Struggles in Faith, Part 2
I think many envision seminary as a monastic-like existence; silent, peaceful grounds dotted with men in contemplative prayer, or hunched over solitary desks interpreting ancient texts—a place of study and deep faith and… doubt.
At Dallas Theological Seminary, I crammed 4 years of study into 8 (an over-achiever, I am). During the course of those years I examined the mysteries of the Holy Trinity, the nature of man, and the eternal existence. I poured over all of Scripture, learning Greek and Hebrew, peering into Holy Writ in the language of its writers. Some days I strutted on campus, full of faith, eager to reach a dying world while on others, I lurched in doubt unsure of anything I believed. How much of the future does God know and control? If God is good and all powerful then why is His world dominated by evil? Are we free or is everything pre-determined? How does suffering factor in God’s plan? Or the “big kahuna” for me: did God cause the Holocaust or sit back flippantly and let it happen? Or was He unable to do anything? Or, even tougher, why did He let it continue? The more I sought answers, the more I wondered.
My struggle intensified when Winfred died. Winfred was a gifted student from Africa. He came, against all odds, to DTS to study Scripture in hopes to return to his tribe and translate the Bible into their language. He knew it was God’s will for him to be at DTS and he worked toward that end for his people. He was the epitome of a man on fire, burning to give his life for the mission of Christ. One evening on a dark Dallas street, a drunk driver weaved along and hit Winfred, killing him just blocks away from the seminary, extinguishing the bright flame.
When tragedies strike people like Winfred, we grope for answers, often finding silence. I remember debating a fellow pastor who constantly claimed that he knew God’s will for his life. I would cite Winfred as an example of our actual lack of knowledge. Winfred was just as godly and just as confident and Winfred was dead. I questioned everything. Is God’s will knowable? Does He still speak to us as so many of my mentors had claimed? Can His will be thwarted? Had Winfred been mistaken, or, had God led him to DTS to allow his life to be taken? For all my $50.00 questions, I received $5.00 answers. The only voice that seemed reasonable was one that had a British tone and a sharp wit. That voice belonged to the old Oxford professor, writer, and Christian apologist (defender), C.S. Lewis.
I heard the other day that comedian, Joy Behar, chided Sarah Palin about C.S. Lewis being her favorite writer, making light that the former Alaskan governor’s choice of literature was a children’s writer. Since the renewed popularity of The Chronicles of Narnia, I’m sure many people have made the same mistake in thinking that Lewis was this guy who did nothing but pen kid adventures. But that was only one a small facet to the man that everyone knew as “Jack.”
Lewis was an expert in Medieval Literature, teaching the subject in both Oxford and Cambridge. During World War 2, he was a regular voice on the BBC answering some of the toughest questions on God, Jesus Christ, and the plausibility of Christianity. The Chronicles actually made up a small portion of his writing, the other being books on faith, pain, and the defense of Christianity.
And although he had been dead since 1963, the former atheist turned Christian thinker became a major influence in saving my faith from failure—a kind of patron saint I’ve been able to lean on when the way of Christ was cloudy.
Lewis had a way of bringing things down to what was most important. He had no time for petty theological arguments or church debates, for Lewis it all came down to one issue… the person of Jesus Christ.
And during those dark nights of the soul, during those times when I hear yet another instance of church or pastoral corruption or I’m forced to face those “scary” Biblical passages which preachers have either skipped or divvied out silly, penny-ante solutions, I revisit some of Jack Lewis’ most powerful words on our Lord:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to…We are faced, then, with a frightening alternative. This man we are talking about either was (and is) just what He said, or else a lunatic, or something worse. Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God. God has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form.
Those words are my ground zero, pointing me back to what is most important, what and who is most real.
This is the second part of my blog where I have come clean, I took a chance and revealed my struggles in faith. So many responded to my musings on Twain and, honestly, I meant every word. There are times when I want to say that faith and church and spirituality are all bunk, especially when I see another hurt soul, devastated by misguided or even false Christianity.
But, in those dark moments I revisit those words of Lewis; I come back to Jesus. I realize that all of the other stuff: the debates (Creation or Evolution, Predestination or Free Will, and on and on and on) the fighting, the comparison we make with one another, and oh, the judging, is all noise—static, television snow. The real picture is the One who was called Christ, the One who was called, “The friend of sinners,” which is comforting, because I could always use a friend.
