This is my story...
An irreverent, hard-fought, ongoing wrestling match with an irrepressible faith…
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As a lifelong Christian believer, I have studied theology in some way or another since I was a small child. Even when I didn’t know it, the work I was doing was theology.
The Bible is full of truth, but it is also full of mystery—so full of meaning that it can overflow the limits of our understanding. Tradition gives us tools for this sacred duty.
I wish I could, in Jesus’ words from Mark 5:35 (KJV), “Be not afraid, only believe.” But determining my beliefs, trusting them, and acting on them is not as easy as “just believing.”
There is nowhere in the world that I have ever felt as comfortable, peaceful, and at home—or as uncomfortable, alienated, and angry as in a church.
This could be the difference between us having a conversation or an argument, between sharing communion and having an arguing match. Or, in some contexts, those differences could even mean violence. Jesus said they will know we are Christians by our love. Can we ever reconcile the different ways of being Christian and be one body?
When my then pre-teen child first heard the plot of the 80s movie “Footloose,” they couldn’t believe that there could be a town in America that would outlaw dancing. But I knew…
If life were a baseball game, I was running the bases, trying to get to home plate before the Devil tagged me out with sin. If I was safe, I would get to Heaven. But if I was out, Hell awaited.
The notion that “good people go to Heaven and bad people go to Hell” misses the point of the substitution model of salvation, precisely because we can’t save ourselves.
I didn’t learn my first lesson about Biblical interpretation in the rational confines of academia. It was in the midst of the ecstatic worship of a Charismatic church.
Our belief in miracles and the expectation that they will come to pass—is an essential part of the glue that has held our family together. I know, because the evidence is me.
And it dawned on me, maybe for the first time, that someone could be in so much pain that they would prefer to risk the eternal torment of Hell over the suffering of life.
What if Adam and Eve isn’t a story of lost innocence? What if it’s a coming of age story, of people becoming aware that they were never as innocent as they thought? When I grew out of my childhood sins and I graduated to the big leagues, there was no pretending I was an innocent any more. I didn’t think my repentance made any difference right now. I only hoped that God would hold off his wrath a little longer.
I hoped to discover some mysterious new Christianity that was easier, simpler, and more accepting. I hoped to find out that all this time, all the churches had been wrong.
God expects this behavior from us. We are fallen and deserve punishment, he took our punishment for us, and now we can be saved. But does it make any sense? Is it just? Is it good? Could God have just forgiven us outright, without having to incarnate himself to kill himself to please himself? Why was God so upset in the first place? If God wishes none of us should perish, does God get what God wants?
This was why I ended up in the middle of the night, cranked up on coffee and cigarettes, sitting with my grandfather’s Bible in the college coffee house, in search of the Devil.
The battle we were waging against the Bible—or at least against the people who used the Bible as a weapon or a rulebook—was against credulity, and reason was our tool.
Perhaps I should have heeded the warning before I dived in. I indeed placed Theology on a higher shelf than Reason, so a book like this could definitely be a stumbling-block.
If Jesus is like God, and God does not change, then Jesus has ALWAYS been like God. Meaning God has ALWAYS been like Jesus. And here’s where things start to get interesting…
You can change some things—the order of events, the general timeline, add in some prophecy and philosophy, but it is hard to change some of the main events if there are people around to corroborate or deny it.
I think the people of the 1st century were able to see some basic, practical truths, such as the fact that people don’t generally come back to life—at least on Earth—after they die…
If I were going to be intellectually honest with myself, I would have to admit that, while figuring out what God wants, I hadn’t satisfactorily proven to myself that God existed at all.
Christianity has always been propelled forward by life-changing revelations. My apocalyptic moment happened at a computer desk in a tiny studio apartment in the northern reaches of Manhattan, amid a clutter of papers and half-empty coffee cups. But it changed everything.