Like the time I ran away...
I just read an interview on the Christianity Today site with Mike Yaconelli, author of Messy Spirituality.
He talks about his relationship with God as having to deal with "annoying love," where God grabs on, and just won't let go. Much like my 4-year-old who must give me a hug and tell me that he'll love me forever, especially when I'm in a bad mood and don't want to talk to anyone.
Actually, the interviewer, Dick Staub, does a lot of good interviews--John Loftus (Debunking Christianity) even talks about one of Stuab's latest interviewees, Dr. Ruth Tucker, on the DC blog.
A lot of the interviewees have the same points:
- Yep, it's messy.
- Yep, there's suffering.
- Nope, it doesn't make sense.
- Yep, I believe in Jesus anyway.
Yaconelli talks about apologists and others putting God in a neat little box that conforms to 10 Points About God. Tucker talks about the fact that the Bible was written by fallible people who were wrong a lot of the time. They agree that God doesn't make sense. Suffering doesn't make sense. And the Bible is probably wrong in a lot of places.
But they believe anyway.
I know that, in my recent conversations with Sandalstraps (and others), he's made a similar point. God is too big for rationality. God is too big for human understanding. So learning about God with your heart or your soul or your emotions is more important than learning with reason and logic. (I'm paraphrasing, and probably oversimplifying his message to me...)
After my last series of posts, I felt like I was drifting way into AtheismLand. But I believe there are many things we don't know, and I don't think our current understanding of the physical world can explain everything. (Not even most things.)
My favorite song is an 18 minute tune by Yes called Awaken. It is a song that I have an emotional reaction to every time I listen to it. And the last line is:
"Like the time I ran away/Turned around and you were standing close to me"
Yes isn't a Christian band by any stretch of the imagination, but there may be something to this. I'd say it was food for thought, but it's food for something different than thought.
He talks about his relationship with God as having to deal with "annoying love," where God grabs on, and just won't let go. Much like my 4-year-old who must give me a hug and tell me that he'll love me forever, especially when I'm in a bad mood and don't want to talk to anyone.
Actually, the interviewer, Dick Staub, does a lot of good interviews--John Loftus (Debunking Christianity) even talks about one of Stuab's latest interviewees, Dr. Ruth Tucker, on the DC blog.
A lot of the interviewees have the same points:
- Yep, it's messy.
- Yep, there's suffering.
- Nope, it doesn't make sense.
- Yep, I believe in Jesus anyway.
Yaconelli talks about apologists and others putting God in a neat little box that conforms to 10 Points About God. Tucker talks about the fact that the Bible was written by fallible people who were wrong a lot of the time. They agree that God doesn't make sense. Suffering doesn't make sense. And the Bible is probably wrong in a lot of places.
But they believe anyway.
I know that, in my recent conversations with Sandalstraps (and others), he's made a similar point. God is too big for rationality. God is too big for human understanding. So learning about God with your heart or your soul or your emotions is more important than learning with reason and logic. (I'm paraphrasing, and probably oversimplifying his message to me...)
After my last series of posts, I felt like I was drifting way into AtheismLand. But I believe there are many things we don't know, and I don't think our current understanding of the physical world can explain everything. (Not even most things.)
My favorite song is an 18 minute tune by Yes called Awaken. It is a song that I have an emotional reaction to every time I listen to it. And the last line is:
"Like the time I ran away/Turned around and you were standing close to me"
Yes isn't a Christian band by any stretch of the imagination, but there may be something to this. I'd say it was food for thought, but it's food for something different than thought.
posted by SuperSkeptic at 12:41 AM
2 Comments:
That's the way that I experience God, anyway.
Though I'd add that faith isn't principally about belief, particularly about belief as intellectually agreeing with particular statements. Faith is principally about trust, community, relationship, practice. It is a comprehensive state of being which incorporates belief, but also transcends belief.
My beliefs about God have shifted a great deal over the years, and will continue, I'm sure, to shift, for as long as I have breath. But underneath that shifting surface of belief is the rock of faith, the trust in the God who cannot be reduced to any description.
That should not, however, be used to sidestep the serious and troubling problems presented by skeptics. They do an excellent job of helping us evaluate our concepts of God. But calling into question concepts of God does not undermine the experiential reality of the God who lies beyond all concepts.
I have faith in the God who brought order to my chaos, even as I constantly reevaluate how to rationally describe that God, who may not, after all, be (as the God rebuffed by the problem of suffering is described) omnipotent and omniscient.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment, Sandalstraps. I sometimes wish this were my experience as well.
Unfortunately, I don't think I have anything (much less a "rock of faith") under that shifting surface of belief. Perhaps the whole concept of faith is something I thought I knew--but learned incorrectly. Perhaps I need my emotional or spiritual self to relearn what faith means and why it's relevent.
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