The Long Journey Back

OK, so since about February I have been having a major crisis of faith. Basically I started studying Christianity and the Bible and Church History in depth and came to some unexpected conclusions (even though they are, and will always be tentative).

I started asking all the big questions: does God even exist? Could I worship a God who tells me to love my enemies, but will torture His for eternity? How can a loving God let such terrible things happen in the world? Why would God give special knowledge or revelation to a select group of people, and yet hold everyone accountable for it? What is the relationship between faith and logic? Is the Bible really the word of God? Is it even an accurate record of what really happened? If God is behind the Church, then why is Church History so diverse and often times different from the Christianity I'm familiar with?

It has without a doubt been the hardest thing I've ever dealt with. When the very core of your being is shaken, nothing makes sense any more, and for a while I was deeply depressed and very preoccupied with all of this. For a 6 week period all I did was sleep and read. I stopped working out, my grades dropped dramatically and I lost about 10 pounds. At one point I was even counting the cost of leaving the faith for agnostiscm: how it would affect my family, my social life, my future career.

But, thankfully this story has a happy ending thus far. I eventually had to just stop reading, stop talking about it, and stop thinking about all this. I had to take a step back. Now, the way I approach these "big questions" has changed drastically. I will continue to learn and wrestle with them for the rest of my life, but they are no longer things that I need an absolute and definite answer for. I try to study them from a safer distance and am learning to live with the tension. It's the only way I can stay sane.

And as for my faith, well, I like to think it's still in tact, but it looks fairly different than it did. In order for my faith to survive, my thinking had to change about a number of topics. I've softened on some of my positions, dropped others altogether, at times adopted more moderate (maybe even liberal) stances on others, and I am very wary of terms like "absolute truth" and all the biases and presuppositions that come with it.

I am still fairly hesitant in how I approach God, but I can tell that slowly but surely I am making the long journey back. Several writers and pastors have had what I consider a very large role in saving my faith, and some day in Heaven I hope to personally thank Rob Bell, CS Lewis, Brian McLaren, NT Wright, Dallas Willard and Dan Mages.

Some Christians might read this and dismiss me out of hand as a postmodern, or liberal, or even heretical. Please don't. It is a big world out there, with millions of different perspectives and thoughts and beliefs. I find it is best not to make judgments about other people unless you have been able to see the world through their eyes. And, if you want to talk to me about this, I'd love to sit down at a local Starbucks with you. Theology and philosophy (though I know considerably less about the latter) have become some of my favorite things to talk about. I'm actually strongly considering going to seminary after college and getting a Masters in Theology, but that, of course, is tentative as well.

I'll end this extremely long post with one of my favorite quotes. It comes from one of the most widely cited United States Supreme Court justices in American History, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“The mark of a civilized man is his willingness to re-examine his most cherished beliefs.”

Keep it real,

Ben