A Semicolon

During the fourth watch of the night Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. "It's a ghost," they said, and cried out in fear. But Jesus immediately said to them: "Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid." "Lord, if it's you," Peter replied, "tell me to come to you on the water." "Come," he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, "Lord, save me!" Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "why did you doubt?" And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God." – Matthew 14:25-32, NIV

I love this icon. I love the passage it depicts. I love it because I can so strongly identify with the fear and doubt that Peter is feeling. Even the disciples in the boat are exhibiting some of that same fear—some of them may be looking at Peter in concern, but for the most part they seem focused on and worried about their sails. Only Peter is really looking at Jesus, and we can see from the text that it was in his seeing the wind—looking away from Jesus—that he began to sink.

I'm reminded that I blogged about this passage once, in part as a response to controversy that erupted over the release of the film The Golden Compass. Parents feared their children would see the movie and doubt their faith, which would naturally lead to an endless spiral into the murky depths of sin and godlessness. But I read that book when I was a kid—I read everything of Philip Pullman's—and I'm in seminary. So there's that.

What reminded me of that old blog post was the quote I used to start it off. It's from Frederick Buechner, a hero of mine, and it's something that has remained with me and which I find comforting in times of doubt. Buechner says, "Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me." God knows us better than we know ourselves, and that means he knows just how prone we are to falter and to lose focus—to look at the wind rather than at Jesus. God isn't so naïve as to think that once we come to faith we will be able to rid ourselves of all doubt and fear. He makes room for us.

This reminds me of yet another quote, this one from the author Wendell Berry. It's a longer one, but it gets at why God reveals himself in ways that can be ascertained only by faith, in ways that are by no means irrefutable in the eyes of reason:

"Christ did not descend from the cross except into the grave. And why not otherwise? Wouldn't it have put fine comical expressions on the faces of the scribes and the chief priests and the soldiers if at that moment He had come down in power and glory? Why didn't He do it? Why hasn't He done it at any one of a thousand good times between then and now?

I knew the answer. I knew it a long time before I could admit it, for all the suffering of the world is in it. He didn't, He hasn't, because from the moment He did, He would be the absolute tyrant of the world and we would be His slaves. Even those who hated Him and hated one another and hated their own souls would have to believe in Him then. From that moment the possibility that we might be bound to Him and He to us and us to one another by love forever would be ended.

And so, I thought, He must forbear to reveal His power and glory by presenting Himself as Himself, and must be present only in the ordinary miracle of the existence of His creatures. Those who wish to see Him must see Him in the poor, the hungry, the hurt, the wordless creatures, the groaning and travailing beautiful world."

Faith is necessary because if God is to be a God of love, the worship of him can never be forced. I'm apparently on a quote kick—here’s another one I recalled: "He who remains good simply because he must serves necessity, not God." That's from John M. Patrick. We are called to serve and love God, and God will not secure our loyalty through uncaringly enslaving us.

I love the passage about Peter walking on water because it shows that although our doubt is not exactly pleasing to God, he doesn't give us over to it, either. Jesus rebukes Peter, but he doesn't leave him to drown. The question Jesus asks—"Why did you doubt?"—sounds rhetorical, but I wonder if that wouldn't be a helpful question to ask ourselves in times where we are floundering in water on which we once walked. "Why did you doubt?" "Because I was afraid." "Why were you afraid?" "Because I saw the wind and it frightened me." "What did you have to stop looking at in order even to see the wind?" "You, my Lord."

Peter has the faith necessary. He had already taken a few steps across the sea before he sank. Having faith and having doubt are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps my favorite Bible verse is Mark 9:24—"I believe; help my unbelief!" The profession of faith is separated from the confession of doubt by nothing more than a semicolon.

Jesus treats our doubt with a gentle rebuke and an honest question. I do not treat my own doubts and fears so gently. I often find myself in situations where it is almost as if I were willing myself to drown as punishment for even looking at the wind in the first place. But the doubt is a part of my humanity, and it is not up to me to decide how long I must thrash about in the waves.

