Okay, Now What?

(Picture found at Anthropinos)

So now that I've published my first eBook, In Praise of the Doubting Thomas, there's only one question left to ask: "Now what?"

Should I start another project, or just rest for a bit?

True, I have a bunch of half-finished eBook projects taking room in my flash drive, including that memoir I've only been writing for four years! I have so many ideas in my head that I kinda want to work on them all at once. I don't even feel right unless I'm working on a book project. I feel like if I'm not working on a book project, then I'm wasting daylight.

But on the other hand, it would be nice to just relax a little bit. Maybe I can actually focus more on important things like . . . oh, I don't know . . . my relationship with Sean? Work? College? That "real life" thing everyone keeps talking about?

I actually had a major depressive episode a few weeks ago trying to juggle work, college, and In Praise of the Doubting Thomas all at once. I don't want to get into the details, but it was bad. Really bad! But thanks to the new meds I'm taking, I think I can handle pressure better now.

For now I'll work on the few ideas I have a little bit at a time. No pressure to upload it on Smashwords at a specific date. And if things get too crazy, I'll take a break.

If you're a writer, do you immediately want to start another project when you're finished with one project? How do you handle all the ideas in your head?

The Reformulating Church

Even though I belong to the church that bears his name, I have a love/hate relationship with Martin Luther. Being a chronic legalist, his story of discovering God’s grace challenges my whole notion that I have to somehow ‘earn’ God’s love. But on the other hand, Luther’s anti-Semitism kinda ruins the whole grace thing. Love him or hate him, Luther is apart of the church’s history, so I try to learn from both his positive and negative aspects.

Another negative connotation to the Reformation is how a lot of Calvinists and discernment bloggers talk about the Reformation. If you didn’t know anything about the Reformation before reading either Mark Driscoll or John Piper, you would assume that the Reformation was when Martin Luther set up a laundry list of narrowly-defined doctrines in order to protect the church from liberalism. But that’s not what happened at all. During the early sixteenth century, the Catholic Church was selling indulgences, which were little pieces of paper you could buy that told you that you are saved. Basically it means buying your way to Heaven. That’s why Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg church, to protest against the use of indulgences.

One of the principals of reformed theology is semper reformans, semper reformanda: “the church is always reformed and always reforming.”[1] A lot of Reformed Christians remember the first and forget the last. The church is like any species; it has to evolve and adapt in order to survive. And part of that evolutionary process involves rethinking our doctrines.

In his book Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?, Brian McLaren wonders if “we are on the verge of the Great Reformulation.”[2] For McLaren, the problem isn’t with the doctrines themselves, but the way we understand the doctrines. For example, most Christians understand the doctrine of original sin like this: ever since Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, every human being hates God from birth, and deserves nothing but Hell. Our sin was so terrible that God had to pour out God’s entire wrath onto the Son, Jesus, so only the elected that believe in Jesus can escape Hell and this cruel world.

Okay, so maybe I exaggerated a little bit, but you get the point.

McLaren sees things differently. He writes, “It might help to think in terms of copying a document or file: all sin today is a copy, an imitation, a replication of this original departure from the aboriginal goodness.”[3] So in other words, we keep repeating our ancestors’ mistakes—walking away from God—in a never-ending cycle. When Jesus died on the cross, he didn’t just give us a free ticket out of Hell; through the cross, Jesus frees us from the cycle of repeating our ancestors’ sin.

And it’s that kind of freedom that I think Luther had in mind. Freedom doesn’t come from getting all your doctrines in a row like ducks. According to Jurgen Moltmann, “Such a faith tries to protect its ‘most sacred things,’ God, Christ, doctrine and morality, because it is preyed upon by fear.”[4] In other words, this obsession with ‘doctrinal purity’ is nothing more than a reaction to a world of change and uncertainty, or what many conservative Christians consider to be ‘an evil generation.’ Unfortunately, by obsessing over doctrine, the Christian doctrines become a new form of legalism that separates ‘the good people’ from ‘the bad people.’

So maybe a Reformulating Church is a continuation of Luther’s original message: salvation by faith through grace alone.

What does a Reformulating Church look like to you?

