The Certainty of Doubt

I bet that one of my favorite passages of Scripture is not one of yours.

It’s where Paul is trying to make a point about the whole “Christian celebrity” phase that was going through a church he helped to plant. It’s in First Corinthians, and Paul is making the point that no one was baptized into his name, and then he says this:

“I am thankful that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, so no one can say
that you were baptized into my name. (Yes I also baptized the household of Stephanas;
beyond that, I don’t remember if I baptized anyone else).”

Does this sound strange to anyone else?

Paul, this great Christian leader is almost stumbling for his point. Getting his memory mixed up, admitting that he doesn’t know all the facts. And it’s all in Scripture.

Rene Descartes helped to get this whole modernity thing off the ground. His contribution was the well known “I think, therefore I am” thing.

But what does that even mean?

Descartes was trying to find something that was impervious to doubt, something that was beyond being questioned. But is that even possible? He stopped at “I think, therefore I am,” and decided that since that was beyond doubt he would build from there. But today there are plenty of people who can poke holes in that foundational statement.

Is is possible to find something that cannot be doubted?

Since the Enlightenment, Christianity has started to become something different than what it was originally. Faith came under heavy criticism, and we began to dig in. To look for proof, to show that we actually have undeniable evidence. Josh McDowell makes a fortune etc. This changed faith into something else. Certainty.

You had to be sure of what you believed. There was no room for questions or doubt, and the people of God, became scientist instead of believers. The problem is that nobody’s certain. Science at it’s best is repeated events of the observable.

Everything can be deconstructed.

In the Gospel of John, the disciple Thomas is told that Jesus is risen from the dead. Now Thomas knows the beating that Jesus took, and in Thomas’ experience people don’t just shake that off. So he tells them that he doesn’t believe them.

Think about this, Thomas is basically saying to his friends that they are either lying or stupid. Now you already know how this story plays out, Jesus appears to Thomas and shows him that he really did raise from the dead. But there is an interesting line here that John throws in there that I have always just read over. John says, “A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them.”

Thomas was still with them.

They didn’t kick him out. Think about this, Thomas has basically broken faith with the other disciples, he didn’t believe in Jesus anymore, and the disciples let him doubt.

It seems to me like in a Post-Christian, Post-modern, Post-foundational world, the gospel has a unique attraction. Some of our main characters in our stories, our heroes, wrestled with doubt. They weren’t certain.

One of the things that has characterized modernity for the past few centuries is it’s sense of arrogant certainty. This explains the re-action of the post-modern worldview that claims no absolutes. And it’s something that I think all people tied to modernity need to listen to. Not because their are no absolutes (which is itself an absolute statement). But because there is a humility in letting go of certainty isn’t there? This is what my friend Randy Harris’ calls an epistemilogical humility.

Yes you might say, but what about Hebrews 11:1? You know, faith is being certain of what we do not see?

I think it helps to remember that the author of Hebrews doesn’t have the kind of certainty in mind that the enlightenment was after. Am I certain my wife loves me? Yeah, but instinctively we know we have started talking about a different kind of certainty. One that is much more relational.

But the bigger problem with this approach to God is that it robs us from being fully human. When we try to know things for certain, we go beyond the limits of humanity.

We aren’t God, we don’t walk by sight, we walk by faith. Maybe the church needs to be a community of people who resume wrestling with God. A place where it’s okay to question, where you won’t get kicked out for doubting. A community that recognizes we may be wrong.

Because the way of Jesus seems to be the most compelling, beautiful way to live, we are going to walk by faith.

Holiness

So we are leaving for Arkansas today. Can’t tell you how excited I am to get to hang out with my family. There’s a gathering of college ministries throughout the state, led by one visionary friend of mine named Seth.

College students are some of my favorite groups of people to talk to. I love them as audiences because life hasn’t taken the wind out of their sails yet, they still believe that they can make a difference. I think we can learn something from them.

Anyway, for my first talk I’ll be speaking about a different kind of holiness. That’s where this video comes in. Think about the life of Uzzah, the guy who God deep-fried in 1st Samuel 6 for touching the Ark of the Covenant. Then compare that story to the story in Luke 8 abut the woman with the bleeding disease. She was unclean, touching a Rabbi. She should be punished, but instead she was healed.

What changed?

It seems like the nature of holiness was transformed in the ministry of Jesus. It no longer was something to be protected but shared. It wasn’t to be guarded from contamination. It was contagious.