The band Caedmon's Call sings, "Waters rose as my doubts reigned / My sandcastle faith it slipped away / I found myself standing on your grace / It had been there all the time." Jesus' hand is outstretched. "On Christ the solid rock I stand / All other ground is sinking sand."

Rubik's Cube Faith

I hate the Rubik's cube. It baffles me completely. Yes, I know, there's a systematic way to solve it, but that kind of stuff just doesn't fit in my brain. I'm not good at spatial calculations, and fortunately for my driving record, my bad depth perception errs on the side of caution.

At CCC last week, two of the counselors did a brief skit/devotion with a Rubik's cube. While Daniel paced around solving the puzzle, Zach talked about how solving a Rubik's cube is kind of like how God leads us through our lives. We're the Rubik's cube--we're just a jumbled mess and can't get ourselves straightened out. But God knows what our lives are supposed to look like. God has a plan.

One of the things that has frustrated me most when I've tried to solve a Rubik's cube in the past is that you'll get to where you're almost done, but there's just one or two squares out of place. The things is, in that situation, you have to backtrack and stuff has to get jumbled up again before it can all be straightened out. I hate that part. I would get so close and then be told that if I wanted to complete the puzzle, I'd have to scramble all my hard work. I didn't want to do that. I'd have to let go of my almost (but not quite) perfect Rubik's cube.

That's the part of this metaphor that really stuck out to me. When we're following Christ, we have to be willing to go places that may not fit our idea of how this thing called life should go. We might get really close to where we think we need to be and then have to take a detour to actually get there.

I've got two verses from Proverbs that relate to this:


"The human mind plans the way,
but the Lord directs the steps." -- Proverbs 16:9

"All our steps are ordered by the Lord;
how then can we understand our own ways?" -- Proverbs 20:24


That first one is a verse I've spent a good bit of time with because I'm a planner and need to learn that whatever agenda I set, God has something much better in mind. The second one is another I've read before, but the idea of not understanding our own ways interests me. I've used the image of walking in pitch dark with only a flashlight to guide our steps (or sometimes, I've said, a cell phone). We can't always see the big picture of why things are coming together (or falling apart) the way they are. That doesn't mean we can explain everything away as being God's will; it means that we can let go of the need to understand. How freeing.

One more thing this line of thought reminded me of is a prayer by Thomas Merton from Thoughts in Solitude. This is one of my favorite prayers, and I recently realized it's printed in the back of the Bible I use most frequently these days. Here it is, with underlining added in the places I feel are most relevant:


My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.


Amen.

His Eye Is On the Sparrow

A few months ago, a friend of mine lost her one-eyed cat, Sparrow. She was found 10 miles from home yesterday after 90 days of being on her own. The funny thing is that we're singing "His Eye Is On the Sparrow" in church this week. I don't like to give too much spiritual significance to "coincidences" (I hate that word) like that, but I do like to point out the craziness and just let it sit. :)

Reese's Pieces: Irrefutable Proof of the Existence of God

My grandfather is awesome. He's a retired bishop in the United Methodist Church, and he's just the jam. Today he told me something that just upped his awesome factor:

Bart Ehrman's official title is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Gray endowed the chair specifically for the purpose of keeping a Christian presence in the faculty of UNC's Religious Studies department. Ehrman is a self-professing agnostic (formerly Christian).

Now, it turns out that James A. Gray is my grandfather's cousin. My grandfather commented today that if Gray knew that an agnostic occupied his namesake chair, he would roll over in his grave. This is funny enough coming from a 70-something-year-old man, but it gets better. My grandfather once met Ehrman and actually told him this. Ehrman didn't seem perturbed.

This story just makes me giggle. And I'm not going to debate Ehrman here--Richard Hays, Stephen Colbert, my dad and many others have done a far better job than I could. I just want to clarify one thing: my problem with Ehrman is not that he's agnostic. It's his reasons for leaving the faith.

