Answering those who have lost their faith

I've had a long-standing interest in answering those who have doubts or questions about their faith. My main focuses are generally Jesus' resurrection, the general integrity of the New Testament gospel accounts, and the problem of evil. But today I have in mind a woman I met who had left the faith for a different kind of reason: two leaders in her church, married to each other, were each having affairs on the side. Of course that doesn't have a direct bearing on whether God exists, or whether Jesus loves her. Even the best of us mere mortals has both good and bad mixed together in us.

But that doesn't really let us off the hook. Not many should be teachers; teachers are held to a higher standard. Their failings will affect people in that way. It's a variation of the problem of evil: how can a 'good' institution allow things like that? How can 'good' people do things like that? For some, it's a short step from taking God's forgiveness for granted to becoming hardened sinners. And if those hardened sinners are teachers, other people find it's a short step out the door, especially if their faith is new and fragile.

Church leaders aren't the only ones in responsible positions. I know people who were turned away from their faith by their parents' mistreatment or hypocrisy.

Here's the thing: If we count ourselves as witnesses for Christ, we're all responsible. I'm not saying that each of us is obligated to become the next great saint (though I suspect that one person the caliber of Saint Francis or Mother Theresa outweighs a dozen of the snide attackers). I'm saying that simply refraining from evil is far more important than we've given it credit for. If we consider ourselves witnesses for Christ -- or if we're the only Christian that someone knows -- we cannot be the one with the temper, the one with the hatred, the one with the arrogance, the one bearing false witness or slandering our neighbor, the one trying to dominate or put down the other person, or the one cheating or stealing or committing adultery.

Because honestly, some of the atheists that I've met have arguments that don't fully make sense or aren't particularly persuasive, and once an objection is answered they simply produce another objection. That's the sign of someone whose real reason is held in reserve or kept protected. May we not be the reason that they have left the faith.

Create in me a clean heart: Digging into David's prayer

I return to King David's prayer of repentance time and again: "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me" (Psalm 51:!0). He captures the human desire so well as we long for a purity and holiness beyond our ability to attain. So I want to consider what a clean heart might look like. 

• A clean heart will be joyful: "Restore unto me the joy of your salvation" (Psalm 51:12)
• A clean heart has rid itself of things that make it unclean: "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice." (Ephesians 4:31)
• A clean heart holds fast to and desires the Spirit of God: "Take not your Holy Spirit from me" (Psalm 51:11)
• A clean heart desires to be presentable to God: "Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer." (Psalm 19:14)
• A clean heart is a treasury, carefully filled with treasures: "Therefore every scribe who has been instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old." (Matthew 13:52)

So the faithful are careful about repentance, about reading Scripture, studying together, and pursuing wisdom. These are some of the ways we build the treasures in our hearts. 

Seeing the Invisible God: The Holy Spirit in symbols

The Holy Spirit is God's gift to us of himself. This is similar to Christ, as Immanuel. As we cannot see the Spirit, the Bible provides some other symbols to help us understand the Spirit: 

• Wind symbolizes the Holy Spirit: a breath that gives life. 
• A dove symbolizes the Holy Spirit: a creature of the air and relatively untouched by earthly problems, it is gentle, an emblem of peace and hope. Doves were also at times used as a sacrifice. 
• Water symbolizes the Holy Spirit: washing, cleansing, and renewal. We see the Holy Spirit descend on Christ at his baptism with water, and speaking to his disciples about a baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire. 
• Fire symbolizes the Holy Spirit: light for wisdom and understanding, counsel and knowledge. While the Psalmist praised the Word of God as "a lamp to my feet and a light to my path," the image used for that light and guidance is that of fire. Fire was associated with courage, empowerment, and freedom from fear. Fire was also used to purify and refine.

Build-A-Bear Deity Kit: Modern Idols

When I was first forming my understanding of the contemporary world, idols were rare in the U.S., at least in the literal sense of the word "idols". Sure, it was easy enough for people to commit idolatry of a certain kind, putting something else in the place of God. But the kind where people constructed something and called it a god and worshipped it, that was rare. 

Again, it has long been a quip -- a barb, a joke -- that people make gods in their own images. Honestly, given how "understanding" works as we fit things into our minds, we could hardly make any other kind of deity than one that is in our own images. The characteristics must be brought from our own minds and our own understanding, and obviously reflect us. But often that had been meant as a critique of limiting our ideas to the ones already found in our own minds. 