1. http://americanvision.org/907/always-reformed-always-reforming/
2. Brian McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World (New York: Jericho Books, 2012), 157.
3. Ibid., 112.
4. Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1974), 19.

The Friday Five: 10/26/12

1. Sarah Moon dispels the myth that American women have it "so good." Excerpt:

Now, I have privilege. There are things that I do have “so good,” as a white, able-bodied, heterosexual American born into a middle-class family. I am not denying that. I am also not excusing or dismissing the abuse that goes on in other countries.

My point?

It’s happening here too. We Americans are not great saviors who have got it all together. Who have achieved a state of egalitarian nirvana and now can exercise the right to judge the temporal position of other countries (“They’re so backward OVER THERE.” “THAT country is stuck in the Middle Ages”)

2. Speaking of feminism, Suzannah Paul of the Smitten Word dispels myths about feminism.

3. Recent studies show that prayer and meditation stimulates the frontal lobes and language area in the brain. What's interesting is the same study shows that atheists don't show as much brain activity while thinking about God.

4. Biblical scholar and sci-fi geek James F. McGrath explores the religious allusions in the movie Prometheus.

5. And finally, Faith Forward interviews one of my favorite biblical scholars, Marcus Borg. Excerpt:

But to put it positively now, progressive Christianity takes very seriously that Christianity is about a two-fold transformation of ourselves as individuals, and of the humanly-created world which has most often been a world of domination, injustice and violence – not meaning primarily criminal violence – but the violence of warfare and so forth. So, progressive Christianity is passionate about transformation in the here and now, even as we recognize that that transformation is also long term, and not something that a generation can accomplish.

During the writing of In Praise of the Doubting Thomas, I re-read a lot of Borg's stuff, and he helped me sort things out.

I'm Jealous of Rachel Held Evans

It looks like our friend Rachel Held Evans is a rock star now! This past Monday she and her husband Dan were interviewed for The Today Show, and yesterday she announced on her Facebook that she's going to be on The View next week. And to think that it's been just four years since she signed with Zondervan for her first book, Evolving in Monkey Town! I'm really proud of Rachel. She's really grown in the past four years.

And yet, I have to make a confession . . .  I'm jealous of Rachel.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on Rachel. Far from it, she's awesome! I just kinda want to possibly live vicariously through her because my life kinda sucks in comparison.

Yes, I know, I finally published my first eBook (In Praise of the Doubting Thomas on Smashwords for just $1.99), so my life really isn't that sucky. And it's true, my life's been pretty good lately. I'm on some good anti-psychotic medication. Sean and I are still going strong. College isn't driving me bonkers right now. Life's good.

But there's always that part of me that thinks my life could be better. A LOT better! "If only I had this." "If only I had that." I guess that's one of the downfalls of being a 4 on the Enneagram; you're constantly hoping you were someone else.

Oh well, maybe someday I'll be famous on all the TV shows. I mean, Rachel had to start somewhere, right?

Besides, I don't really want to be on The View anyway. They talk over each other way too much.

The Official Playlist For "In Praise of the Doubting Thomas"

 
Most writers use outlines to map out their books. Me, I make playlists. In fact, sometimes I work on the playlist longer than the book! I think a great soundtrack can compliment a book just as much as a movie. Hey, it worked for The Perks of Being a Wallflower, right?

And since my first eBook is out now, I think it's only fitting to share the official In Praise of the Doubting Thomas playlist:

1. David Bazan – “Hard to Be”
2. Matthew Sweet – “Divine Intervention”
3. Karla Adolphe – “Flying Low”*
4. Lisa Gungor – “Jesus and John”*
5. Nick Drake – “Way to Blue”
6. Nirvana – “Jesus Doesn’t Want Me For a Sunbeam”
7. King Crimson – “I Talk to the Wind”*
8. Sara Groves – “Maybe There’s a Loving God”
9. Switchfoot – “Sooner or Later (Soren’s Song)”
10. Jars of Clay – “Fade to Grey”
11. Pedro the Lion – “The Fleecing”
12. The Restoration Project with Brian McLaren and Aaron Strumpel – “Atheist”
13. Chris Rice – “Smell the Color 9”
14. Nickel Creek – “Doubting Thomas”
15. Rich Mullins – “Hard to Get (Demo)”

You can listen to it here on Spotify. Or if you find these songs on Amazon by clicking the widget below.