Ehrman is making gobs of money off books where the thesis is basically "OH MY GOSH THERE ARE INCONSISTENCIES IN THE BIBLE AND IT MIGHT NOT ALL BE 100% HISTORICALLY ACCURATE AAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!" I *might* be mocking, but I can't help it if I'm snarky and sarcastic by nature. Anyway, the thing is, Ehrman presents his problems as if he's the first person to notice them. But if no one had ever realized that not all 4 Gospels were exactly the same...why would we have 4 Gospels in the first place? The point is that Ehrman is wrestling with legitimate questions in a way that ignores the fact that the church has been dealing with them for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Since I have papers to write and don't feel like going into this anyway, I'm just going to leave you with this gem:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Bart Ehrman
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

"Oh yes, you did laugh."

I had a disorienting experience the other day that got me thinking. I still don't quite know what I want to say about it, but I'm just going to describe what happened and get some feedback.

I was at a church on Sunday that is not "my" church but which I visit occasionally. During the sermon, the pastor used the famous quote by Saint Francis: "Preach the Gospel; when necessary, use words." I was nodding in agreement when I heard several people in the congregation laugh out loud. I was completely thrown off guard. I had never thought that this quote was funny. I wondered if I'd missed something.

Later that afternoon, I called my dad, a longtime pastor and a Saint Francis fanboy. I told him about this new reaction to the quote, and he told me he'd had similar experiences in certain churches or settings where he was a visiting preacher or speaker. In particular settings, some things he says that would normally (by people who know him and share his perspective) would be met with pondering silence instead elicit laughter.

I suspect I'll eventually have more to say about what I think this means, but for now I want to hear your thoughts. What is your reaction to the saying, "Preach the Gospel; if necessary, use words?" Or have you had an experience where you found something funny that wasn't intended that way, or vice versa? What do you think different reactions to a statement like that mean, if anything?

The Miraculous Feeding of the 5,000

Today, I overheard a snippet of a conversation taking place on the first floor of my house as I walked through the second. "Oh, you Methodists and your non-miraculous reading of that miracle," said one housemate jokingly to another. I knew exactly what he was talking about, and it prompted me to think a little further about my troubles with a particular reading of the passage in question. But I get ahead of myself.

The feeding of the 5,000 (or 4,000...or 5,000, not counting women and children...but still a lot of people...) became a boring narrative for me sometime in middle school. I'd heard it so many times I tended to zone out when that Bible story was being read or preached on.

Imagine my surprise when one time earlier in college a sermon on this Gospel lesson caught my attention. Having drifted off mentally as usual, I was suddenly listening and disoriented. The preacher was wondering aloud whether perhaps the crowd was moved by the generosity of the young boy with the fish and the loaves. Perhaps someone pulled out a piece of bread here, a hunk of cheese there, and before long everyone's little to offer became a lot to eat.

I felt myself immediately averse to this account, but I couldn't explain why. In fact, more recently, my friend said she thought that it would have taken a greater miracle to move the crowd to such generosity than it would have to reproduce baskets of bread and fish. I had to agree with that. But I was still troubled, and I think I'm starting to figure out why.

Let me make it clear that I'm not opposed to this Stone Soup version of the story. I'm open to different readings of the Bible, and besides, the stone soup approach works wonders in the household of which I am currently a part. It isn't so much this interpretation that bothers me, it's where it came from and what it can lead to.

In my Old Testament precept last week, we were discussing a book by Peter Enns called Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. Enns attempts to find a way to reconcile a non-literal reading of the Bible with the maintenance of Scriptural authority (to summarize very crudely). In order to give us background on where the debate over the Old Testament and the authority of Scripture began, our preceptor described to us some of the theological and philosophical history of the various issues. He talked about one school of thought that sought to explain, in modern terms, the seemingly miraculous happenings in the Bible. One scenario that struck me was that on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus was walking on a sandbar and simply appeared to be walking on water. There were several other explanations that rubbed me the wrong way, and the interpretation of the feeding of the 5,000 that I outlined before was ranked among those.