At Dallas Theological Seminary, I crammed 4 years of study into 8 (an over-achiever, I am). During the course of those years I examined the mysteries of the Holy Trinity, the nature of man, and the eternal existence. I poured over all of Scripture, learning Greek and Hebrew, peering into Holy Writ in the language of its writers. Some days I strutted on campus, full of faith, eager to reach a dying world while on others, I lurched in doubt unsure of anything I believed. How much of the future does God know and control? If God is good and all powerful then why is His world dominated by evil? Are we free or is everything pre-determined? How does suffering factor in God’s plan? Or the “big kahuna” for me: did God cause the Holocaust or sit back flippantly and let it happen? Or was He unable to do anything? Or, even tougher, why did He let it continue? The more I sought answers, the more I wondered.
My struggle intensified when Winfred died. Winfred was a gifted student from Africa. He came, against all odds, to DTS to study Scripture in hopes to return to his tribe and translate the Bible into their language. He knew it was God’s will for him to be at DTS and he worked toward that end for his people. He was the epitome of a man on fire, burning to give his life for the mission of Christ. One evening on a dark Dallas street, a drunk driver weaved along and hit Winfred, killing him just blocks away from the seminary, extinguishing the bright flame.
When tragedies strike people like Winfred, we grope for answers, often finding silence. I remember debating a fellow pastor who constantly claimed that he knew God’s will for his life. I would cite Winfred as an example of our actual lack of knowledge. Winfred was just as godly and just as confident and Winfred was dead. I questioned everything. Is God’s will knowable? Does He still speak to us as so many of my mentors had claimed? Can His will be thwarted? Had Winfred been mistaken, or, had God led him to DTS to allow his life to be taken? For all my $50.00 questions, I received $5.00 answers. The only voice that seemed reasonable was one that had a British tone and a sharp wit. That voice belonged to the old Oxford professor, writer, and Christian apologist (defender), C.S. Lewis.
I heard the other day that comedian, Joy Behar, chided Sarah Palin about C.S. Lewis being her favorite writer, making light that the former Alaskan governor’s choice of literature was a children’s writer. Since the renewed popularity of The Chronicles of Narnia, I’m sure many people have made the same mistake in thinking that Lewis was this guy who did nothing but pen kid adventures. But that was only one a small facet to the man that everyone knew as “Jack.”
Lewis was an expert in Medieval Literature, teaching the subject in both Oxford and Cambridge. During World War 2, he was a regular voice on the BBC answering some of the toughest questions on God, Jesus Christ, and the plausibility of Christianity. The Chronicles actually made up a small portion of his writing, the other being books on faith, pain, and the defense of Christianity.
And although he had been dead since 1963, the former atheist turned Christian thinker became a major influence in saving my faith from failure—a kind of patron saint I’ve been able to lean on when the way of Christ was cloudy.
Lewis had a way of bringing things down to what was most important. He had no time for petty theological arguments or church debates, for Lewis it all came down to one issue… the person of Jesus Christ.
And during those dark nights of the soul, during those times when I hear yet another instance of church or pastoral corruption or I’m forced to face those “scary” Biblical passages which preachers have either skipped or divvied out silly, penny-ante solutions, I revisit some of Jack Lewis’ most powerful words on our Lord:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to…We are faced, then, with a frightening alternative. This man we are talking about either was (and is) just what He said, or else a lunatic, or something worse. Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God. God has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form.
Those words are my ground zero, pointing me back to what is most important, what and who is most real.
This is the second part of my blog where I have come clean, I took a chance and revealed my struggles in faith. So many responded to my musings on Twain and, honestly, I meant every word. There are times when I want to say that faith and church and spirituality are all bunk, especially when I see another hurt soul, devastated by misguided or even false Christianity.
But, in those dark moments I revisit those words of Lewis; I come back to Jesus. I realize that all of the other stuff: the debates (Creation or Evolution, Predestination or Free Will, and on and on and on) the fighting, the comparison we make with one another, and oh, the judging, is all noise—static, television snow. The real picture is the One who was called Christ, the One who was called, “The friend of sinners,” which is comforting, because I could always use a friend.
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