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26 febrero Italy Trip and Update--Please Read!!!This year has been a challenging but exciting ride. Hillary and I have moved. We are currently living in a loft in south Dallas. It’s an artsy community with tons of stuff to do. I have a longer commute to school, but it’s a better situation overall. And our pet rabbit Petunia has adjusted nicely. Meanwhile I finished my Master of Theology degree and am in my second semester of PhD work in Philosophy of Religion. Hillary is busy with photography. Between artistry and studies, we’ve had to work hard to get by. But God is good. As for ministry, we’ve had some great opportunities these last few months. * South Africa Teaching Trip—last summer John traveled with a group from Southern Evangelical Seminary. The group is called T.E.A.M (Tactical Evangelism and Apologetics Mission). We went into Johannesburg, Pretoria and Potchefstrum, South Africa and taught in universities and churches on apologetics topics like the New Atheistm, occultism, defending the faith, worldview thinking, and ethics. * Love Comes to Town: A Falling Whistles Event—on February 7th Hillary did the photography at a Falling Whistles event in our loft complex to raise money for orphaned children in the Congo. About 1500 people attended and $35,000 was raised. She’s still responding to the interest raised through her pictures (www.hillarymorgan.com). * The God-Dialogues—this spring John is coordinating a round-table discussion between atheists and theists hosted by three universities: University of Texas Dallas, University of Texas Arlington, and Texas A&M. Michael Craven of the Center for Christ and Culture will join John for two sessions with Dr. Robert Sloan Lee, a college professor in the Dallas area, filling in at the A&M venue. They will be dialoguing with two representatives from the North Texas Church of Free Thought, area atheists, Dr. Zachary Moore and Derek Sansone. The Dialogues are slated for March 23rd 7-9pm (UTD), April 9th 7-9pm (UTA), and April 23rd 7-9pm (A&M). This summer, May 13-27, we have the opportunity to go on another teaching trip to Italy. We will be returning to Naples and Rome. But we’ll also venture into Milan this time. When we went in the winter of ’07 we found ministry moments everywhere—small groups inviting us to teach, guest speaking at multiple churches every night, university training, church conferences, all in the span of about 10 days. This year we have more venues opening and more time to invest. The evangelical church in Italy is hungry for truth that can stand up to objections. They are desperate to see the Gospel in action within a skeptical world. These trips are important, but as for Hill and I, they are tough on the marriage since we haven’t been able to pool enough money in the past for both of us to go. The biggest blessing of all would be to raise enough for both of us to go. The team always needs a photographer, so she’d be a vital asset. Plus, she’s a sharp apologist herself. The cost for both of us to go is around $4000. Please pray for us that God would make a way, pave the way, prepare the people, and shine through all of it. And please consider contributing to this trip. Please make all gifts in the following manner. To: Southern Evangelical Seminary T.E.A.M. For: John or Hillary Ferrer Mail to: Southern Evangelical Seminary 3000 Tilley Morris Road, Matthews NC, 28105
Sincerely, John Ferrer 21 febrero 10 Songs That Changed My Life1. Eric Clapton "Tears in Heaven" 2. Led Zeppelin "Going to California" 3. White Stripe "Icky Thump" 4. Jeff Buckley (version) "Hallelujah" (the original might be better but I forget the artist) 5. Led Zeppelin "Over the Hills and Far Away" 6. The Guess Who "American Woman" 7. Queen "Bohemian Rhapsody" 8. Cake "Going the Distance" 9. Doby Gray "Drift Away" 10. Keller Williams "Kidney in a Cooler" The Gift of Grace is Wrapped in Discarded Paper (aka: The Un-Sermon)[I haven't written many sermons lately, and rarely any more do my sermons speak outside of apologetics purposes anymore. So when I found myself jotting these sermon notes down this sunday, I surprised even myself. This is a little Christmas message about grace] "The Un- Sermon" There is perhaps no subject matter more fundamental to life and reality than the doctrine of God. And the link between God and man is grace alone. So that makes grace the single most important lifeline that man can hold onto. Or, if you think about it another way, God's grace is the ocean where we are all afloat. Were God's sustaining grace not present, then we would sink into non-existence. I'm not merely talking about whether we go to heaven, I'm talking about whether our electrons will still revolve around their nuclei within our every atom; whether or leptons and quarks will continue to exist at a subatomic level; whether our bodily organs will continue to function and cooperate, and whether our solar system will continue its stubborn survival. I'm talking about the very sustaining of our existence so that we don't