My issue isn't so much that I'm so attached to and dependent on the miracle status of the stories from the life of Jesus that I can't give them up, like a child with a security blanket. I won't call down curses on someone who says the demoniacs in the Bible were schizophrenic or otherwise mentally ill. (By the way, it seems to me that curing someone of a mental illness is at least as impressive as casting out a demon.) What troubles me about this whole train of thought is the obsessive need to explain everything. Faith is an art that requires an ability to live in the tension between the known and the unknown, the revealed and the unseen, the fulfilled and the yet-to-be. Certainly we should be exploring the Bible with minds that are open to new inspiration, but we should not take our need to explain so far that it becomes an attempt to control and manipulate the text. And we must never forget that while alternative explanations of Bible stories may be interesting, when they become the focus, we miss the point. The technicalities of how a miracle occurred should never become more interesting or important than the Miracle Worker. Explore possibilities, share new ideas, ask questions; but don't get rid of the mystery.

Fully an academic institution AND fully a faith community

After 4 years of lurking in the halls of Langford and Westbrook, I'm finally a student at Duke Divinity School. I've been around so long that there are faculty who think I'm a third year, and plenty of people who I'm sure must wonder what in the world is taking me so long to get an M.Div.

Anyway, in the process of going through ordination and of explaining some of the philosophy of DDS (Duke Divinity School) to others, I came across an interesting question: How in the world can a place function both as a competitive academic institution and as a community of faith? Are we primarily students or primarily ministers?

I'm a big fan of holding things in tension, so the distinction doesn't bother me personally, but orientation was rife with instances of faculty and administrators actually sounding confused as to how to define what the heck we're doing here. I heard one person tell me DDS is first and foremost a graduate school; another said that ministry is a priority over against academics. One faculty member tried to explain that DDS is most importantly academic, AND most importantly faith-based.

Like I said, nonsensical "both/and" statements like that don't bother me. The main reason for this is that we have a Savior who is fully human AND fully divine. Christians should be used to this kind of nonsense. But that doesn't mean that living out our identity as divinity SCHOOL students and DIVINITY school students is easy.

I've had some people react with surprise when I tell them that most of my professors begin class with a prayer. I love that we do that, even though I know full well that the love of Christ isn't going to keep Dr. Smith from giving me an "F" in Church History if I don't study.

Then there's the funny question of spiritual formation. DDS tries to be intentional about forming not only the minds but also the hearts of its students. Part of this effort is the required spiritual formation group to which each first year is assigned. You don't get a grade or really any credit for it, but you can't move on to your second year of seminary without it. That class is itself in many ways the embodiment of the fine line we're walking between academics and faith.

I guess we'll just see how this plays out. I already know Duke thoroughly for the competitive academic institution that it is, and I know the Div School is no exception, so I'm not going to pretend the competitiveness isn't there. But I also know that for the most part my classmates are going to be far more willing to help me out than perhaps some were in undergrad.

"If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it" (1 Cor. 12:26). As weird and awkward as it might sometimes feel, we are all one body, and it does me no good to get an A in Hebrew if the seminarian sitting next to me can't remember the alphabet.

Theology without Faith

My campus ministry group has an annual tradition: students write "affirmation letters" to the graduating seniors. When I graduated from college this spring, I received one that included an important observation: "There's always more to learn about God, but I still believe the best way to do that is through time with him on our knees, not in the classroom."

I'm starting divinity school in the fall, and I'm a little nervous about it. I'm going to the same school where I did my undergrad, and I spent way too much of the past four years in the religion department and divinity school. I know that I thrive on academic pressure. But I'm also aware of the danger that exists when thinking about faith becomes more absorbing than faith itself.

Theology is fundamentally different from other disciplines because it requires not only that you contemplate the logos but also that you know and engage with the theos. While nonbelievers can study the history or sociology of religion, theology outside relationship with God completely misses the point.

