Tagged: thomas RSS

  • michael 9:38 pm on 26 May 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , john, matthew henry, , thomas   

    7 Days of Doubt 

    Posts in the Sermon Prep: Doubt series

    1. The Third Rail – Doubt
    2. Digital Art Photos
    3. 7 Days of Doubt
    4. From Descartes to Indiana Jones

    I’m reading Matthew Henry’s commentary on John 20, and he makes an observation that I hadn’t noticed before. In the “Doubting Thomas” story, 8 days pass between Thomas’ proclamation of doubt, and Jesus reappearance to confirm his resurrection. Henry’s interpretation is that the delay serves as a kind of rebuke to Thomas.

    That’s not what struck me, though. Thomas basically calls the disciples fools, and says “Someone has duped you, but not me.” And yet, when the story picks up 8 days later, Thomas is hanging out with the 12 (11 at this point, sans Judas). He’s still part of the community, still in the fellowship. Imagine what those 8 days must have been like! What else would the other disciples be talking about, apart from the resurrection? It had to have been the topic at every meal, every gathering. The resurrection, what it meant, what they should be planning for the future. I wonder if, when the week had passed, Thomas had begun to hope that it was true, if he was prepared to believe it, or if he become cynical in the face of their foolish (to him) faith.

    I like the precedent that this sets for the church and those of us who are doubters in her midst. There is space for puzzling through, without breaking fellowship.

    Previous in series: Digital Art Photos

    Next in series: From Descartes to Indiana Jones

     

    • Doug 10:35 am on 27 May 2009 Permalink

      I like how Matthew records the appearance of the resurrected Lord In 28:17. “When they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted.” The very ones who will receive what we call “the great commission” are the ones who worship and doubt. Matthew reminds us that worship and doubt are not mutually exclusive. Many commentators believe the text could be translated “When they saw him they worshiped him, but they doubted”. The meaning being that the very ones who worship the resurrected Christ also doubt. This is in keeping with Matthew’s perspective of discipleship that followers of Jesus are always those of “little faith” (Matthew 14:31)

    • michael lee 11:52 am on 27 May 2009 Permalink

      This ties in strongly with Aly’s quote on the previous post, that the life of faith is always everywhere the life of doubt and struggle.

  • michael 8:00 pm on 22 May 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , saints, , thomas   

    The Third Rail – Doubt 

    Posts in the Sermon Prep: Doubt series

    1. The Third Rail – Doubt
    2. Digital Art Photos
    3. 7 Days of Doubt
    4. From Descartes to Indiana Jones

    A week from this Sunday, Chad and Erica will be leading worship at our little dutch chapel in Orange County, and I will be bringing the bible-thumping fiery rhetoric from the pulpit. You should definitely come check it out. Or, if not, you should at least help me plan my message.

    I think I’m going to talk about the third rail of the life of faith: doubt.

    Here, let me make it a little spookier:

    DOUBT!

    Topics on the table:

    Doubting Thomas
    Mother Theresa
    Mark 9:24

    So – hit me. If you had to put a percentage on is, what’s the ratio of belief to doubt for the things in your personal creed? How influential is the belief of others in reinforcing your belief? Do you feel the freedom to express honest doubt about fundamental things (scripture, resurrection, omnipotence) when you’re in the company of other believers? And most importantly, Doug, will I still have a job waiting when I get back? For that matter, Phil, will I still have a job waiting when I come before the faith interrogation high council?

    Next in series: Digital Art Photos

     

    • aly hawkins 9:44 am on 23 May 2009 Permalink

      We count omnipotence as a fundamental? I need an updated list…

      This is slightly unrelated, but does anyone else feel like “Doubting Thomas” was misnamed? Like maybe we fastened on one, maybe less important, aspect of him (“Brown-Haired Aly”)? I mean, the guy was awfully brave and loyal at times to ALWAYS be Doubting Thomas (see John 11). I feel bad for the guy.