(*These songs are not available on Spotify.)

In Praise of the Doubting Thomas - My First E-Book!

I am pleased to announce the arrival of my first eBook, In Praise of the Doubting Thomas: How to Doubt Without Losing Your Faith!

It's a semi-memoir about my struggles with doubt, especially after my friend Julie lost her daughter Cora. In the eBook I ask what it means to believe, and how can someone have faith in something that cannot be proven.

You can download it on Smashwords here. It's $1.99. You do have to set up an account at Smashwords, but the account is free.

Spread the word!

Made of Nature Stuff

I’m not a huge Richard Dawkins fan. I think he’s a brilliant biologist, and I applaud his efforts to increase science education. I’m also sure that if we ever had the chance to talk over coffee, we would have a good conversation. Yet I think he relies on the old “I’m right, you’re wrong, get used to it” mentality way too much. From what I’ve read from him and seen on YouTube, he tends to think that anyone who believes in any kind of higher power without any piece of objective truth is automatically an idiot.

Having said all that, though, I did read something of his years ago that I haven’t stopped thinking about since then.

While explaining evolution in his book The Magic of Reality, Dawkins writes:

Although we may lack the fossils to tell us exactly what our very ancient ancestors looked like, we are in no doubt at all that all living creatures are our cousins, and cousins of each other. And we also know which modern animals are close cousins of each other (like humans and chimpanzees, or rats and mice), and which are distant cousins of each other (like humans and cuckoos, or mice and alligators). How do we know? By systematically comparing them. Nowadays, the most powerful evidence comes from comparing their DNA. [1]

This may sound strange, but this reminds me of the creation account in Genesis chapter 2. Most people think the first two chapters of Genesis tell the same creation account, but they don’t. In the second chapter, man is the first living being God creates “from the soil of the ground” (7) to tend to all the plants of the Earth. The man is lonely, so God creates all of the animals out of the same ground Adam originally came from (19).

Of course, I don’t believe Genesis is a science book. I don’t mean to say that we all literally came from the ground. But I do find it interesting that both scientific fact and the creation allegory found in scripture both tell us that humans and animals are made of the same stuff. Think about that for a moment: we are more connected to animals and other human beings than we think.

But our interconnectedness doesn’t end with just DNA. According to astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson:

. . . the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool. That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe; we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us. [2]

So there you have it. To borrow a phrase from Carl Sagan, we are made of nature stuff. Our goal isn’t to “pass through Nature, beyond her,” in the words of CS Lewis. [3] We are nature.

So what does this mean? To me, it means two things: 1). We need to do a hell of a lot better job at taking care of the planet, and 2). We need to do a hell of a lot better job at loving each other. Going back to what I said earlier, Adam’s first job was to tend the Garden of Eden. So contrary to popular belief, this new ‘creation care’ movement isn’t all that new. We just got it wrong about the whole “dominion over the animals thing.” When scripture says we have dominion over the planet, it does not mean we have the freedom to abuse it. As Jonathan Merritt explains:

The Hebrew word for “rule over” or “dominion” literally means to exercise a given authority over something. This word can be used to describe priests executing their duties or shepherds taking care of their sheep but is most often used to refer to the power of kings over their subjects. [4]

Now that may not sound like much of an improvement, but let me explain. Throughout Scripture, the kings of Israel act more like caretakers than dictators. According to Merritt, “When an Israelite king abused his dominion—when he got greedy, oppressed the people, or enslaved his subjects—God would judge and punish him.”[5] Now I’m not saying God is going to strike you dead if you throw a recyclable item into the garbage can, but if we are called to be caretakers of the planet, and if abusive caretakers make God mad, how do you think God feels about the way we abuse Earth?

As far as loving each other, well, that should be obvious. If we all share star stuff and DNA, then that should automatically make us want to be more compassionate, right? We’re all connected. We’re all related. Why wouldn’t that make you want to take better care of your fellow human?