So I'm grateful to be attending a school where regular worship, spiritual formation groups, prayer in the classroom, and field education are significant, even mandatory components of my education. My goal is to avoid becoming so fascinated with the eschatological implications of the Eucharist that I forget to spend time in prayer.

This post first appeared on Theolog, the blog of The Christian Century.

Love Wins

On Monday, I went to a lecture at UNC by Frank Turek, author of I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. There, he referred us to a video of a debate he had with Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great. I'm currently in the middle of watching the debate and had to pause to reflect on some things.

Hitchens' main point is not that God does not exist, but that we cannot know that God does exist. I concur. That's what faith is for. I don't want to believe in a God whose existence can be empirically proven by mortals. In such a case, faith is a moot point. If God's existence can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, there is no room for faith, hope, even love.

Apologetics as a field elicits a sort of inquisitive amusement from me. I take God's existence as a given, and I'm totally OK with that. I have no qualms about making that assumption. When people want to debate the "facts" with me, I'll indulge them to a certain extent, but it reaches a point where I simply lose interest, because I've been convicted by a faith that will not let me go and that could be neither convinced nor deterred by ontological, teleological or any other proof.

It's probably good for me to be in relationship with people who understand and are good at apologetics, because it simply isn't my cup of tea. I know all the arguments, but I'm far less likely to talk about the prime mover or creation ex nihilo than I am to share the ways in which God has moved in my life and in the communities of which I am a part.

It simply isn't helpful to people who want the scientific-sounding answers, but that's just how I understand my faith—in relationships of God-given love. Not that I don't enjoy a good theological debate—I'm going to seminary in the fall, for goodness' sake—but I believe all of that should be trumped by the witness of the love reflected in believers' lives. They'll know we are Christians by our love—not by our intellectual arguments. Not that those aren't valid, but basically...love wins.

Room for Doubt

"Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me." — Frederick Buechner

Doubt is something that is underappreciated in today's society. Doubt is not welcome on Wall Street, in classrooms (on either side of the evolution debate) and even in the pulpit. In a world where security is supposedly constantly threatened, few want leaders, political or religious, to express doubt.

Buechner does not believe, and I do not believe, that this fear of doubt is in the nature of Christianity. In fact, this room for doubt is one of the most appealing aspects of the faith for some. Saying that doubt is OK allows believers to be human. Space for fear and uncertainty is created by the examples of the first followers of Christ, not only his disciples but also others he met in his ministry. The man who cried, "I believe; help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24) illustrates the give-and-take of belief and doubt with which many Christians are intimately familiar.

Of course, there is a flipside to the question of doubt. A friend of mine attended a secular summer program in high school, and their motto became "Question Everything." Sponsored by but separate from the public school system, this program was supposed to encourage the state's brightest thinkers to take a step outside the box and to challenge presuppositions; and in this, it succeeded. However, I wonder if "Question Everything" is really applicable in the church. Certainly members should never be discouraged from asking questions, but what I have come to learn over the years both as a believer and as a student of religion is that theology and faith involve a different method of formulating questions than other fields. I wonder if part of this is because the implication of "Question Everything" is that these questions expect answers, but Christians must learn that questions often lead only to more questions, that the wondering and the wandering must be lived into and is not always brought to a neat conclusion. There seems to be a creative tension throughout Scripture and Christian experience between doubt and belief.

Peter doubted and was given the keys to the kingdom of heaven; but it is clear that when he nearly drowned walking to Jesus on the water, it was because he doubted. When Thomas puts his hands into the risen Christ's wounds, Jesus said, "Do not doubt, but believe" (John 20:27). Jesus would prefer for us not to doubt, to believe wholeheartedly, genuinely and without question, but it is also important to note that Jesus rescues Peter from the waves and from his doubt; Jesus does not chide Thomas but willingly gives him the tangible evidence he needs. Christ has the power to help our unbelief, to reveal himself to us, if not always as obviously as to Thomas.