      As to the topic at hand, I like Anne Lamott’s reminder that the opposite of faith is not doubt; it is certainty. We are blessed, according to Jesus, when we believe even when we don’t see. Personally, faith is not something I’ve ever struggled with very much (so far)—I’m pretty credulous, as a rule. That’s not to say that I don’t doubt . . . I do. I just haven’t had the experience of sitting up at night worried that it’s all bollocks. I think this may have something to do with the difference between belief and trust. Occasionally I don’t believe a lick of orthodox Christianity, but I trust God. I don’t know why. I just do.

    • michael lee 3:57 pm on 23 May 2009 Permalink

      Originally Posted By aly hawkins
      We count omnipotence as a fundamental? I need an updated list…

      I’ll get you a copy. As an alumn of Biola, I have access to the secret vault where the original is kept.

      I think omnipotence is pretty tough to get away from as a fundamental of the faith, although there is a lot of discussion about what that means (i.e. is omnipotence compatible with open theology, what about illogical possibilities, how does this relate to divine command ethics, stuff like that). Kind of like “inspiration”, I think acknowledging the special inspiration of scripture is fundamental to being a Christian, and then the discussion about what that might mean (fallible, infallible, verbal, narrative, etc.) kicks in.

      This topic is very personal to me right now. I’m a rational person by nature (I would argue all of us are), and there are some aspects of the faith that I am having a hard time reconciling. Working my way through The Bible Podcast, I find myself saying some things in the voice of God that are just plain awful, and cannot be reconciled with the nature of a God that I can believe in. What does that mean for my perspective on scripture? I’m not sure.

      It’s all coming to a head, of course, because my wife and I have started a little side hobby where we raise two kids, and pass on every important thing we know to them. I’ve talked about that a little bit before here, but I’m not at peace with my own creed yet (ever?), and when I look into the trusting eyes of my kids, I find myself saying things with certainty that I am maybe only 70% reconciled to. Sometimes less. Sometimes much less.

      So, at the risk of jeopardizing my immortal soul, I feel like I need to get into this and ask what our obligation is to honest discourse, and honest questions, with our fellow believers. I think the church is petrified of doubt, like it’s some kind of pin that will prick the bubble and bring down the whole illusion. Ironically, that perspective betrays a very substantial lack of faith, if God and his kingdom can be brought down by a little bit of doubt.

    • Gretchen 8:46 am on 24 May 2009 Permalink

      Aly- the pastor at my parent’s church in WA was just talked about the misnaming of Thomas too. He says he likes to call him “honest Thomas” . And how would we like to have one of our (many) moments of doubt recorded for all time?

      I agree Mike, that I continue to grapple with the certainty of what I believe or why I believe certain aspects of our faith. Particularly after answering “why?” for the fourth time in a single subject. Continuing to break down an idea to a four year old level, makes me wonder why I believe such a thing, or more often, “does this even make sense?” And at the same time, having to break down complex theological ideas to a four year old level, reminds me of how our faith is also rooted in some pretty basic beliefs. Love, compassion, devotion.

    • aly hawkins 9:40 am on 24 May 2009 Permalink

      Stanley Fish on reason, faith and doubt. Lots of good stuff, but this, I think, is a key graf:

      The religions I know are about nothing but doubt and dissent, and the struggles of faith, the dark night of the soul, feelings of unworthiness, serial backsliding, the abyss of despair. Whether it is the book of Job, the Confessions of St. Augustine, Calvin’s Institutes, Bunyan’s “Grace Abounding to The Chief of Sinners,” Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling” and a thousand other texts, the religious life is depicted as one of aspiration within the conviction of frailty. The heart of that life . . . is not a set of propositions about the world (although there is some of that), but an orientation toward perfection by a being that is radically imperfect.

    • michael lee 9:58 am on 24 May 2009 Permalink

      Oh, that’s fantastic. Thank you, Aly!