I know a lot of Christians with the mindset of this video. If this place really existed, I don’t think they would have a lack of tenants. We have developed a kind of escapist philosophy of the world. We are going to just wait unit we get beamed up (which I don’t believe in).

But I also know a lot of Jesus followers who have recognized that they need to be among the kind of people that Jesus was with. But they eventually become just like them. They fail to live out the counter-cultural, subversive call of Jesus.

Jesus was offering a different kind of being God’s people. A different way of being holy.

This idea of a different kind of holiness seemed to dominate the ministry of Jesus. He spent his time notoriously with the unclean, but somehow when he left them, they weren’t that way anymore. Craig Blomberg points out that in every meal Jesus has with “sinners” there is a call to change. It’s Jesus believing in them to be more than they are.

Probably the best part of this weekend, is that it’s not just another pep-rally. It’s done in the context of ministry to the very people Jesus spent his time with. Like I said, they are wanting to practice a different kind of holiness. One that is not defined by what we are abstain from, but by what we are for.

Anything you’d like to add to this? What does being holy mean to you?

The Colbert Report

Did anyone else see this last night? I appreciate Stephen Colbert, while his character’s voice may not sound like a man of faith. Colbert himself is actually a devout Catholic. And his spiritiual gift is sarcastic irony.

Anyway I appreciated this segment last night. I am glad that there are voices like this in Pop-culture. He may be occasionally irreverent, but he gets people thinking about deeper things, without knowing that’s what they are doing.

Anyway, what do you think about this clip? Does anyone else think it’s cool that Colbert is sarcastically putting up what we think but don’t want to say out loud up against the claims of the gospel?

Post-Liberal and the Scriptures

There is a time where Jesus is talking to the religious people in the gospel of John. They are trying to back him into a corner and he responds by saying to them, “You dilligently study the Scriptures because you think that through them you have eternal life. But these Scriptures testify to me, yet you refuse to come to me to have this life.”

A couple of observations here. One is that Jesus seems to think the purposes of the Scriptures lays outside of itself. The other is that the Bible can be studied so closely that it’s main points are missed.

I bring this up because I think this is apt for how we talk/think about Scripture today.

Ever since Luther’s Sola Scriptura or Scripture alone as the basis of authority, we have used the Bible as foundational for the authority of God. Now Luther was speaking to the abuses of the Roman Catholic church. And this was a needed corrective for his time and his place. The Bible helped advance literacy among the masses, and it helped to inspire the invention of the Gutenberg Printing Press. But along with this invention, other things began to be published as well.

This was a time of great growth and development in almost all areas of culture. It was the beginning of the Renaissance. And it all started with the Bible.

However, these new developments in scientific, historical, and literary fields were eventually turned on the Bible itself. And if you have any religious training at all, or have ever read a commentary, chances are you have run into this. And here’s where the story picks up.

These criticism’s became the starting point for reading the Scriptures through a certain lens. The questions that we started asking the Bible began to change. We began to ask things like, “are these miracles possible?” or “How do we know what Jesus actually said?” And the last century saw the majority of conversations about the Bible centering around these kinds of questions.

But what if these questions are the wrong ones?

I have learned over the past few years that there are plenty of good reasons that people in both camps have for thinking what they think. They aren’t idiots.

And I have to admit that for the first couple of years of graduate school this was really disturbing. To read great minds talking about why they no longer had faith really rocked my world. I found myself at some points wondering if I believed anything.

Did I mention I was working at a church? Not a lot of job openings for an agnostic minister.

There is a guy named Paul Ricoeur who talks about what he calls a 2nd naivete. The idea, Riceour says, is that after we come to the end of criticism, we choose to believe. We choose to accept that we don’t know everything. This has blessed me immensely. This 2nd naivete is not a blind faith. I have seasons of doubt. I study and try to stay up on what other people are saying. But instead of allowing every new conclusion to rock my faith I have decided to trust.

Which brings me back to how we talk about the Bible.

Most of the time I have heard people talk about the Bible to people that they have differences with, the terms that they use are the same. The battle lines have already been clearly drawn. Someone mentions something about the infallibility or inerrancy of the Bible. And the fight is on.*

But most of my generation isn’t asking questions about the infallibility of the Bible. And if they are is because someone taught them to ask that question. They are instead asking questions that I think are more true to the Scriptures. And they are questions that I think we need to address.