However, throughout Scripture we see that even revelation does not preclude doubt. Many saw Jesus and the prophets before him and heard them speak, but did not believe. Perhaps this is what Buechner meant: doubt is intrinsic to the disconnected state of humanity, and for God to devise a revelation that would leave no room for doubt would be to destroy what it means to be human. As long as we understand ourselves as God's imperfect but well-loved creation, there will always be room for doubt.

The Golden Compass

I've tried to avoid the debate that has surrounded the release of the movie The Golden Compass. However, while avoiding homework and browsing Facebook, I came across a group called "Do NOT support 'The Golden Compass.'" It currently has 100,998 members.

OK. I read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy (of which The Golden Compass is the first installment, followed by The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass) as a kid and loved it. I have the entire trilogy in audio format on my iPod. I've read other books by Philip Pullman and loved them as well. I'm definitely going to go see the movie.

Somehow, even though I was immersed in Pullman's writing as a child and love his work to this day, I remain a steadfast Christian. The fact that the children in the book supposedly kill God miraculously had no effect on my faith.

Then again, I don't think it's all that miraculous. How many Christians do you think have read or seen The Wizard of Oz? I couldn't count how many times I've seen that movie even if I tried. Why do I bring this up? Well, just think about it: at the end, the wizard, very clearly a God figure whom Dorothy, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion (oh, and Toto, too) have travelled far to see, is revealed as a hoax. The curtain is pulled back and the Wizard of Oz is just a pathetic little man hiding behind smoke and mirrors.

Does anyone see the similarity behind L. Frank Baum's fraudulent wizard-god and Philip Pullman's story? Neither exactly typifies the Christian narrative, but The Wizard of Oz is one of the best-loved stories of a generation (or two...or three?), and I have yet to see anyone revoke their faith because they saw the movie or read Baum's fantasy novel.

I think there's a deeper issue in here of a psychotic need felt by some Christians to shield themselves and their children from exposure to atheistic themes in film and literature. Harry Potter got a bad rap, too. Once my dad was criticized by another pastor for allowing his children to read these anti-Christian books—he claimed that a child who read Harry Potter would have everything he or she needed to become a witch or a warlock. My father replied, "You know, my kids have read those books many times, and they just can't get that broom off the ground."

People, this is ridiculous. No child is going to walk out of The Golden Compass and decide that he or she should go kill God, just as no one who saw The Wizard of Oz in 1939 decided that God must actually be an old man behind a curtain. Go see the movie. Take your kids. They'll enjoy it. Let them read the books. Heaven forbid you should, well, forbid your child to read. Don't be so uptight. Faith is all about trust, and there is no trust in the line of thinking that leads people to protest a kid's movie because it might threaten their faith or their children's.

Logical Fallacies and Faith

I get into trouble in debates sometimes. I'm perfectly capable of using rational, deductive methods to make my point, but I seem determined to abandon all reason at a certain point in every argument. Sometimes, however, I think faith calls for that. I would never pit faith and reason against each other; they can always work in tandem, and at times when they seem divergent, they seem to me to be occupy such different planes that it's like comparing apples and oranges—or maybe apples and elephants. In any case, I went back and looked up some of those formulaic logical fallacies I learned to avoid in high school philosophy class and found that two of them—appeal to emotion and appeal to tradition—could get me into a lot of trouble with a philosopher but are valuable, maybe even necessary, within Christianity.

The one that gets me most often is the appeal to emotion. I'll follow a logical argument and hold my own for a while, but at a certain point, it all breaks down and I make a flot-out appeal to the other person's heart. I know I can't stop bringing up this issue lately, but the place where thisgets me the most is in the homosexuality debate. I can be convinced by logic of the soundness of church tradition (which will come up later, obviously) and the sanctity of marriage, but in the end I always want to ask—what about Christ's mandate to love your neighbor? What do I do when a dear friend senses a call to ordination and is unable to pursue it—and I don't know whether to support him/her? Although in a strictly logical argument, my comment would be out of line and fallacious, I firmly believe that these questions are vital within Christianity. The way our logic causes us to treat other member of the body of Christ matters a great deal, and so I will not relinquish my insistence on the appeal to emotion even—and especially—when the logic is so sound.