Alfred North Whitehead once said, “All actual entities are drops of experience, complex and interdependent.”[6] And science proves this. Now the question is, “What are you going to do now?”

1. Richard Dawkins, The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True (New York: Free Press, 2011), 50.
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtWB90bVUO8
3. C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses (New York: Harper Collins, 1949), 44.
4. Jonathan Merritt, Green Like God: Unlocking the Divine Plan for Our Planet (New York: Faith Words, 2010), 45.
5. Ibid.
6. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Free Press, 1979), 18.

The Friday Five: 10/19/12

1. Hemant Mehta of the Friendly Atheist dispels the myth that atheists hate being told, "Have a Blessed Day." No word yet on what atheists say during an orgasm.


2. Over at Huffington Post, Emily Timbol criticizes Timothy Kurek's new book The Cross in the Closet. Excerpt:

What's sad is that every interaction Timothy had during his year pretending was fake. The people he met thought he was something he was not. He was welcomed under false pre-tenses, acting like someone who understood the struggle that his LGBT friends faced. He did not. His heart might have been in the right place, and his intentions might have been pure, but what he leaves is a wake of people lied to. In this case, the ends don't justify the means. Especially not when the ends could have been reached without lying to anyone.

3. Shay Kearns asks what radical living looks like. (Spoilers: He's still trying to figure that one out, too.)

4. Matthew Paul Turner explains that the real reason why LifeWay Books won't carry Rachel Held Evans' new book isn't because she said the word "vagina:"

Another reason that we don’t like talking about is because Rachel has a vagina. Let me explain. Even before LifeWay read the first word of Rachel’s book, the fact that she is a female author, limited what those words were allowed to say and also to whom Rachel was allowed to say them to. Being a woman limits an author’s biblical platform according to LifeWay.

5.  And finally, Joy Bennett writes a guest post for Seth Haines dispelling the idea that Jesus will calm every storm in your life.

Let 'em In

(Picture from Craig T. Owens' blog.)

Last Friday I was driving through downtown Salisbury on my way back home from Sean's house when I saw my friend Daniella sitting on the curb outside of a pizza place. I swung my car around to the pizza place to say hello. She said she just got out of class at Salisbury University, and was waiting for a bus ride home. Out of the blue I blurted out, "Can I give you a ride?" (I'd given her rides before, so I knew where she lived.) She said, "Hell yeah!" and we drove off to Cambridge, which is where she lives.

During the 45 minute drive to her house, I told her how I had a bad depression spell last week. It got so bad that even cutting wasn't doing anything for me. I told Daniella that my problem is when I go through a depressive episode, I sugarcoat it the next time I see my psychologist. "Oh, that? Pfft, that was last week. I'm better now."

"Yeah, you need to open up to your psychologist," Daniella said. "She can't help you unless you open yourself up and find what exactly it is that's torturing you. You gotta let people in, man!"

Let people in. I can't think of anything scarier than those three words.

I'm scared because opening myself up FUCKING HURTS! I'm so sensitive inside that if I let someone into my heart, I'm afraid they'll muck about and make the pain worse. Or worse, I'll find something buried deep inside that I don't want to face, something so terrible that it would drive me crazy . . . literally!

But being that I've been therapy on and off again since I was 12 and I'm still struggling with self-injury, I'm obviously not doing something right! I don't just need a mental attitude adjustment. I have a sickness. If I don't find out what's causing this sickness, then I can't get better.

So I guess I have to do Paul McCartney a favor and let 'em in.

Reason to Doubt

(Picture from The Daily Bible Plan.)

The follow blog post is an excerpt from my upcoming eBook In Praise of the Doubting Thomas: How to Doubt Without Losing Your Faith. It should be out within the next couple of weeks.

Coming of age in the evangelical church, I was taught that the history of Christianity goes something like this: God wrote the Bible, the Catholics came along and ruined things, Luther and Calvin saved the day, the end. The truth is actually a lot more complicated than that. There’s a whole two thousand year history that’s full of different doctrines, ideas, theologies, and schisms that have shaped the religion throughout the years.