    • Cheri Cole 8:05 pm on 24 May 2009 Permalink

      This is a really interesting topic….

  • Chad 3:01 pm on 16 February 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , thomas   

    Faith = Doubt 

    Without doubt, there can be no faith.

    Webster’s defines the word “Faith,” as follows:

    1a: allegiance to duty or a person : loyalty b (1): fidelity to one’s promises (2): sincerity of intentions 2a (1): belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2): belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b(1): firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2): complete trust 3: something that is believed especially with strong conviction ; especially : a system of religious beliefs

    I hadn’t looked up this definition when I started crafting this post in my head. I was hoping against hope that there would be something like the, “Firm belief in something for which there is no proof,” statement. I was immensely gratified to read it, as it props up my little thesis.

    Without doubt, there can be no faith.

    Near the very end of the last Gospel, in John chapter 20, we find the story of Doubting Thomas. Thomas was the Apostle who wasn’t buying the news that Jesus had been resurrected. He was rational, cool, and frankly, pretty well reasoned in his statements.

    “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”

    Downright reasonable, if you ask me.

    A week later, Jesus shows up, and has Thomas go ahead and get a nice, long feel on those scars. Thomas falls to his knees and exclaims, ”My Lord and my God!” Jesus, being Jesus, has this awesome little zinger for him.

    “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

    I haven’t seen Jesus. I haven’t put my hands on his scars. I didn’t see Him forming the foundation of the earth. I don’t know how it will all shake out in an end times scenario. I am not certain that every Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, Atheist, and Democrat will all burn in eternal damnation. I have a sneaking suspicion that God is greater and kinder than our little, offensive value judgements. I have also, in my darkest moments, been terrified that this whole Jesus thing is just a big sham, a human construct to give some meaning to our random, miniscule existence.

    But still … I believe.

    At the end of the day, I cannot shake the feeling loose that the words and teachings of this Jewish carpenter are not from this world. At the end of the day, I calculate my doubts, and I calculate the evidence, and realize that this equation will simply not balance out, and I take a deep breath, and make a choice to hold some things in a state of unresolved tension, and I simply… believe.

    Jesus of Nazareth, The Lion of Judah, the Alpha and Omega, said that I will be blessed in the presence of my fully reasonable doubts, for I am a man of faith.

     

    • Chad 3:05 pm on 16 February 2009 Permalink

      Perhaps I’ve made Baby Jesus cry with my post, as I cannot figure out why I cannot get paragraph breaks into my post.

      Perhaps Mike, the giver of every good and perfect HTML code, will fix it. I’m word-faithing here.

    • aly hawkins 4:53 pm on 16 February 2009 Permalink

      Great post, Chad. (And the fixer will have to be Mike—I took a look and couldn’t figure out how to help. I think you imported the formatting from Webster’s and it gunked up the works.)

      I think it was Anne Lamott who said, “The opposite of faith is not doubt; it is certainty.” Or it was Paul Tillich, but I’m pretty sure I get kicked off this blog if I quote Paul Tillich. Whoever it was is pretty smart.

    • Bobby 6:29 pm on 16 February 2009 Permalink

      in HTML view get rid of those ridiculous , , , and tags (all of them in pairs) and you should be in luck.

      Also I think this post is brilliant.

    • Bobby 6:31 pm on 16 February 2009 Permalink

      and as html is stripped out of the comments, what I am trying to say is the span, /span, div, and /div tags in pairs (brackets included).

      Mike you are welcome to delete this.

    • Chad 7:35 pm on 16 February 2009 Permalink

      Bobby, you might as well have been speaking Klingon. :)

      Thanks for your kind words, however.

    • michael lee 7:44 pm on 16 February 2009 Permalink

      Rule of thumb – don’t ever copy and paste from word.

    • Chad 7:45 pm on 16 February 2009 Permalink

      I didn’t!

