me well at times. We live in a messed-up world in which people will shake your hand, reassure you, and blatantly lie to your face. A little distrust can go a long way in avoiding the most obvious charlatans.

Secretly, I wish I was a little less apprehensive about people and their motives. It's not easy always looking for the chink in the armor of others, especially if you find it. I would rather be suspicious and discover I am wrong, having to throw out my cynicism, than actually be right.

While discussing this with a friend, I remarked how innocent she was. She was kind, open, and gentle in her heart, seemingly non-judgemental about things. I meant it as a compliment, tinged with longing to possess some of those qualities. She took it as an insult. She didn't express her annoyance in any outward way, but the long hesitation, and the halting tone in her voice as she asked me what I meant, was clue enough. She had taken my description of innocence and trust as meaning simple and unsophisticated.

The suspicion that serves me so well in the everyday world does nothing for my spiritual life. In fact, it is antithetical to true faith in God.

In our earthly realm, we have good reason to mistrust our fellow wanderers. People can be a miserable lot; weak, selfish, and disloyal. Sifting through my own motivations has often exposed things I would rather bury under the sandy soil, hoping they would stay there like some forgotten pirate's treasure. It's disconcerting to realize that not only is the rest of the world off-kilter, but so are you.

Born into this crooked, impure world, we struggle with our hidden disability, a crippling skepticism about the goodness of others. Without intent, we are spiritually hindered by our handicap when approaching God. It seems, that after expressing belief in the forgiveness of our sins through Jesus, that we should be able to trust God as having only good things in store for us. Yet, over and over again some us go back to the well of wondering about his motivations. Does He really care about me, as an individual, and not as some tiny cog in the great churning machine of life? Does the evil that proliferates here on this planet bother Him? Why doesn't He do something about it already? We give more weight to the things before our eyes than to the character of our Creator.

It is Eve's first sin. Disbelief and distrust of what God said and of His very character.

You can't have faith and trust in a dubious God. Not only is it insulting to Him, but it is counterproductive to our spiritual life. Many sins and traps along our path begin with false beliefs about the nature of God. Thinking Him vindictive produces fear. Thinking Him uncaring produces apathy. Thinking Him ineffective and weak produces doubt.

Hebrews 11:6

"And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him."

We are to believe not merely in His existence, but in His goodness. We must believe that He isn't a con man selling us a little snake oil, marketed as the Balm of Gilead, sure to cure our aches and pains for only $19.95. Assenting to His existence is great, but without belief in his goodness the company we keep is less than desirable:

James 2:19

You believe there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that--and shudder.

It's hard sometimes, isn't it? When things go awry and we're scraping through our emotions to find the faith that can so easily flit away from our grasp, trusting in God's ultimate goodness and purity can seem daunting. However, it is at these moments that we need to align our thinking to the reliability and unchanging nature of God. He is good. Always. In every way. At every time. Without fail.

Chuck your suspicion and mistrust at the door. He really isn't out to get you.

God Is Not The President

I realized that a few months before my conversion.

Raindrops slid down the window, in a haphazard journey to the windowsill, as I contemplated The Meaning Of Life one day. It was cold and grey outside. I don't remember what was churning in my thoughts as that insight swept over me, but I remember it with great clarity.

Insights like these peppered the months before I came to Christ. They were laying the ground-work for the beginning of my faith. Startling moments of unbidden perception would break into my mind at the strangest moments. Looking back, I can pick them out, bright sunflowers in fields of grass, popping up above the green, shouting, "Look over here! Notice me!"

It seems self-evident now. Of course God is not the president. We didn't get to install Him in the Heavenlies with a two-thirds vote, or even an electoral vote of 270. He just was. And is. And is to come.

And yet, I'm not sure that Americans apprehend this concept. Perhaps it's our rebellious, democratic nature. We have created a nation built on the principles of self-reliance, self-determination, and the pursuit of happiness. Making our image of God into a Sovereign King rubs us against the grain, bringing back visions of tea floating in the Boston Harbor, steeping in cold sea-water. We'd rather obliterate His rule over us by tossing our cargo away, than give him one penny of "taxation without representation." Never mind that we have a very good representative, that's for another post.

Much fist-shaking and shouting at the heavens is rooted in our spirits, scandalized by a lack of inclusion in the planning process. God can do as He pleases and we, poor saps that we are, have no recourse. He gets to do what He wants and we have to go along one way or the other.

Exactly.

Rebelling against such a repugnant idea, says less about God and more about us. First, it lays bare our fear of God's control of the Universe. We don't want to lack control, because then we are helpless to defend ourselves. Bad things might happen--the secret worry of everyone. Second, it implies that we would make much better choices than this Creator who's always butting into our business. He expects too much of us and makes unreasonable demands upon us, like some crazy, tyrant king sending his subject on a quest for some rose, that only blooms at midnight, on the sixth day of spring, at the top of a treacherous mountain in some distant land, 2,000 miles away. Third, it reveals our fear of being unimportant. If God doesn't need or want my input, then I must be like a fly buzzing about His head; small, irrelevant, and slightly annoying.

Not exactly.

Accepting God as Supreme Ruler, and not as Guy-Who-Least-Irritated-Us-And-Got-Our-Vote, aka The President, is not the fearful prospect it might seem. It hinges on the simple but profound acknowledgement of God's goodness, His unchanging nature of purity. It is a necessary component of our faith; one that impacts us in every aspect of our spiritual life.

to be continued tomorrow