What I have seen recently is the idea -- which some people I know take seriously -- that it is desirable to create a god in our own image based on what we wish that god would be. I have a friend who was  invited to create her own idea of God based on her own needs and preferences, who thought it was exhilarating to be free from all constraints and have a god about whom she had no doubts or reservations. There was even a paper-and-pencil exercise where she decided the traits and characteristics she desired her god to have, based on some reflective journaling. It didn't even seem strange to her. The awareness that she just made it up wasn't seen as a problem. It does not bother her that she prays to a god that she drafted in a journaling exercise. That this deity would never be able to have any insight for her, beyond what she had given it, would be a problem for another day (if ever). I can hope that her understanding of God retains some roots, though there is no guarantee of it. 

We all have misunderstandings of God. When the infinite God meets our finite minds, our mental images are all incomplete. But usually not intentionally so, or with disregard for the best common experiences of humanity through the ages. 

Our culture's relationship to truth and objectivity has changed much in recent years. As BK was posting over at CADRE Comments, there are new challenges calling us forward. 

Genealogies (in Scripture and elsewhere)

When I was a child, my grandparents would try to interest me in the family tree. They would tell me the names of generations who had died before I was born. And at the time I had no interest, much to my regret now. Because time has changed my perspective on that, and more strongly as I have recently sorted through old family photos trying to identify who was who, and how to view old 35mm slides, and how to figure who was the photographer of various scenes. 

As I child I used to see that kind of thing as belonging to an irrelevant past, what I now think of as lost treasure. My grandparents weren't telling me of irrelevancies, they were telling me about their own parents and grandparents and before. I began to feel it more strongly when my father died: that he had become one of the names on a list, memories that lived only in certain people. And it grew on me that all those names from before were my people, my family that I had never met. They are a missing piece of my puzzle. And I am a vital link in their future, as they were for the generations before them. 

The cultures that value genealogy -- such as the Hebrews -- may resonate more strongly than I do with seeing the endless lists of people. And as the years go by, the lists of names even in Scripture become more meaningful to me. The lives, the eras, the stories of how they managed, are a treasure. 

When we forget or devalue the past, we lose part of ourselves. But it can be found again. 

Love hopes all things

When I was a child I spoke as a child. I understood as a child. I reasoned as a child. When I was grown, I put away childish things. Now we see as through a glass darkly, but then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known. And faith, hope, and love remain, these three. But the greatest of these is love. (Paul, 1 Cor 13:11-13)

In Paul's much-quoted passage about spiritual gifts and spiritual maturity, I do not always credit that faith, hope, and love are seen as having the most potential for maturity in our spirituality. When it comes to hope, it's easy for me to get caught up in what I see: it's not necessarily cause for hope. But "we see as through a glass, darkly." I don't see everything there is to see, and what I do see isn't always seen clearly. And I get caught up in what I know. "I know in part," and tend to forget how much can be missed. 

Earlier, Paul had mentioned some characteristics of love. It included: "Love hopes all things." I can become resigned or even cynical, in a distrust of hope. I can tell myself that the lack of hope is realism. If so, it's a kind of "realism" which overlooks the reality that a situation might be transformed. I can assume that "what we see now" and "what we know now" is the final word, forgetting the limits of what we see and what we know. If "love hopes all things", then it is right that I allow myself to hope the best for all people, even if hope seems like a longshot. 

Forgiveness and Restored Fellowship

Lately I have heard more than one person proudly announce forgiveness by saying something along these lines: "I'll forgive so that I am not burdened," without any plans to reconcile. They may also mention that harboring a grudge is like drinking a poison and hoping the other person dies, and so they stop drinking the poison. (From the tone of voice, they may still wish the other person dies.) 

And yet forgiveness, as we know it from God, is a forgiveness that does not write off the relationship. God's forgiveness always hoped we would not die ("takes no pleasure in the death of the sinner"). God's forgiveness is not for personal peace-of-mind, to get away from the uncomfortable feeling of being mindful of a wrong toward him. God's forgiveness is not a detachment but a reconciliation. So forgiveness from God is not merely the end of resentment, but the renewal of the relationship. 

Of course it takes two to reconcile. That said: a mere detachment cannot lead to reconciliation; it never sought it in the first place. In that way, detachment can resemble condemnation more than it resembles forgiveness in the Christian sense. 

With detachment alone, the natural outcome is that people become more and more disconnected, more isolated. To build fellowship and community, it's necessary to reconnect. It's harder work, but it is how God forgives us.