    • Chad 7:50 pm on 16 February 2009 Permalink

      Aaaaaah… blessed St. Michael.

    • michael lee 7:51 pm on 16 February 2009 Permalink

      Ninja edits completed.

      Aly, there’s nothing you could ever do to be kicked off of this blog. Even starting your own blog and putting all of your awesome writing over there doesn’t keep you from being first, last, and always a Roadie.

    • JC 8:25 pm on 16 February 2009 Permalink

      Chad: Thank you for speaking for so many of us. I am incapable of saying it that well and that succinctly, but you really captured it.

    • aly hawkins 8:50 pm on 16 February 2009 Permalink

      Aw, Michael. If Tillich can’t break us up, nothing can.

    • michael lee 11:00 pm on 16 February 2009 Permalink

      Chad (and other person who are raising up litle tykes), how candid are you with your kids about doubts and gaps in your theology?

      I left a comment over at Aly’s blog that is pretty much on target with this:

      I’ve noticed in myself how much I want to shield my kids from my own process of doubt. Our daughter will ask things that, frankly, I used to have a ready answer for, and now no longer do. I often find myself reverting to the answers that the church has proclaimed for generations, even if it’s not where I am right at this moment.

      I guess I don’t know how to introduce young children into a faith woven through with doubt and questions. A huge part of me feels like my job is to introduce them to the “believe” part of it, and then be ready to help them walk into the “doubt” part of it when it comes into their own life later.

    • Chad 11:39 pm on 16 February 2009 Permalink

      I don’t bother them with things above their pay grade.

      Zion wants to know where God lives. That’s his new thing. We both keep telling him… “Well… He lives in Heaven, pal, but we don’t know exactly there that is!”

      That’s seemingly enough for him right now, in the given moment. I don’t think he’s really asking the question. He asks it in the same sentence as when he wants to know when his new Lightning McQueen car booster seat will arrive from the magical internet.

      We don’t know the answer to that one either. We just know that it’ll eventually show up, and we love him in the meantime.

      I refuse to make shit up… let’s put it that way.

    • Leonard 7:23 am on 17 February 2009 Permalink

      Thanks for the post Chad. For the record John doesn’t have 29 chapters. But then you probably know that and in your musical genius that is considered the bridge.

    • michael lee 8:04 am on 17 February 2009 Permalink

      He numbers the chapters using the Septuagint method, which broke John into 48 chapters, and also they called it “Ezekiel” instead of John.

      And it was about the exile instead of Jesus.

    • aly hawkins 8:06 am on 17 February 2009 Permalink

      Obviously, I don’t (yet?) have kids, but I’ve thought a lot about how I might talk about faith, doubt, theology, etc. to hypothetical children. One important factor in my considerations is how I was raised — what I would do differently, what was a good call. What worked and helped my faith to stick: the opportunity to put faith into practice by helping others. What I would change because it exacerbated later confusion: how Bible stories were presented. Instead of understanding that Scripture is one big Story in which all the characters are connected, I thought of it as a storybook with a bunch of isolated tales, like Grimm’s Gigantor Book of Completely Unconnected Fairy Tales. Too much of the teaching I was exposed to was based on the “and the moral of the story is…” model. Sure, individual stories from the Bible can be powerful teaching tools for character growth — but that’s not the point of Scripture.

      I actually have some ideas (surprise!) for how faith communities could do Sunday school differently. Why not structure biblical training around themes rather than individual stories? “Exodus” is a good one, as an example: God’s liberation of the Israelites from Egypt is, like, totally meta for the arc of Scripture — and very much in keeping with how Jewish families have taught and still teach their children about their Story.

    • Chad 8:14 am on 17 February 2009 Permalink

      Ack!

      John 20, verse 29. I’m not a math guy.