dissolve into total nothingness. I literally mean the God "in whom we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). I never tire of gazing into the infinite ocean of God's grace. No subject fascinates me more. And since our present life and future hope rest squarely on His grace, we have good reason to wonder at the nature of His grace. Yet, strangely enough, grand-scale realities are sometimes so big that we can't help but miss them. I think it was C.S. Lewis who said, "If you want to understand the wetness of water, don't ask a fish." A fish knows nothing of the wetness of water. Or, to illustrate further, it is like, looking very closely at some writing. An inch away from the page you may still be able to see what it reads. But a micrometer from the page, viewed under the microscope, you might be able to see parts of it, but you can no longer see what it reads. You are literally too close, too submerged in it, to be able to see what it reads. For the fish, this over-obvious reality is water, for us, this over-obvious reality might be the experience of time, or space, or our own existence, or grace. Divine grace is for us like water is to a fish, it is the sustaining environment whereby we "live and move," but the analogy breaks down because for fish and men alike, God's grace is how we all "have our being." It is God's sustaining and gracious activity in our cosmos that gives both fish and men both life and existence. The grace of God is everywhere visible, little seen, ever-present but unnoticed, so obvious it is beyond us. God operates in gracious ways that are just crazy enough to be true. God's grace appears in grand order when a few hundred Israelites in Gideon's army defeat scores of thousands of Midianites (Judges 7). God's grace operates in subtler ways, in gentle healing (Matt 14:14). And God's grace is downright confusing when he engineers pain and suffering in redeeming ways that only a divine Daddy can do. For example, God first gave man the "gift" of death so that we would not have to live forever in our fallen state (Gen 3:22-24). And God tells Paul amidst his "thorn in the flesh," that "My grace is sufficient for you" (2 Cor 12:9). God's grace is clearly not the safe and easy doctrine that it often seems. God's grace is grand and glorious, odd and awkward, profound and mysterious. And whatever it is, it is not cheap. I hardly need note Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "Cost of Discipleship" where the author contrasts "cheap grace" with "costly grace." Grace may be free but never for a moment should we think it cheap. And so we come to the point at issue: the Baby Jesus typifies God's grace. Our response to Him is our response to God's grace. Let us dwell first on how the Christ child means grace. The baby Jesus was an infinite treasure to purchase the souls of men from slavery, yet this treasure, we find, is wrapped in burial shrouds, carried by a poor unwed teenager, lain across hay and spittle, away from home, late at night, outside a stranger's hotel, in a barn, in a feeding troth for barn animals. This child is the most important person in existence, and yet His entry into this world is the practical equivalent of being born in the parking lot of a pawn shop and first wrapped in newspaper. The infinite eternal God has here pierced time and space, donned a human nature, and taken on mortality for the express purpose of dying another man's death. And this Christ child has hidden himself in poverty among commoners so that merely mortal men could meet God. This is God's grace at work. Confused yet? Amazed? I say yes on both accounts. Let us look deeper into the story of His birth and see then how God's grace comes to us. 1) Undeservedly--first we can see from Mary and Joseph that they were not especially deserving. Adequate for God's purposes, yes. But Scripture makes no hint that they were sinless nor that they deserved to play the role they did in the redemption of mankind. Circumstantially, they were barely fit for the task. They could not afford to give baby Jesus the best educational opportunities, nor the best food and shelter, nor the most elite social network to get His message out to the world. They had little to give to baby Jesus, but what they had they gave it all. Mary and Joseph both took some miraculous convincing before they would believe that Mary was supernaturally impregnated (Matt 2:19-24; Luke 1:26-38). Yet God endured their doubt and used them anyone. 2) Unnaturally--the Baby Jesus came in a strange way. Not only was this baby born by supernatural implantation, but the baby Jesus was born away from home, amidst hostile governance, to what may have been an unwed couple. The more natural means of child-birth within the Biblical Judeo-Christian tradition is to have one man and one wife birthing the child within the stability of a loving and fruitful marriage. And the more natural and healthy manner is to settle in, and have the child in a stable and settled home--not in transit, with the first few years of His life being lived on the run from hostile governing authorities (Matt 2:13-23). But since this birth was in fact miraculous, it is unusual and almost unbelievable. It is altogether unnatural. 