When we were children, we thought we had it all figured out. Life was about good vs evil. We wanted to be the “good guys” and to triumph over the “bad guys.” So all we had to do was learn the difference between the two, choose the good, and we'd be all set, right? But as we grow up and work our way through adulthood, we come to realize that it's not that simple.

As Terryl and Fiona Givens state in Chapter 2 of their book “The Crucible of Doubt,”

[T]he circumstances that define the reality of the human predicament are not a blatant choice between Good and Evil but a wrenching decision to be made between competing sets of Good.

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We feel unmoored if our religion fails to answer all our questions, if it does not resolve our anxious fears, if it does not tie up all loose ends. We want a script, and we find we stand before a blank canvas. We expect a road map, and we find we have only a compass.

“Unmoored” is exactly what I felt like as I have examined my faith and encountered questions I couldn't find the answers to – or the answers I was expecting, anyway.

But maybe true religion isn't supposed to give us conclusive answers to all our questions or make us feel warm and fuzzy all the time. Maybe it's meant to make us uncomfortable as we are compelled to examine our own hearts in light of what we do know about what Jesus Christ has taught us – and as we try to make sense of what we don't understand.

This is nothing new. The New Testament is full of stories about the disciples of Christ being constantly made uncomfortable both by the teachings of Christ they understood and the teachings they didn't understand.

So maybe the fact that I am wrestling with questions is not the bad thing I thought it was. Maybe it's the point.

#100DaysToOffload (No. 157) #faith #Lent #Christianity

One of the things I chose to abstain from for Lent was Twitch – both streaming and viewing other streams. But it has cut me off socially from good friends I enjoy interacting with there, and it occurred to me during a sleepless night last night that I'm feeling socially isolated.

It doesn't help that, in addition to taking a break from Twitch, I deleted my Discord because I don't trust the company anymore. So I've been trying to seek out other online communities on IRC, Jabber, etc. but not really finding any that click with me.

I plan to reengage with Twitch before Easter while trying to be careful about not using it as mindless entertainment or background noise.

But I also realized: I have no real-life friends that live near me. My only IRL social interaction is with my family and my church community. I love my family dearly, but we need friends, too. And I love my church community, but I don't interact with them much outside of church meetings – with the exception of occasional visits in their homes as part of my leadership role, which I absolutely love.

Online friends are great, and I have met some genuinely good people that way, but electronic interaction is no substitute for in-person interaction.

We need people. And I need to make more friends in real life.

#100DaysToOffload (No. 156) #faith #Lent #Twitch #family #friends #loneliness #tech

Earlier this Lenten season, I expressed some thoughts and questions I had about the influence of the Holy Spirit. Does He communicate with us through feelings? Thoughts? Reason? I think it's all of the above. Chapter 1 of the book “The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith” by Terryl Givens and Fiona Givens helped me understand this.

The Givens make the case that there are different ways of knowing. We can learn much through reason, but not everything. We can learn much through emotion, but not everything. Reason and emotion don't have to be mutually exclusive, nor should they be.

They use art as an example. Reason tells us how a beautiful painting was created, but it cannot tell us what it means or how we are supposed to interpret or react to it.

In most of life’s greatest transactions, where the stakes are the highest, it is to the heart that we rightly turn, although not in utter isolation from the rational and reasonable. But whom to marry, when to discipline a child, when to let go of a dream, what sacrifices to make and promises to keep—these are decisions best made when emotion is moderated but not obliterated by reason, by logic, by “scientific” thinking. And these decisions are certainly made, not in the absence of truth, but in recognizing those very truths which logic and science may be powerless to detect. (“The Crucible of Doubt,” Chapter 1)

I had begun to think that some past experiences where I believed I felt the influence of the Holy Spirit testifying of truth to my heart might have been just me feeling really good at the time. After the fact, it would be so easy for me to rationalize them into irrelevance. But I cannot do that. Because if I am honest with myself, those experiences were more than just me being overly emotional. They were God communing with me. I know this because in those moments, I felt His love for me.

Do a camera, a DNA sequencer, and a full-spectrum lab report provide the truest, the richest account of who I am? Or do my spouse, my children, and my circle of friends? Love does not blur the reality behind the appearance. Love reveals reality. So why would we privilege scientific rationality over our intuitive, emotion-laden ways of perceiving truth? (“The Crucible of Doubt,” Chapter 1)

#100DaysToOffload (No. 155) #faith #Lent #Christianity