and if you don't believe that then look around.
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- Mike Bailey
- I started taking pics in 2004. I use a Canon PowerShot A640. I live in Rome, GA. I'm married and have three children. Feel free to post a comment on my pics or commentary.
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Author is my brainy friend, Jonathan Huggins
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8 comments:
"looking around" to determine whether or not there are too many prayers to satisfy might be like using eyes to determine that Harvey and the cars are inside the tobacco shop.
fair enough.
still...
chesterton said (or was it franklin? or lincoln? someone who is quoted a lot....) that orignal sin is the one point of theology that can be empirically demonstrated. one need merely open one's window and take a look at how people behave.
but it seems there is at least one other point of theology equally empirically obvious that ol'
chesterton missed: that god doesn't answer our prayers--or at least he answers them in ways that we cannot recognize. but if he answers them in ways we can't perceive or recognized as answered, then it might as well be zeus (or random chance) that accounts for what happens in our lives.
also, imagine he DOES answer our prayers but does so in ways that we can't recognize. if so, then surely we end up praying all the time for matters that have already been addressed by handled by god. in which case, well, then our praying is...inefficient, to say the least, if not outright moot in lots of cases.
by the way,applebee is a terrific (if anonymous) name. i really like it.
If we are not finding answers to prayer, perhaps we need to retrain our looking.
Sometimes I tell my children "no." Sometimes I give them less of an answer than they would like--at times it is better for them to seek the answer on their own.
Sometimes I let them suffer for a while before I fish them out of their jam. Sometimes I don't fish them out at all.
Sometimes they see, later, that I was there all along, structuring the answers or lack thereof for their own good. Even if they never understand, even if they turn against me for my silence, my parenting motives are (most of the time...I hope...) out of love for them.
So it is with God, except that His motives are always pure, and in our favor. Zeus and Chance cannot claim this.
God is not a push-button god, waiting to do our bidding, even when our bidding is, in our own minds, "for good". That would be a weak god indeed. His life on earth was all about us, so much so that He laid it down. He asks that our lives be all about Him.....our Father's business, not our own. About getting on His page, about obeying with and without understanding, about trust, as a young child trusts a loving parent.
Perhaps a good starting point for effective prayer is that we may be about the Father's business: Thy will, not mine.
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Anonymity is like a camera lens; it can emphasize the message and minimize distractions. In this case, I am truly anonymous, as we've never met.
Applebee, nothing wrong with anonymity on a blog. fo sho. in fact, i really like your point about anonymity. but it's also kind of fun, no, to fish around a little and guess who my responders are. i sense my audience is remarkably small in number (which, perhaps, is what my blog deserves)so my default position is that i probably know my responders.
but since we haven't met, i'm all the more flattered you've taken the time to write such a thoughtful and measured response. in fact, i think your answer to my semi-petulent comments are about as good as they can get. they are just the kinds of things I have said in the past to those who are searching for answers during times of trial. (though sadly i was never as eloquent or as thorough as you). and i still think there are a couple days in the week i believe in the thrust of what you say. And there several other days in the week i think they “might” be right.
so....no real argument from me here. however, i will say only this. there are just many theological questions/problems that cannot be finessed with clever or even thoughtful and prayerful and faithful responses. just two examples: why god saves some and not others, and why god allows evil to exist. or one more: whether something is good because god demands it or whether god demands it because it's good. most of the time we offer "place holder" answers that merely push the questions back by one remove. there are reasons why some questions about god and his creation have been with us and have been argued over by the brightest minds for over two-thousand years. they are insoluble. the problems are real.
i have virtually no dispute with any of your points. no, we don't want a "push button" god. no, we can't expect to understand god's plan for things. i mean i can hardly schedule my days without confusion. yes, we are right to assume that god has our good in mind even if we do not ourselves.
but at the end of the day, your answer is, finally, this: trust. you say, in effect, “hey, the evidence you understand as evidence is not really evidence. it's part of a scheme for your own good that you just can't understand. you just need to trust.”
and that, i think, is indeed the best the faithful can offer. It’s a good thing to say. I believe deeply that when people give up hope they give up on life, so it's a very good response. i mean, what else can one say? but it's a plea to the will far more than it is an answer to a question or a refutation of a stance.
if i have put an ungenerous spin on your comments, let me know. and i promise to let your comments stand without a snarky response from me.
Snarky is a great word, but not for your comments. You raise challenging questions.
You are right. Initially, and at numerous midpoints, walking with God boils down to trusting that which is not supported by the evidence we see.
However, as we walk through, God begins to verify that our trust is not misplaced. Faith is not merely a last, desperate lifeline when answers are conflicting or hopelessness looms. It is the seed pod of spiritual victory: as we are faithful to believe that which is not evidenced, He is faithful to reveal Himself, and to change how we see and who we are. First is trusting...faith. But after that, great relief and joy in discovering that the hand you grasped for is there and strong, and that He loves you passionately.