3) Unwelcomed--now Mary and Joseph did, eventually, embrace the the role conferred to them through the angel Gabriel. But, let us remember, that they did not ask for this prestigious position, nor was it an entirely pleasant or comfortable position to be in. Meanwhile most of the world made no effort to welcome baby Jesus. Beyond the supernaturally informed insight of Mary and Jesus, a few shepherds, and perhaps some accidentally faithful Magi, the rest of the world did not recognize or welcome Jesus into the world. As Jesus grew from a child to a man, and as he began His earthly ministry, he would become a revolutionary of the most radical sort. He would so change society and threaten convention that He faced inhospitable and intolerant opposition throughout His earthly ministry. God's grace is largely unwelcomed. Summing up, we see a picture of God's grace. It's the same picture today. God's grace comes unnaturally, undeservedly, and without welcome. Yet we would not even exist to reject His gracious advances were we not already swimming in His grace. Like the ignorant fish we are immersed in God's grace so much that we take it for granted. Reader and listener, let yourself see the grandeur of God's grace and welcome it for all its supernatural and undeserved glory. You are no mother Mary or Joseph, but God wants to show you grace by using you in a bigger plan then you could ever fashion by your own hands. He first wants to save you from yourself and the death you deserve. He then wants to salvage your life and make a miracle worker out of you, a carrier of grace to other thankless wretches like you once were. He even wants to make out of you a masterpiece of praise, an artwork of worship whose very life is an act of adoration towards God. There is no such meaningfulness to be found by our own artifice. We could never manufacture such meaning in our lives. We are made for worship, and no other meaning in life matters so much. Only by God's grace are we allowed and able to worship Him and so discover again for the first time the very reason we were made. God is here extending a gracious hand to you today. Whereever you are in your journey with Him--off the trail, far along it, not even on it--please receive God's grace for the transforming and heart-warming gift that it is. God's grace is but another name for His love. Do not reject the only perfect and infinite love in life. Do not ignore the Christ child and so reject the man Jesus, his crucifixion, his resurrection, and your own only future hope. He has come in love, he has come by grace. Welcome into your life this miracle of love and grace. Eugenics and AbortionEugenics or "good genes" refers to selective breeding techniques designed to "improve the race." Usually this meant aborting babies and sterilizing people so they can't pass on their problems to children. But on the lighter side it also included birth control--however, this was birth control for the sake of social evolution (which we'll get to later). Today, eugenics is a dirty word. And rightfully so. It paints over so much inhumanity, racism, genocide, with a thin excuse of "bettering the world." Eugenics conjures images of Nazi Germany sterilizing the handicapped, of Gattaca where "inferiors" are not allowed to live, and of sterilized imbeciles in insane asylums. But little do Americans know that it was U.S. social policies which Hitler claimed as inspiration for his eugenics legislation in WWII. How could such an aweful practice sprout on American turf?
The seedbed of ideas is not hard to find. The eugenics policies that were passed in America were in the 1920's and 30's and they were not repealled until "eugenics" became passe after Hitler's exploits gave it a bad name. In the 1860's the bookshelfs bowed under the heavy social weight of the newly release Origin of the Species, by Charles Darwin. But to be more technical, the title is: On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection: The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. Here Darwin put forward the idea of competing animals vying for limited resources and ultimate survival in a world that is "red in tooth and claw." This natural selection idea was not all that new, but it was clearly presented and abundantly illustrated in Darwin's book. But built into Darwin's argument was a population scare forecasted by Thomas Malthus in his famous (but seriously flawed) Principle of Population. Written a few decades earlier, Malthus argued that human populations grow by multiplication while the food resources grow additively and so, he predicted, we would all run out of food within a few generations. By this logic, Human survival is a zero-sum game where we will have to restrict our growing population or "return to nature" killing each other to keep ourselves alive. Humans are just more animals subject to the cold logic of natural selection.