I think that the way we talk about the Bible should take into consideration the beauty of the Scriptures, the epic nature of the story. And most of all, I think we need to address the call that the Bible has on people, as made in the image of God, to live outside themselves. The Bible, as it stands, seems to make some pretty radical calls to humanity, not least to those who call themselves followers of Jesus.

And part of the danger of reducing the Bible to making 19th century arguments, is losing the claim that it is making on us to be different.

Think about this. Our kids grow up hearing us talking about the Bible like it’s a text book. Defending it’s content and digging in our heels.

And they see the majority of Jesus’ followers living just like everyone else.

Is it interesting to anyone else that the attendance in most American churches are declining, while para-church organizations and social justice causes are more thriving than ever? It’s like a ton of people are being drawn to places that are embodying the Scriptures, and away from places that are teaching them.

Wouldn’t it be nice to do both?

When Jesus responded to those religious leaders he let them know that the Scriptures alone couldn’t bring life. Its purpose was to point to Him. The bent of Scripture after all is from Word to flesh. And when people looked at where Scriptures were pointing they saw a man that has captivated much of the world.

And that man of course is the Word who became flesh. Christ, the mirror of God.

* Now those arguments had a time and place. But in a post-modern world, why are we really still having them? Post-modern actually refers to the disillusionment with modernity. And these questions are about as modern as you can get.

Can you do this?

I love stuff like this.

Their tag line is, “40 Days of water, no Ark necessary.”

I assume you already know the statistics of Sub-Saharan Africa. That more than 40% of deaths could be avoided with a simple solution like clean water. I assume most of us have had those moments in hearing those kind of numbers where we thought someone ought to be doing something.

Well these people are, and they have a great idea. Drink only water in March, and give the money that you would have spent on other drinks to help develop access to clean water for others.

Think about it, you are healthier and you are making a difference. I’m thinking about doing it. Anyone else on board?

The imagination of Stetson Kennedy

Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

Right after World War II, America was in a pretty volatile time in it’s history. Different philosophies competed for prominence. We had just partnered with Communist Russia to defeat the Nazi’s and then had to fight communism during the Red Scare, gender roles were more vague than ever, and racial conflict was heating up.

Enter the black and white (literally) certainty of the Klu Klux Klan. The KKK was not just a marginal hate group, they were seen as a legitimate, respectable organization by many. And they were picking up steam. They boasted a couple of presidents as members during their history, and they had all the answers to the uncertain times.

To say the least it was scary.

The bigotry and hate that we fought in the Nazi’s was now rearing it’s head in the States. Some people estimate that the KKK was close to becoming the driving philosophy. And one guy was wise enough to see what was going on.

His name was Stetson Kennedy, and he did what anyone of us would have done. He joined the KKK. He started rising in the hierarchy, and eventually got to the rank of Kleagle, whatever that means. But what no one in the organization knew, was that Kennedy was funneling information, secret information, about the KKK to the outside.

And here’s where it picks up. Who could Stetson Kennedy get the KKK’s secrets to where it would really hurt them? The answer was obvious. Superman.

He actually started passing on secret codes, secret meeting protocol’s, secret handshakes, (does this seem like a glorified boys club to anyone else?) to the radio show “The Adventures of Superman.” The plan was that Superman would fight the KKK every week on his radio show. And it worked. By revealing the inner workings of the KKK to the kiddo’s he helped to show them how bad they really were.

The KKK dad’s started coming home hearing their kids talking about how Superman had destroyed the KKK leaders, saying their fiercely guarded secret’s at the dinner table, and men started to drop like flies out of the previously vibrant movement.

I bring this up because I think it illustrates the power of imagination.

Greg Boyd has a great book called “Seeing is Believing” in which he talks about how Western civilization has basically written off imagination as being something for children. And we are paying the price. Too often things are framed in terms of us vs. them, black and white, Democrats or Republican.

We are losing the ability to find an imaginative third way. But deep in our bones I think we know that these are not the only options. As one Iraqi medical worker said, “Violence is for those who have lost all creativity.”

I think this is what Paul is tapping into in Romans 4, where he talks about the way God operates in the world. Paul says, “He is the God who gives life to the dead, and calls things that are not as though they are.”

The history of humanity has been changed by men and women who saw that what was really needed was not more bullets or missiles, but a deeper imagination. It’s how Gandhi got rid of British occupation without ever firing a gun, it’s how Dr. King won civil rights for African American’s without starting a war.

And it’s how Stetson Kennedy and Superman took down the KKK.