12.11.06
why are christians so doubtful?
A man sent me an email today. He asked me beautiful, wonderful, questions. Though I won’t share this individual’s identity, I will share with you some of his questions.
What this gentleman basically asked me today was this:
It seems like you have examined and rejected a lot of the stereotypical assumptions about what it means to be a Christian. I like that. Me too. But I’m wondering whether and how much you considered whether God even exists in the first place, whether God is somehow personal - that is, cares about my life, and what God requires I believe, both about God and about Jesus.
Are these issues you accept as a given? Are they issues you wrestle with sometimes? Often? Assuming you have wresteled with these questions, what road did you travel to resolve them, or did you never resolve them?
Whew. Heavy stuff, to be sure. Yet, I think these are important questions. Questions that I, as the writer of these questions seems to assume, have indeed spent some significant time ruminating upon. What I’m about to present is not the “badchristian.com” prescribed answers to any of these questions. Rather, I’m going to tell you something of a narrative about how I ended up thinking the way I do (if you cared) and why asking these questions is vital to a strong Christian faith.
But I’m wondering whether and how much you considered whether God even exists in the first place, whether God is somehow personal - that is, cares about my life, and what God requires I believe, both about God and about Jesus.
Are these issues you accept as a given?
Great question. Is God personal? Does she/he care about me? What does God require that I believe about God and Jesus? Frankly, like most people do, I took the easy road on most of these questions through the majority of my admittedly immature Christian walk. The short answers were these: Is God personal? Yes. Does God care about me? Yes. What does God require that I believe about God and Jesus? That God exists, Jesus is God’s son, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried, and on the third day was resurrected and now sitteth on the right hand of God the father from there he shall judge the living and the dead… What a mouthful!
And then, the most important question of all the questions asked by my emailing friend: Are these issues you accept as a given? My answer to this question, as was the case (and perhaps is the case for many) was a triumphant and emphatic “Yes!”
Largely, my answers to the first set of questions haven’t really changed. I still believe that God is a personal relational God who cares about people and desires interaction with those people. I still believe that God cares deeply about me. I’m a little fuzzy about what God requires of me with regard to my intellectual assent to a particular demographic of theological abstracts, but I personally believe that God exists (as obviated by my answers to the first two questions), that Jesus is God’s son who was crucified, died, was buried, and ressurected and now lives. I believe that.
What’s changed? I no longer can answer the “Are these issues you accept as a given?” affirmatively. In fact, just as emphatically and triumphantly as I would’ve answered “Yes!” in the past, I’d have to answer “no” now. My answer to this question leads rather naturally into a discussion of the emailers second set of questions:
Are they issues you wrestle with sometimes? Often? Assuming you have wresteled with these questions, what road did you travel to resolve them, or did you never resolve them?
These are issues that I wrestle with ALL the time. Often would be an understatement. I find these issues to be consuming, and tiring, and sometimes frustrating.
What road did I travel to resolve these issues? Well, although I have an answer, a belief, I can’t say for sure that they’re completely resolved. Although, as I said before, I do have faith in a certain sub-set of historical facts that seem to point to the existence of a personal, involved, and demanding God. The first, and much less messy, answer to the “what road did I travel” question is that I read, a lot. But, in order to get to a place where that reading would do me any good, I had to be willing to put my faith to the test. More on that later.
What did I read? A pretty seminal (again, please pardon the sex biased language) and faith changing book was a book I’ve mentioned here before co-authored by Marcus Borg and N.T. Wright called (I believe) The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions. I read this book with an open mind, and probably for the first time in my life I was convinced of a bodily resurrection.
Now, before reading the book (and subsequently a couple of N.T. Wright’s other pieces such as the one found here, and others in this N.T. Wright repository) I did “believe” in a bodily ressurection. Or, maybe it would be more accurate to say that I would’ve verbally casted my vote for a bodily ressurection of Christ given that that’s what they told me in Sunday School. Wright’s arguments regarding the bodily ressurrection (and more importantly, what a bodily ressurrection means for 1st and 21st century Christians) gave me much more confidence than the flimsy 8th grade bible-class arguments I was previously armed with.
That’s the road I’ve travelled to get to where I’m at. Did I resolve these issues? Depends how you define resolve. Do I have something that I can verbally assent to that I agree with in my heart? Yes. Given the fact that I had to have the openest of minds, given that I had to really let go of my beliefs about God, in order to arrive at any REAL belief, I’d have to say that I haven’t really resolved anything; at least not in the sense that I could quit wrestling with the topic of “Is God real, Does God want to deal with a piddly little human like me, and What does God want me to believe about Jesus?” So, in that sense, I never resolved the issue.
A few paragraphs ago, I made one of those “more on that later” statements. Well, now’s the time to pick up the “more on that later thread.” I feel like sometimes as Christians–and I include myself in that number–we get the eensy-weensy-est bit antsy about the “are these issues accepted as a given” issue. I can count on less than one hand how many times I’ve heard a faith leader tell me that I should be willing to throw all my beliefs about God out the window and hold them up to a test of the evidence.
This leads to my title question: “Why are Christians so doubtful?” Now, I can only speak from my own experience. And, my experience could well be unique. However, it seems to me that people of faith are pretty reticent to put that faith to the test. In science, we talk about Popper and falsifiability. If we’re to believe a theory is true, it should be submitted to a test which could ostensibly find that theory to be wanting. Junk science happens when we “test” theories by subjecting them to conditions that can only result in evidence supporting our preconcieved theory, and then we proclaim that this theory is true.
It seems to me that junk faith operates along the same lines. If we’re to believe that faith is true, it should be submitted to a test which could ostensibly find that faith to be wanting. Christians, sometimes, seem to be doubtful that their faith can really support rigorous inquiry. I know it makes me bristle every time I think that in order to grow in my faith that I might need to loosen my grip on the parts of faith I’ve been trained to grip onto so tightly. That’s not a particularly comfortable feeling.
However, if we ever want to create a living growing real faith, I think that’s just what we need to do. If we really believe in faith, we need to subject it to intellectually rigorous questioning. Anything less reveals the truth: That what we have and call faith is really an empty, shallow reflection of faith. A faith so weak, we don’t really trust it.
Is my faith perfect? Far from it, it’s weak; some parts of my faith are, I’m sure, empty, shallow reflections of a true living faith. I hope that over time, prayer, reflection, and study that I’m able to strengthen my faith accordingly. Probably the first step in the process is realizing the truth in the wise words of Wayne Campbell:
“I say hurl. If you blow chunks and she comes back, she’s yours. But if you spew and she bolts, then it was never meant to be.”
See? Falsifiability.