Meanwhile, religious conversative influence in the universities was starting to wane around the start of the 20th century as well, as historically Christian schools like Brown, Yale, Harvard and Princeton were caving in to German rationalism (with its brutal skepticism), higher criticism (which questioned the historicity and truth of the Bible), and theological liberalism (which dismissed much of orthodoxy and historic Christian ethics). Ideas like the sacredness of life and the "imago dei" were being reinterpreted naturalistically or abandoned altogether. The university then had little power to fight the tide of evolutionary appeal. Naturally, with such ideas leading the way, social darwinism rode into town in royal cavalcade. By the turn of the century social evolution was swirling aboutin educated circles and into popular conversation. By the 1920's and 30's court cases and legislation were appearing which pushed for sterilization of imbeciles, poor people, minorities and all sorts of "defectives" as they were called. In less than 20 years, estimates indicate about 600,000 people were sterilized, many of whom thought they were getting some kind of flu shot. Of course, when Hitler took the eugenics experiment into the public limelight and coldly applied its brutal logic the term became passe and most overtly eugenics-oriented legislation was repealed.
However, America has not recovered from its eugenics experiment of the 1920-30's. We have just transferred the emphasis to abortion and translated the lingo into the language of "women's rights" (though the early women's lib movement carried the 'right to life' cause alongside the suffrage issue), and "choice" (though dead babies have no choice, and the vast majority of pregnancies already involved the choice of consensual sex).
True to form, abortion on demand has preyed overwhelmingly on minority and impoverished populations--serving the same purposes for which eugenics and social evolution were drawn. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, herself saw the Aryan race as the most advanced race and in her "Negro Project" she targeted black ministers as cultural support in her cause saying, "The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We do not want the word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it occurs to any of their more rebellious members" (quoted in, Michael K. Flaterly, "White Lie" The American Spectator Aug. 1992). At the time she had both sterilization and birth control in mind because abortion was not yet legal. Now all three are legal, and all that has been lost is the popular acceptance of terms like "eugenics" and "social evolution." Sanger's cause was hardly slowed even when social evolution was scandalized by the cold logic of the Holocaust and and Hitler's "Final Solution." We cannot estimate how many people were preempted by the 600,000 (estimated) sterilizations in American eugenics legislation in the 1920's and 30's. But we do know that since Roe versus Wade legalized abortion in 1973 in America, in just 35 years America has seen 49,000,000 legal abortions.
This year America is slated to pass the 50,000,000 mark for legal abortions.
-That is almost as much as the populations of California and New York combined. Or about 2x the population of Texas.
-That is more than the populations of either South Africa or South Korea.
-That is about 6 million more than Stalin killed during his communist regime in Russia.
-That is about 4.5 x's as many as Hitler ever killed in Nazi Germany
-That is more than 100 x's as many as Mussolini killed in Fascist Italy.
-That is 50 x's more than the total number of American's who have died in combat throughout U.S. History.
-That is 12 million more than all the deaths in combat in all the wars in all the world during the entire 20th century.
Abortion is an arm of eugenics, and, if you listen closely to the arguments used today to support it you can hear the same logic of social evolution. I pray that God has mercy on our country and intervenes to stop this genocide. We dare not cannibalize our kids for mere comfort any longer and presume to ask God's favor or blessing on our country. Lord save us from ourselves. Let the terror stop.
If you are considering or know someone who is considering an abortion, please do not be another statistic in that 50 million. That is a record you don't want to be a part of. There are other options. Thoughts on doubtDoubt can be a scary place. In a turning and transient world, when time flies too fast for our memory to follow, and our business is busyness, change seems to be the only constant. We cope by finding bits of solid ground to stand on. We survive by forging little nooks of security, places where we feel safe, where boring is good, and dependability is golden. We need bastions of protection just to get by. Sure we don't mind the swirling dervish of life sometimes, but we need breaks between the rides. We all need solid ground to stand on. Doubt can be like that whirling ride, or it can be a diminished spot of ground beneath us. If doubt overtakes us, we either cannot get off the ride anymore, or we step off it into emptiness.
But lets be honest. Everyone doubts. Doubt is like taxes, its obligatory. Sure, we wouldn't want to doubt ourselves into an asylum somewhere, but we also wouldn't want to be a naive gullible, a comparative bunny rabbit in this predatory world. How then can we harness our doubts and force them into submission to truth? Well, we first should consider what we're dealing with.