I found it amusing that the appeal to tradition was listed in the fallacies I looked up; I had forgotten about that one. I was recently told by a friend that to resort to tradition (again on the issue of homosexuality) was ultimately a cop-out. I think this is incorrect, and I think this is what the fallacy of appeal to tradition assumes. However, 2,000 years of tradition cannot simply be ignored; we may indeed need to wrestle with it, and sometimes changes should be made—take the ordination of women, for example—but to discount it entirely is foolish and completely against the nature and continuity of the Christian faith over time. In the case of homosexuality, the appeal to emotion and the appeal to tradition both come up a lot and are often at odds one with the other. Both are valuable and need to be considered as more than logical fallacies.

Just to add on to the two fallacies I've discussed, another good one is the Ad Hominem fallacy. This is when an attack is made on the person making an argument, and that attack presumes to make the argument itself invalid. I see this a lot in Christianity. People are often turned off of the church because its members say one thing and do another. Philosophically speaking, hypocritical or inconsistent actions do not discount the credibility of the argument, but in the church, it matters that the words and the actions match up. Certainly no one is going to be able to have a perfect record in any given area; we all struggle with our sexuality in one way or another, so taking the moral high ground should never be the goal or the method of the debate on homosexuality. On one hand, we cannot claim that because Bob is a sinner, Bob cannot tell me not to sin; on the other hand, Bob should be aware of his sin and honest about it, because it does matter.

Just some thoughts about logic and faith I wanted to throw out there...

Refusing to Surrender (an old piece)

This is actually a reflection I wrote in May 2006 while reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book The Cost of Discipleship. It's a little scattered, but the questions and the musings are there, and I would like to revisit some of these thoughts in the near future.



"Is there some part of your life which you are refusing to surrender at his behest, some sinful passion, maybe, or some animosity, some hope, perhaps your ambition or your reason? If so, you must not be surprised that you have not received the Holy Spirit, that prayer is difficult, or that your request for faith remains unanswered. Go rather and be reconciled with your brother, renounce the sin which holds you fast—and then you will recover your faith! …How can you hope to enter into communion with him when at some point in your life you are running away from him?" -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer


I wrote this passage down in my journal on 3 February 2006. Certain words and phrases stuck out like sore thumbs jabbing me in the sides: refusing to surrender, your reason, prayer is difficult, your request for faith remains unanswered, at some point in your life you are running away from him. I read this passage over and over sporadically for the next few months and still revisit it in times of doubt.

My own refusal to surrender anything to God goes back quite a long way. I remember talking for years about how important it is to allow oneself to be vulnerable in the presence of God, to give up control and to trust him even when it seemed impossible, only to realize that I was utterly unable to follow my own teachings. I had never surrendered anything to God but a fragment of my free time, had never truly allowed myself to lean on him, had never relinquished control of my heart and mind as I thought I had. I still to this day maintain a fierce, tenacious hold on my life. I am slowly working my way back to God, slowly turning things over to his grace and will, but it is very, very slowly.

It was very profound to me that Bonhoeffer chose to list reason among those things that are perhaps not being handed over to God. I can completely identify with that. Despite my surface distaste for reason and my romanticized ideals of the subjective, I still rely entirely too much on my own understanding. I realize that much of my approach to ameliorating my faith comes from this standpoint; although I am working some on my spiritual life, most of what I am doing is building a stockpile of knowledge, of expanding my religious education, of becoming well-read, supposedly for the sake of equipping myself to be a better pastor one day, but I will be the first to admit that there is a certain amount of pride tied up in how much and what I get read this summer. I don't think that doing these things are necessarily bad, but I am keenly aware that I need to couple my theological expeditions with Scripture readings, personal prayer, and active engagement in corporal worship. Worship I actually have about down pat, but the Bible and prayer are still slightly foreign to me.

