Faith and Doubt This Week

This week I’m going to talk more directly to you, the audience, as FaithandDoubt gets a serious upgrade and reboot. It’s a good time to reflect on the purpose here. Today’s question: Who is the audience?

One basic assumption brings focus to my writing: Seekers and believers alike need to experience the relevance of faith in everyday life. Relevance is good medicine for doubt. So, I am speaking to people who want their faith to get real (to borrow a phrase).

My key assumption: I start with relevance rather than with “the Bible says” because believers can affirm its message without really dealing with it and seekers can dismiss its message without really dealing with it.

Believers

People can affirm biblical values without allowing them to get personal. Sometimes people think of sacred words as spoken over their lives rather than into them. A serious disconnect grows between what we say we believe and how we actually live. Trite but true: the greatest distance for a believer to travel is between head and heart.

Scripture is not some “there-there” pat on the hand to reassure wishful thinking. It aims to confront us, inside out. Wilbur Reese artfully addresses this attitude:

I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.
Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep,
but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk
or a snooze in the sunshine.

I want ecstasy, not transformation.
I want warmth of the womb, not a new birth.
I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack.
I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.

Sometimes believers want less of God than they believe–they affirm without owning, internalizing.

Seekers

Many who dismiss biblical ideals need to know they have their own ideals running in the background which they think are exempt from being examined or doubted. To confront this fact respectfully, I must first build the bridge. Augustine said, “God has made us for Himself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Him.” I start with relevance in order to help people identify their restlessness. Then I hope to guide them to examine it.

In other words…

Some people escape reality by using faith; other people escape reality by avoiding faith. Seekers and believers alike need reminding that true faith directs us to what Francis Schaeffer described as, “the really real.” Whether you consider yourself a Christian or not, it’s avoidance which turns faith into wishful thinking. God describes Himself as the Author and perfector of our faith. So, like Shakespeare in contrast to Hamlet, our Author is far more than we can measure or think, and more real. Authentic faith is required to see ourselves and what’s happening in the world for what it really means.