Three kinds of doubt stand out to me (this is borrowed from Dr. Gary Habermas who first clarified these categories for me).
1) Intellectual Doubt--this is the reasoned and thoughtful kind of doubt where questions are raised about some proposed belief and unless answers come we suspend belief. Scientific, philosophical, theological or what have you--intellectual doubt is the "thinking mans" mode of doubt.
2) Emotional Doubt--this is the emotionally based doubt where, regardless of intellectual objections, the locus of doubt is some hurt, anger, fear, or otherwise emotional distrust. In my estimation, the vast majority of skeptics, free-thinkers and disbelievers have emotional doubt lurking beneath their intellectual questions.
3) Volitional Doubt--this is the willful and deliberate doubt, which may have originally sprung from emotional hurt or intellectual objections, but has since cooled and calcified into simple choice. This kind of doubt is the scariest because it cannot be assuaged or reasoned with. As such, it is emotionally and intellectually oblivious.
Intellectual doubt is my forte. It's relatively easy to address since the questioner is simply looking for answers to the question. Intellectual answers. Logical, scientific, theological, and philosophical problems can often find strong answers, if not conclusive answers so that intellectual doubt is resolved.
Emotional doubt is a bit trickier. The questions that arise are are often attempts to vent an emotional hurt, rather than seek an intellectual answer (for example, "There can't be a good God if he lets little babies die every day, right?"). The questions and doubts that are expressed sometimes don't even do that. Sometimes they just obscure and deflect us from seeing the emotional wound where the doubt really lurks. Here the intellectual questions can be answered without resolving much or any of the doubt. The intellectual questions are more of a smoke screen than a barrier. The real barrier is usually some kind of hurt. to address emotional doubt we have to address the hurt. A warm hug can sometimes do the trick. Usually though it takes some long-term loving friendship, earned trust, a patient ear, and gentle counsel. These needs are met existentially, not "rationally," so to speak.
Volitional doubt is even trickier. This kind of doubt might be exposed by first addressing the intellectual and emotional needs. When the person has no significant hurt or rational objection, he or she may still prefer to doubt and stay comfortable in their old lifestyle, their secret sin, their independence, their addiction, or what have you.
Somewhere between the last two kinds of doubt lurk the three main reasons for disbelief (that I can see at least).
Pride, fear and comfort.
Untold millions of people would rather reject faith in God than have to admit they were wrong, than cede to his authority, than step into the unknown, than leave their comfort zone. Rarely do I meet a person whose sole, or even main, reason for disbelief is a genuinely intellectual reason. Usually what happens with an "intellectual doubter" is after searching out his or her questions about God (or "the faith," or "the resurrection," or "the Bible") to the furthest end and seeing that strong reasons remain for believing God, they still don't want to believe or are still emotionally unable to believe. Resolving the intellectual doubts merely cleared away the smokescreen so that the real reasons for disbelief can be addressed.
so what is the moral of the story then? I suppose the simplest starting point is to admit that we don't always know ourselves as well as we think we do. Once admitting that we need courage enough to follow the truth wherever it leads. This is a willful commitment, a scary one at that. And following the truth is rarely a straight and narrow path. Then, lastly, we humbly pursue the truth.
to put this is brutally painful terms, consider the lonely maiden wanting a husband. There are millions of eligible women, good girls and would-be domestic goddesses/career women (take your pick) with a great work ethic, a gentle spirit, and undying faithfullness ready to be unleashed on a husband. The only problem is they have no good husband material available. For there millions of those women, there are about 12 good guys to choose from. So what do they do? They do what anyone desperate enough does, they settle. I'm not talking about realistic settling, I'm talking about pessimistic settling. I'm not saying they should hold out for prince charming, I'm saying they shouldn't marry the dragon. The truth is, and they know this, they should wait for a good respectable God-fearing and responsible man. However emotional doubt can be very strong ("Being an old maid is the worst thing ever!; No man will ever love me") and it can be well hidden by intellectual doubts ("All the good guys seem to be gay or taken; I really don't have a 'right' or 'deserve' anything better than this?; Hardly anyone 'holds' out for their Mr. Right anymore."). Reasoning with such women does little good. The locus of doubt is emotional, but if not treated it hardens into intellectual and volitional doubt.