Let’s take, for example, the virgin conception. Only two of the gospels mention anything about Jesus’ birth–Matthew and Luke–and none of the New Testament books written prior to Matthew and Luke say anything about Jesus’ birth. Also, both Matthew and Luke have different details about what exactly happened on that first Christmas morning. And then of course, there’s the fact that in the original Hebrew, Isaiah 7:14 could mean either “virgin” or “young girl.”[7] Of course, there is no way to look up Mary’s medical records, so I don’t we can ever know for sure. But the possibility is there.

Then there’s the controversy surrounding Hell. Before Rob Bell unleashed a media shit storm with his book Love Wins, I was already having doubts about Hell and Satan. As my friend Crystal Lewis explains:

A devil-like character had a pretty good run in Greek mythology as Hades/Tartarus, and in the Zoroastrian religion as Angra Mainyu. In early Israel, this character was simple an “it,” known as “the satan” or “the accuser.” The Jewish people believed that both good and evil came from God. (Please see Isaiah 45:7; for the record, many Jewish people still believe this.) In their eyes, God was all-powerful and could not be out-maneuvered by a mere “accuser.” It wasn’t until centuries after the institution of Judaism that Christians embraced and popularized the concept of Satan as the evil “god of the underworld.”[8]

Okay, fine, there might not be a red guy with horns after all. But there has to be a Hell, right? Well, for starters, when Jesus talks about Hell in the Gospels, the original Greek text says “Gehanna,” which was a real place where people sacrificed children to idols. According to Lewis:

Gehenna became a trash heap on which the Jews would throw old refuse, human waste, dead animals, and criminals unworthy of burial. The stench and history of this place was profound in the first century that people had to kindle an “eternal” or “everlasting” fire there to control the sickening odor. It was a place where worms (or maggots), bugs, and disease were always everywhere, thus making it the place where the “worm didn’t die.” The word “Gehenna” became synonymous with defilement. [9]

Okay, so Hell’s questionable. That’s cool. I never liked the whole “eternal conscious torment” thing anyway. But all the stuff about Jesus is historically accurate, right?

Well, not exactly, according to biblical historian Marcus Borg:

Written in the last third of the first century, [the gospels] contain the accumulated traditions of early Christian communities and were put into their present forms by second- (or even third-) generation authors. Through careful comparative study of the gospels, one can see the authors at work, modifying and adding to the traditions they received. They were continuing a process that had been going on throughout the forty to seventy years when the gospel material circulated in oral form. Much happened in those decades to change the traditions about Jesus. [10]

The more I study the history behind the Christian religion, the more doubts I have about my faith. What if I’ve built my entire identity around a lie? What if “faith” is just another word for “denying reality?”

That’s not the case, according to biblical historian (and fellow Doctor Who fanatic) James McGrath. In his book The Burial of Jesus, McGrath explains that the biblical definition of faith is “first and foremost trust or confidence in God, and secondly faithfulness to God. Only rarely is the focus on believing the truthfulness of certain propositions.”[11] So when the author of Hebrews says that “faith is being sure of what we hope for, being convinced of what we do not see” (11:1), it does not mean that we can disregard historical and scientific fact simply because it doesn’t fit into our worldview. We need scientific and historical facts in order to distinguish between myths from reality.

Of course all facts need interpretation, and this where faith comes in. When there are gaps in the facts, or the facts leave gaps in our previously held theology, faith fills in those gaps. It does not ignore the facts; it merely says that God is much bigger than all of our questions, all of our doubts, and all of our tiny little theological boxes.

And thank God for that!

1. Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus & the Heart of Contemporary Faith (New York: Harper One, 1994), 23
2. Crystal St. Marie Lewis, QUENCHED: What Everyone (Especially Christians) Should Know About Hell (Self-published, 2012), Loc. 562-568
3. Ibid, Loc. 454-458.
4. Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, 9.
5. James F. McGrath, The Burial of Jesus: What Does History Have to Do with Faith? (Englewood: Patheos Press, 2012), Loc. 156-158.

The Friday Five: 10/12/12

1. Over at Emergent Village, George Elerick writes a provocative post about "the evil of altruism." Now before you get angry, Elerick is NOT going all Ayn Rand on us! He's just saying that mere charity isn't enough.