This leads directly into the next point, that prayer is difficult. I hate praying. I especially hate praying in front of groups. All my life, I was the kid who volunteered to pray or was called on to pray. At some point, I got sick of it and decided to make other people step up every now and then. This quickly turned into my total absence from that arena, and I wonder if that did not directly affect my personal prayer life, which has been virtually nonexistent for years now. When I am forced to pray in public, I hate every second of it; I get nervous, I sweat, I stutter, I fumble for words. Usually I simply refuse to do it. Last night, Dad asked if I would say the blessing at dinner, and I replied, "No thank you." As for my individual prayer life, I have tried on occasion to get into a habit of praying. I have found that one big problem is my attention span. I often get bored or distracted in the middle of prayers and suddenly find myself at the computer remembering that I was supposed to be talking to God. I found that journaling helps this some; I am more articulate when writing in the first place, and it helps me to train my mind on what I am doing. I also am more engaged and involved when I do this. Other things that have helped have been prayers, songs, or poems written by others with which I strongly identify; some that come to mind include Merton's Seigneur mon Dieu, Wesley's "Come O Thou Traveler Unknown," the occasional Rilke elegy, and plenty of Jars of Clay songs. I can pray through their words and make them my own because they speak profoundly to my experience and my needs. I would like, however, to do some praying that really is mine, and I will have to work on that. I need to begin to set aside time for prayer, but I am so often busy and I live with other people, so time and privacy are both scarce. Even when I am alone and have the time, prayer frightens me. I suppose that the only way I can ameliorate this situation is to actively pursue a healthy prayer life on my own. Yikes.

I have requested faith and often do not know whether that request has gone unanswered or whether I completely misunderstand what it means to be given faith. Faith is a funny thing, and too often we are taught to associate it with emotionality and warm fuzzy feelings. Although I disagree with this approach and find it destructive in many ways, there is still a part of me that has been so conditioned by mountain top experiences like mission trips and retreats that I find myself almost looking for that euphoric, spiritual feeling that is supposed to accompany belief in and communion with God. I don't particularly know how I will know when I truly have faith, but I’m sure patience is involved somehow. I read something helpful in Norwood's American Methodism, something that Peter Boehler said to John Wesley: "Preach faith till you have it, and then, because you have it, you will preach faith." This sounds like Bonhoeffer's spiel on obedience and faith (also in Discipleship). He presents the paradoxical truth that one cannot have faith unless he obeys but that one only obeys when he has faith. This annoys me because I can't find the entry point to all of this. Maybe the whole faith and works thing is related – true faith is by definition accompanied by works, and true works cannot be done without faith. Or something, I’m just trying to avoid condoning works righteousness right now. In any case, I must learn to pray for faith, to preach faith, to practice obedience, and to do works of faith; and then, perhaps, I will one day have faith.

"How can you hope to enter into communion with him when at some point in your life you are running away from him?" Good question. I know plenty about running away from God. "I cannot run, I cannot hide/Believe me now, you know I've tried." I spent years doing so, and to some extent I continue on that path even now. When I wrote my song "Prodigal," it was not yet titled, so I posted the lyrics online and asked friends for ideas for a song name. Suggestions that came back included "Prince of Peace," "All in All," and other sappy, happy, warm fuzzy titles. True, most of them drew on lyrics within the song, but I was bothered because none of them really got to the heart of what the song was about. Although the song does thank and extol God, its primary function is a prayer for forgiveness and reconciliation. I started thinking of titles that were not lifted from the text, and when I thought of "Prodigal," I knew there was nothing more perfect. This was not a song about Jesus, it was the lamenting, apologizing, entreating prayer of a child who had run away from her father and was painfully tiptoeing back. I am that prodigal child every day, when I refuse to surrender to God, when I choose reason over faith, when I shy away from prayer because it is too hard or inconvenient, when I half-heartedly ask for faith, and when I continue to run away, run away, run away. I must stop in my tracks, turn around, and go back to my Father. I hope to find a warm welcome.