I know I already "concluded" but perhaps some clarification would help to apply this insight.
1) Treat the doubt according to its kind--intellectual for the intellectual, emotional for the emotional, and persistent prayer for the volitional doubt.
2) Use your doubt--don't run from it, explain it away, or pretend its not real. It need not master you. Rather let it be the insightful question that helps your further along to better answers.
3) Known what you know, and doubt your doubts--if you find that doubt is getting the best of you, remember what you do know. And don't let anyone talk you into unreasonable, baseless, and illicit doubts. In the mean time, question your very questions. Some questions are uncalled for, and you don't have to let them trouble you. Why question whether truth exists? Do you really believe that you can't trust your senses AT ALL? Why question your own existence? If you have no real intellectual reason to doubt your wife's faithfulness, then why worry about it?
4) Emotions are a better follower than leader--when you find that your doubts are more emotional than anything else, treat it with the caution and care you should use with any emotion. Don't let emotion take you on a roller coaster ride. You have great authority over your emotions so don't believe the lie that you have to "follow your heart," or "if I feel it, it must be true." If you can let your emotions inform you but not guide you then you'll find that emotions are a great and helpful support as you pursue truth.
5) Let your intellectual doubts correct your faith--be a life-long learner, ask sensible and responsible questions to correct your faith. When you have good reasons, and the pros outweigh the cons, then you can start extending some faith in that direction, reasonable faith. If you wait for absolute certainty you'll be waiting a while. But if you hold out for high probability, or a good defensible position, then you can start building a worldview and a life.
Doubt can be good. Truth is out there and you can know it, so let your doubts be just another avenue to it. Thoughts on doubtDoubt can be a scary place. In a turning and transient world, when time flies too fast for our memory to follow, and our business is busyness, change seems to be the only constant. We cope by finding bits of solid ground to stand on. We survive by forging little nooks of security, places where we feel safe, where boring is good, and dependability is golden. We need bastions of protection just to get by. Sure we don't mind the swirling dervish of life sometimes, but we need breaks between the rides. We all need solid ground to stand on. Doubt can be like that whirling ride, or it can be a diminished spot of ground beneath us. If doubt overtakes us, we either cannot get off the ride anymore, or we step off it into emptiness.
But lets be honest. Everyone doubts. Doubt is like taxes, its obligatory. Sure, we wouldn't want to doubt ourselves into an asylum somewhere, but we also wouldn't want to be a naive gullible, a comparative bunny rabbit in this predatory world. How then can we harness our doubts and force them into submission to truth? Well, we first should consider what we're dealing with.
Three kinds of doubt stand out to me (this is borrowed from Dr. Gary Habermas who first clarified these categories for me).
1) Intellectual Doubt--this is the reasoned and thoughtful kind of doubt where questions are raised about some proposed belief and unless answers come we suspend belief. Scientific, philosophical, theological or what have you--intellectual doubt is the "thinking mans" mode of doubt.
2) Emotional Doubt--this is the emotionally based doubt where, regardless of intellectual objections, the locus of doubt is some hurt, anger, fear, or otherwise emotional distrust. In my estimation, the vast majority of skeptics, free-thinkers and disbelievers have emotional doubt lurking beneath their intellectual questions.
3) Volitional Doubt--this is the willful and deliberate doubt, which may have originally sprung from emotional hurt or intellectual objections, but has since cooled and calcified into simple choice. This kind of doubt is the scariest because it cannot be assuaged or reasoned with. As such, it is emotionally and intellectually oblivious.
Intellectual doubt is my forte. It's relatively easy to address since the questioner is simply looking for answers to the question. Intellectual answers. Logical, scientific, theological, and philosophical problems can often find strong answers, if not conclusive answers so that intellectual doubt is resolved.
Emotional doubt is a bit trickier. The questions that arise are are often attempts to vent an emotional hurt, rather than seek an intellectual answer (for example, "There can't be a good God if he lets little babies die every day, right?"). The questions and doubts that are expressed sometimes don't even do that. Sometimes they just obscure and deflect us from seeing the emotional wound where the doubt really lurks. Here the intellectual questions can be answered without resolving much or any of the doubt. The intellectual questions are more of a smoke screen than a barrier. The real barrier is usually some kind of hurt. to address emotional doubt we have to address the hurt. A warm hug can sometimes do the trick. Usually though it takes some long-term loving friendship, earned trust, a patient ear, and gentle counsel. These needs are met existentially, not "rationally," so to speak.