2. Peter Enns reviews Einstein's beliefs about God. Einstein thought the Bible was total hogwash, but wasn't exactly an atheist, either. His God was more mathematical than person.

3. You know that moment when you're struggling with doubts, and then one of your favorite bloggers writes an awesome post that helps? Yeah, Rachel Held Evans' latest blog post is like that.

4. Sarah Moon calls the Good Men Project out for publishing a horribly misogynistic story. [Trigger warning: rape]

5. And finally, singer/songwriter Heatherlyn releases her first music video:

Brief Update on my Mental Health

225 mg of Effexor

80 mg of Inderal

20 mg of Prozac

0.25 mg of Risperdal

AND I'M STILL FUCKED IN THE HEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pilate's Question -- Guest Post on George Elerick's Blog

Check out my guest post "Pilate's Question" over at my friend George Elerick's blog. Here's an excerpt:

Pilate looks up and down the prisoner before him, trying to make sense of this weirdo whom many people regard as a king. He wants this man, Jesus, to just give him a straight answer, but all he gets instead are cryptic statements about a “kingdom” that “is not from here.”

“Aha!” exclaims Pilate. “So you are a king.”

Jesus replies, “You say that I am a king. For this reason I was born, and for this reason I came into the world – to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens tomy voice.”

“What is truth?” Pilate asks. (John 18:36-38)

And it’s Pilate’s question to Jesus that philosophers have been trying to answer for years.

You can read the rest here.

The Friday Five: 10/05/12

1. Frank Viola ponders what kind of dirt political attack ads would dig up on Jesus and Paul.

2. Crystal Lewis breaks her blogging sabbatical to tackle the infamous "spiritual but not religious" phrase. Excerpt:

God is not just black or white. God is in the gray areas, too—and that makes us uncomfortable because we can’t bottle that up. We can’t package the gray areas, or talk about them in “enlightened” absolutes. We can’t control people by threat of ridicule and ostracism when there are no black areas or white areas in which to entrap them.

3. Over at A Deeper Story, Joy Bennett disproves the many myths about poverty.

4. Ben Ponder of Media Rostra finally says what I've been saying for years: we've made an idol out of "the family!" 

5. And finally, Rachel Held Evans calls bullshit on Kent Shaffer's "Open Letter to Christian Women Bloggers."

Why I Am An A/theist

(Picture from Empower Network.)

Certain names have been changed to protect their privacy. Other than that, this is a true story.

Dear reader, I'm afraid I have to make a confession. I thought I was going to take this secret with me to the grave, but I can no longer deny the truth.

I’m an a/theist.

No, that wasn’t a typo. I’m not an atheist in the Richard Dawkins "theists are delusional" dogmatic sense. I’m an a/theist, which, according to Peter Rollins, “is not some sort of agnostic middle point hovering between theism and atheism, but rather, actively embraces both out of a profound faith.”[1]

Confused? Okay, well, let me try to explain. In fundamentalism and most evangelicalism, one is extremely confident about what one believes about God. The Bible is 100% factual and inerrant, and no amount of objective evidence can change that. “In contrast,” Rollins says, “the a/theistic approach can be seen as a form of disbelieving what one believes, or rather, believing in God while remaining dubious concerning what one believes about God (a distinction that fundamentalism is unable to maintain).”[2]

So in other words, I have my beliefs about who and what God is, but I don’t hold a death grip on those beliefs. I try to open my hands up enough to give my beliefs room to grow, evolve, and adapt. And most of the time I can do that without having an existential crisis. Sometimes, though, the evolutionary process is so painful that I’m tempted to go from a/theist to atheist.

This happened recently during Labor Day weekend.

Prior to that, I was already having doubts. No specific event triggered the doubts; it was just my usual heady intellectual existentialist armchair philosopher angst. The questions piled on like snowballs rolling down a mountain: “How can we know for sure that God exists?” “Why is God so silent?” “Can a person be compassionate without religion? And if so, does this mean religion is useless?” I looked for answers, but couldn’t find any. Normally ambiguity doesn’t bother me, but this time I was like, “Fuck ambiguity, somebody give me a straight answer!” I never got a straight answer, but re-reading Rollins and Kierkegaard satisfied my existentialist armchair philosopher angst enough for the time.

