if i never knew

I've heard about a few people, recently, who've been having doubts about their faith. I'm only writing this because I've had the same doubts. I've often asked myself, "If I had never grown up in a Christian home, raised to believe in an all-loving and all-powerful God, would I still believe? Would I, left to my own devices without having been influenced from a young age, considering the Christian faith objectively, have arrived at the same set of beliefs to which I currently hold?"

How can anyone figure out what he would have believed given a different course of events? We are, in some sense, the product of our past experiences. And, is this even the best course to take when trying to deduce truth? I admit, past experiences can bias our ways of thinking, but they can illuminate them, too. The conclusions you might have drawn in a sterile environment absent past baggage may not always be the best.

Suppose, for example, that I did not go to school. I did not take math classes. Would I have, on my own, stumbled across the theory of calculus? Okay, maybe you would have. And maybe you're Isaac Newton (but even he was "standing on the shoulder of giants"). But I certainly wouldn't have. Does that make calculus any less true? It'd be foolish to ignore the wisdom of our parents, and of those who came before us.

We are taught. We accept some of the things we are taught, reject others, based on the merit of their ideas. But an idea shouldn't lend itself to doubt simply because it was taught.

I admit. If I weren't raised christian, I might very well not be. This could be a disconcerting thought, but I choose to instead to thank God that He chose to reveal himself through me through my parents. And that is why I think christian parenting is incredibly important.

"Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it."
- Proverbs 22:6

And in case you're wondering. No. I am not planning on having kids any time soon.

prayer

 "And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him."
- Matthew 6:7-8

I fall into the trap, sometimes, of praying for the sake of prayer. The more I say, the better I feel about my prayer. But why pray, if God knows all our needs?

Maybe prayer should be more geared towards worshiping and praising God.

And when we do pray for our needs, and for those of others, maybe we aren't praying so much that God will be made aware of those needs and respond, but that we ourselves would be made aware of those needs and respond. Our prayers for ourselves serve to convict us of our sins, and motivate us towards true repentance and a change of heart. And our prayers for others serve to convict us of their need, to motivate us towards an outpouring of love, and potentially action.

salvation

I've always believed that if someone hasn't heard of Christ, he still might in his own way worship God and be saved by Christ. In much the same way Abraham was. Or even a Muslim in a culture dominated by Islam might be. C.S. Lewis seemed to think so when he wrote of the Arab man in The Last Battle who worshiped Aslan with the name Tash. And Billy Graham mentioned something similar late in his career, for which he received a lot of flak.

I still believe that. Very much so. In fact, I think we need to look in the other direction. It might very well be the case that the Christ we worship and call by name is very different from who Christ really is. I feel like our perception of Him has been tainted so much, by our culture, and by our wants. We want Him to be loving, but in a way that isn't loving. We want Him to save us all, without the discomfort that comes with true sanctification.

Whenever someone in the church dies, I always hear someone thanking God for taking him or her into heaven. And a lot of times, I can't help but wonder. Really? Who are we to know? To judge? To assume? God does as He pleases. When I die, someone will probably say something similar. But how will I be judged?

"Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers."

- Matthew 7:22-23

And how will the church be judged?

"I know your deeds; you have a reputation for being alive, but you are dead."

- Revelation 3:1

Stop taking your salvation for granted. Work it out, with fear and trembling. I feel like today's Christians are way too confident. And that confidence rubs off on me.

defensiveness

Somewhat related to my last post. Being surrounded by yay-sayers can really make you super defensive.

When I lived at home, I could always count on my mom to point out all my flaws. And when she didn't, I could count on my sisters to pick up the slack :P But for the past, I don't know, few years (?) I haven't had anyone point out an area where I really need to step it up. In fact, I've been getting a few compliments here and there, too :) Which is nice. No more nagging, less exasperation.

Plausible explanations:

1) I was perfect all along and my family was being too picky.

2) I'm still flawed, I'm just no longer aware of my flaws.