The in-between periodically requires a dogged determination not to let go, even through the storm that blinds.
"I have set my face like a flint....." (Isa. 50:7)
Yes, it is a plea to the will. Or, for the Christian, more like a command backed by power enough to to control the wind and overcome death.
God never intended for us to answer hard spiritual questions with reason alone. When one takes hold of faith and hangs on, faith becomes more than a "place holder." It is not only a solid, living, and powerful answer, but also a weapon to wield against spiritual forces that would destroy us. As we do, little by little, the dark glass becomes transparent, or at least translucent---reason and reality and faith slowly begin to merge into a cohesive unit.
Yes, it's "all we have", but perhaps it is way more than enough.
I loved this response. It was wonderful. I don't want to challenge its validity, but I do want to point out a consequence of its truth--namely that it may make genuine fellowship difficult. I have been to many church groups, small group settings, when we were invited to come forth with our concerns. Having talked with people in private, I knew that my fellow small group members had doubts and crushing insecurities and moral lapses and the like, but one it came to sharing their concerns, they only made reference to the body: "I have a friend with cancer." Or, "my mother has dementia." Legitimate concerns, true. But the refused to come forward with their own spiritual struggles lest they be judged as having weak faith. Because sometimes the "in-between" times can last weeks, months, years, and decades. Sometimes we see through that glass less and less because it becomes darker and darker. But with the model of faith that you discuss, that shouldn't happen. And so when one is undergoing what I'm describing, the alternatives seem either (a) that god really has abandoned me, or (b) I just don't have enough faith. The path of greater clarity is a wonderful idea, but I'm not sure it is a reality for everyone of faith. I don't even think that faith bringd clarity at all; at best (which is a lot) it brings peace. And not because all things cohere with faith, but because we drop our worries about the incoherence we encounter. I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud.
I'm quite drawn to Catholicism, but I'm stuck here with Protestantism and will probably remain so. But we Protestants believe that the Bible is self-attesting. If one approaches it with enough faith, its truth will reveal itself to us. Ye that has not been my experience. Two or three summers ago, I read the Bible to my children faithfully--a chapter a night. We made it through Exodus I think. We would start out by praying for God's blessing and guidance. Then I would read a chapter aloud. I would discuss it and ask the children some questions about it. We thanked god for his Word. I asked what the children what was good in their lives that they wanted to praise god for, as well as what worried them. Each of us said a prayer and I ended our time together with a prayer. It was the very picture of the Protestant model for how the Bible will reveal itself to the faithful. But the truth is that the more I read the Bible (and I had read it in its entirety before, as well as the New Testament many times over) the more I became convinced that, well, it is a product more of humanity than of god. Also my oldest daughter, eight years old at the time, was finding contradictions. Not in a "snarky" way but in a perfectly innocent way. I then was faced with a decision. Keep reading the Bible and lose my faith more, or try to salvage my faith by putting the Bible away. In fact what I did was neither. I quit reading the Bible to my children, but I kept reading it by myself. I made it only through 2 Samuel and decided to put it away for a while.
By the way, I wrote a related paragraph in my latest response under the post "look, damn it."
hey applebee, thanks for hanging in there with me. i appreciate your patience.
No---thank YOU for hanging with me when my pat answers don't match up with your reality. For me the answers are not trite; they have enough strength and power to carry me. But I know you are right about in-betweens lasting decades and people not speaking up because something seems to be working for others and not for them.
I don't think any of the "isms" (catholicism, protestantism, unitarianism, etc.) have enough leather for us to bootstrap up. Someone gets ahold of a bit of truth, revelation, or spiritual reality and BOOM here's another denomination and another set of doctrines, codified and starting to pile up silt in the soul, choking out God. I don't think the Holy Spirit is like that -- He travels like the wind, blowing where only He knows for His own purposes. It is an exciting ride and I want to be on it. The isms don't help.
nothing pat about your answers. the truth is, of course, that the answers we give are the best we can give on any given day. and here's another thing. there is a big difference between knowing something and feeling it. in other words, words that feel profound on one day may feel hollow on another. imagine that a loved one dies. people who've gone through it before offer their best advice, which is, just wait, your grief will be diminished in time. sure, that's true. and you may even know it at some level; surely you "knew" it before you lost a loved one. but knowing something and feeling its truth are two different things. so i didn't see something "wrong" with your "pat" answers. they weren't pat. but sometimes even true words only go so far...
i do believe that when people give up hope--when they think just the all of it is meaningless or without future good, then the end is quick to follow. so when answers get you bring you through to good health and in good mind for another day, that's nothing to sneeze at.
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