That is, until the Friday before Labor Day. My coworker Jessica called us up at work and told us that her two-year-old daughter Rose was at John Hopkins. The doctors performed three emergency brain surgeries in forty-eight hours, and it looked like Rose was going to make it. But by Labor Day, the doctors said she was dying. Although she didn't die until two days later, I already started mourning her.

I was at my boyfriend Sean’s house when I got the news. We sat on his porch trying to make sense of what just happened.

“Maybe it’s sort like Job," I said, "where this is no answer in the end. Maybe it’s all an ambiguous ending where the only thing we know in the end is that God exists, and God put the natural world in order. But that kinda sounds like a cop-out, doesn’t it?”

“It does, a little," he replied. "But I don’t think anyone can understand God. We’re not supposed to, or else it wouldn’t be faith.”

“I guess you’re right.” I wasn’t completely satisfied, but at least I had some one to talk to about this.

Sean lives an hour and a half from my house, so on my way home that evening I had plenty of time to think about Rose, God, and why this happened. I couldn’t believe that God somehow ‘preordained’ Rose to die so young in order to give God’s self glory. That kind of theology makes it sound like God has a borderline personality disorder.

Then you have the process theologians like my friends Tripp and Bo at the Homebrewed Christianity podcast. They say that God doesn’t preordain every single event that happens on Earth, but God does guide us (non-coercively, of course) in creating a better future. That would definitely explain how God can be good when there’s so much misery in the world. But then again, it also makes it sound like God’s kind of lazy, doesn’t it?

Then, all of a sudden, I realized something: there’s no way of knowing for certain who or what God is, or even whether or not God exists. I had to decide for myself what I believe. And so, at that moment, I chose to believe that God did not preordain Rose’s death. I chose to believe that God was healing Jessica and her husband right there and then. I chose to believe that God, in the words of Alfred North Whitehead, is the “fellow-sufferer who understands.”[3] I chose to believe that Resurrection Sunday will always follow Good Friday and Holy Saturday. I chose to have faith in spite of the absurd.

Rollins says, “For when we can say that we will follow God regardless of the uncertainty involved in such a decision, then real faith is born—for love acts not whenever a certain set of criteria has been met, but rather because it is in the nature of love to act.”[4] And that’s why I still believe, because I believe to have hope in the midst of despair.

[1]. Peter Rollins, How (Not) to Speak of God (Brewster: Paraclete Press, 2006), 25.
[2]. Ibid, 26.
[3]. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Free Press, 1979), 351.
[4]. Rollins, How (Not) to Speak of God, 34.

Monday Morning Musings: Would You Read Ahead?

This Saturday was the last episode of Doctor Who with Amy and Rory as the Doctor's traveling companions. It was poignant, but it didn't make me cry as much as Rose's departure. I guess saying goodbye to companions gets to be less traumatizing the more you watch Doctor Who.

I don't want to rehash the entire episode, but there is one theme that really stood out to me. In the episode, the Doctor reads a book that ends up saying everything that is about to happen to the Doctor, Amy, and Rory. And it made me think: If there was a book that told you every single thing that was going to happen in your life, would you read it?

My initial answer is, "No! We're not supposed to know. I want it to be a surprise." But if I can be honest with you, I would probably cave in to temptation eventually.

Some of you may already know this, but there was a time in my life where I was OBSESSED with any book that supposedly contained prophecies about the future: Nostradamus, The Bible Code, 2012, etc. I was so convinced that the end of the world was just around the corner that I was literally paralyzed with fear. Nothing gave me pleasure anymore. The only thing that eased the anxiety was cutting, but sometimes I wondered if it was best to just end it all and get it over with. Eventually I got help, and I realized that all of those books are full of crap, so I don't really worry about Armageddon anymore.

In fact, I don't really believe in fixed moments of time anymore. I like to think that we shape the future with God moment by moment, and when the future gets rough God gently guides us in making it better. So I highly doubt that there will ever be a book that reveals the final fate of the world.

But for the sake of argument, let's say such a book did exist. Reading it wouldn't be conducive to my mental health. But the temptation would still be there.

What about you? Would you read ahead?