Volitional doubt is even trickier. This kind of doubt might be exposed by first addressing the intellectual and emotional needs. When the person has no significant hurt or rational objection, he or she may still prefer to doubt and stay comfortable in their old lifestyle, their secret sin, their independence, their addiction, or what have you.
Somewhere between the last two kinds of doubt lurk the three main reasons for disbelief (that I can see at least).
Pride, fear and comfort.
Untold millions of people would rather reject faith in God than have to admit they were wrong, than cede to his authority, than step into the unknown, than leave their comfort zone. Rarely do I meet a person whose sole, or even main, reason for disbelief is a genuinely intellectual reason. Usually what happens with an "intellectual doubter" is after searching out his or her questions about God (or "the faith," or "the resurrection," or "the Bible") to the furthest end and seeing that strong reasons remain for believing God, they still don't want to believe or are still emotionally unable to believe. Resolving the intellectual doubts merely cleared away the smokescreen so that the real reasons for disbelief can be addressed.
so what is the moral of the story then? I suppose the simplest starting point is to admit that we don't always know ourselves as well as we think we do. Once admitting that we need courage enough to follow the truth wherever it leads. This is a willful commitment, a scary one at that. And following the truth is rarely a straight and narrow path. Then, lastly, we humbly pursue the truth.
to put this is brutally painful terms, consider the lonely maiden wanting a husband. There are millions of eligible women, good girls and would-be domestic goddesses/career women (take your pick) with a great work ethic, a gentle spirit, and undying faithfullness ready to be unleashed on a husband. The only problem is they have no good husband material available. For there millions of those women, there are about 12 good guys to choose from. So what do they do? They do what anyone desperate enough does, they settle. I'm not talking about realistic settling, I'm talking about pessimistic settling. I'm not saying they should hold out for prince charming, I'm saying they shouldn't marry the dragon. The truth is, and they know this, they should wait for a good respectable God-fearing and responsible man. However emotional doubt can be very strong ("Being an old maid is the worst thing ever!; No man will ever love me") and it can be well hidden by intellectual doubts ("All the good guys seem to be gay or taken; I really don't have a 'right' or 'deserve' anything better than this?; Hardly anyone 'holds' out for their Mr. Right anymore."). Reasoning with such women does little good. The locus of doubt is emotional, but if not treated it hardens into intellectual and volitional doubt.
I know I already "concluded" but perhaps some clarification would help to apply this insight.
1) Treat the doubt according to its kind--intellectual for the intellectual, emotional for the emotional, and persistent prayer for the volitional doubt.
2) Use your doubt--don't run from it, explain it away, or pretend its not real. It need not master you. Rather let it be the insightful question that helps your further along to better answers.
3) Known what you know, and doubt your doubts--if you find that doubt is getting the best of you, remember what you do know. And don't let anyone talk you into unreasonable, baseless, and illicit doubts. In the mean time, question your very questions. Some questions are uncalled for, and you don't have to let them trouble you. Why question whether truth exists? Do you really believe that you can't trust your senses AT ALL? Why question your own existence? If you have no real intellectual reason to doubt your wife's faithfulness, then why worry about it?
4) Emotions are a better follower than leader--when you find that your doubts are more emotional than anything else, treat it with the caution and care you should use with any emotion. Don't let emotion take you on a roller coaster ride. You have great authority over your emotions so don't believe the lie that you have to "follow your heart," or "if I feel it, it must be true." If you can let your emotions inform you but not guide you then you'll find that emotions are a great and helpful support as you pursue truth.
5) Let your intellectual doubts correct your faith--be a life-long learner, ask sensible and responsible questions to correct your faith. When you have good reasons, and the pros outweigh the cons, then you can start extending some faith in that direction, reasonable faith. If you wait for absolute certainty you'll be waiting a while. But if you hold out for high probability, or a good defensible position, then you can start building a worldview and a life.
Doubt can be good. Truth is out there and you can know it, so let your doubts be just another avenue to it. |
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