You can probably guess which one is true... Whereas before, it was a constant struggle to take in all of the criticisms, I was struggling. Now, I live pretty comfortably. I identify my own faults, ask for prayer, and that's the extent of my conviction.

But someone recently has been really, truly, confronting me about deficiencies in my life. In an uncomfortable way. And my first reaction was, who are you to be questioning what I do? People who know me better than you think I'm alright, isn't it pretty presumptuous of you to assume that I'm not? You don't know me.

And I still think that my complaints are valid. But here's the kicker. It doesn't matter. Truth is truth even if it comes from the mouth of a donkey. The person speaking truth may be 10x more horrible than you are, but who he is has no bearing on the validity of his statements. And some of the statements I've been hearing recently have really stung, because, I think, deep down I know they're true. My first reaction was to criticize back, but really, criticisms are a gift, and should not be spurned so easily.

I need to be more humble.

depravity

It's been awhile since I've been reminded of this. And that is this: it's easy to be an okay person around people you are not terribly close to. And when you're around people you're not terribly close to, you begin to convince yourself that you are, in fact, an okay person. Until you truly believe that you're an okay person.

For me, it was much easier to be convicted of my sin in high school. Which is ironic, since I attribute a lot of my spiritual growth to my college years. But it was in high school that I faced real conflict. Mostly with my family, and mostly because I lived at home. But once I went to college, I found myself surrounded by people I knew less well. Sure, I would say that I've made some really close friends, but I was never forced into the kind of intimacy that you have with your parents and your siblings. Or the kind of intimacy that you start to have with your significant other.

And it's worse now that I've graduated. I get along with my family just fine (which I appreciate). I get along with my coworkers. I get along with people at church. But it's taken the beginning of a somewhat more intimate relationship to give me a rude awakening to the fact that, hello, I suck. That there's a bunch of garbage inside of me that I completely forgot about. Sure, it takes some prodding to stir it all up to the surface. But it's there. My recent spiritual life has been a reflection of that inner stagnation all along, but sometimes it takes some (and hardly any, really) intimacy to really bring it all out into the open.

No one has any right to talk to anyone about love until they've actually tried to love someone. And not love someone as in, be nice to your neighbor. Love as in, love. Very descriptive, I know. It's hard. And it really isn't that surprising that the divorce rate is so high. We're not worse off than we were before. We're just better at accepting these things.

I'm writing a lot. But really, what I feel right now, is probably just the tip of the iceberg. I have no right to talk about love, either. Me being so experienced and all... 

But in all seriousness. To those people who say "God is either all-powerful or all-loving, but He can't be both because of all the suffering in this world": if you're anything like me at all, you really have no idea what love is. Would it be all-loving to give everyone what they wanted? What I think is good is so not-good sometimes. Especially in my attempts to relate to others. I'm so self-centered that I'm completely blind to my self-centeredness. And that's a cycle that only God can pull me out of. But really, sometimes I'm so convinced that what I'm doing from self-centeredness is actually the loving thing to do. Blah. Random protip: if you're going to send out a serious email, wait at least 24 hours before doing so. Okay, I realize I'm probably not making any sense here, but that's fine.

Who are we to question God? I think Francis Chan said something along the lines of, God has more of a right to question us about the suffering in this world. I agree.

relationships

Sometimes, when I see a flaw in someone else, I feel that if I don't point it out, they will never realize it and therefore never change. So it becomes very necessary for me to catalog these flaws, and point them out in a very reasonable manner. Once per flaw! And not all at once. I just need to get it out there, you know? And then I can rest easy. They might not change right away after hearing about it. They might not change at all. But I am absolved of responsibility. And who knows? Maybe sometime in the future they'll recall what I said. Maybe I don't need to be there when they do. I don't need to belabor the point, just mention it once.

How ridiculous, right? I really need to learn to let God work in people. To pray for people. To trust that God can change people without my direct intervention. To believe that people can be convicted of their sin without having someone point it out to them. But really. I need to figure out this plank in my eye before I worry about the specks in others'.