    • michael lee 8:17 am on 17 February 2009 Permalink

      I was very pleasantly surprised the other night when I was telling Sophia her “Brushing Story” (I tell her stories while I brush her hair at night). We talked about Moses and Aaron turning the Nile ‘red’ (yes, I do censor still). She picked up the story from there, and took Moses and his band of bitchy jews from the nile, through the Red Sea, to the law-giving, to the Battle of Jericho, and then jumped over Judges straight to David and Goliath.

      It wasn’t perfect, and parts were a little jumbled, but I was thrilled to hear her articulate something approaching your idea, Aly, of the big story, rather than the small stories. I don’t know how her mind is processing all of those things, but I hope that it is, “God is doing a big thing that involves the lives of lots of people over a long time.”

      Also, did I mention that she’s 3 1/2, and a Freeking Genius™?

    • Leonard 9:16 am on 17 February 2009 Permalink

      see the difference between our kids faith at that age and our faith at this age is they are not struggling with doubt.

    • Chad 9:24 am on 17 February 2009 Permalink

      Yeah… I’m with Leonard, with the exception of his obvious legalism when it comes to how many actual chapters there are per book of the Bible. Go back to Kansas, ya fundie!

      Ok… so not really.

      I’m with Leonard in that I don’t think it’s necessary to plant doubt. Doubt will take care of itself. I guess I just want to be able to look back and be somewhat certain that we didn’t feel the need to cover over some of the blemishes and sharper edges of a life of faith.

      I think this will be important for my kids, as well. I don’t want them going back and saying, “But you told me…” and me having to say, “Well, we really didn’t mean it, but we did it for your own good…”

      I think that sorta thing is destructive.

    • Leonard 9:39 am on 17 February 2009 Permalink

      I found when I tell it like it is true, my kids do better with the gaps than when I pass on my own uncertainty. When they were little we simply told it as though it were 100% true. Now they are teens and the gaps to not shake them.

      This does not mean hiding the gaps but simply saying …”I have no idea how this works” but I believe it does… For me doubt is an emotion and faith is an action, often times in the face of that emotion.

      On the legalism charge:I did go to LABC which became liberal when John MacArthur came on board and changed it to Masters. So as I sign out… I bless you in the name of the Father, in the name of the Son and the other guy… (don;t want to become a charismatic)

    • Chad 10:19 am on 18 February 2009 Permalink

      Editors note:

      After thinking about it, I decided to go back and correct the Scripture reference. I like my little post, so the idea of having such a silly error living on the intertubes for all eternity was eating at me.

    • michael lee 10:20 am on 18 February 2009 Permalink

      Always the authors prerogative.

    • Anthony 4:42 pm on 18 February 2009 Permalink

      My heart is warmed when I hear that parents are wrestling with how they pass on the stories of their faith.

      and… I’ll stop there before I say something that upsets the almighty Chad and his molten words of fury.

    • Chad 4:58 pm on 18 February 2009 Permalink

      No! Not gonna happen. Chad’s in a much better place now.

    • Leonard 6:43 am on 19 February 2009 Permalink

      Chad, in all seriousness I want to say thanks for caring about this stuff. Your kids are already better off to have a parent who chooses faith over doubt.

      Nothing I have ever done requires more faith than parenting does and yet nothing I do is more filled with doubt. My kids are now 13 and 15 and nothing good in their lives has happened on accident. It is what we do on purpose that causes our kids to thrive.

      One piece that has been essential in our home is affirmation. This has been used by God as the primary door to faith in our kids. But along with than that, it has been used by God to help our kids become confident, it has helped us keep open doors for the other forms of communication, it had made our home a joy to be within.

      Affirmation is simply letting other people know you are glad to be in their life and glad they are in yours touch and by telling them and showing them why. My kids have heard this phrase from me about a million times…

      I Love Being Your Dad! They believe it and that is huge in how they handle uncertainty. Not trying to get all preachy, sorry about that.

      Thanks again for the honesty you portrayed in this post. God’s best to you today.

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