Video credit: Arlen Miller @ https://storiesmadepowerful.com/
Video credit: Arlen Miller @ https://storiesmadepowerful.com/
In a previous post, I claimed the most important thing to tell your kids when they doubt their faith is: they are normal!!! It is not a sickness or a sign of a spiritual flaw. It is an opportunity to grow in their understanding and faith, or so I argue.
But how do they grow in this?
My wife and I have a policy with our kids: they are allowed to ask any question they might have. There’s nothing—and I mean nothing—that is off limits. If one of our kids hears inappropriate language that he/she doesn’t understand, they are allowed to ask us what the words mean. If one of our kids doesn’t think something said in a Bible lesson or even in Scripture sounds right, they are allowed and encouraged to ask us.
Now, I will say sometimes we postpone answering the question. We have 4 kids ranging from middle school down to 1st grade. So our 1st grader may not be ready for a deep discussion about certain delicate topics and we may postpone an answer until we can talk privately with our middle schooler, for example. So they know they can ask anything they want to, but they also know they need to ask appropriately when little ears are around.
Our hope with this is twofold.
One, we want to create a culture in our family where asking questions and thinking critically about their life and faith and all that this entails is normal. Here’s a critical moment in the life of a Christian kid who has embraced the faith of her parents. Let’s say she has read and is familiar with the gospels. But one day a person points out the differences in certain parallel passages of Scripture and claims these are contradictions. This can come as an absolute shock. She’s likely to wonder why this has never ever come up in all her years of Sunday School and church. She may even go on to suspect she’s been sold a bill of goods. How different would this be if she is quite aware of the differences and knows how they are reconciled?!
I want the hard questions about the faith to feel very familiar to my kids when they come up. I want them to have wrestled with these questions in my household, sometimes instigated by me, and not when confronted by the social pressures of a broader world hostile to Christian faith. They should be used to asking deep and difficult questions and be able to think for themselves before they become wholly confronted with a world which is happy to tell them all they should believe.
Second, we want to create a culture in our family where our kids come to us when they have questions. Every parent will, at some point, say to their kid, “Do this, because I said so!!” I actually think this is completely appropriate. It’s called parenting. A parent has the privilege and the right, in my view, to set the rules and a parent doesn’t need to always appeal to some further rational principle in telling the kids what they are to do.
However, I think saying, “Believe this, because I said so” is a really bad idea. Here’s why: if this authoritarian principle is your child’s guide for forming his beliefs and worldview, what happens when he is sitting in a biology or philosophy class with a professor who is hostile to his faith? You’ve literally taught your child to believe his authority figures, rather than to think critically about ideas, and now his authority figure is not you (or his pastor or youth pastor).
I want my kids to see me, among other things, as a reliable guide for life’s deep questions. The irony is that if I demand to be the just-because-I-said-so authority in their life, then I’m likely to be dismissed from this post at some point. But if I teach them to think critically for themselves, they are likely to come to me as they work out their worldview.
We live in a post-Christian world. We also live, in many ways, in a post-rational world. Our culture is not one of pluralism and tolerance (in the good sense of these terms). There is one “right” view about almost everything (e.g., gender, sexuality, politics, morality, etc.). And fitting in to this is almost impossible to resist unless we plan to seclude and shelter our children from the rest of the world FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES!!! OR we teach our kids to think critically so that they may see the truth, goodness and beauty of Christianity. I’m going with the latter.
Doubt that doesn’t matter much
Some of our beliefs are mundane and they really don’t matter too much. It’s a big yawn, in these cases, to be corrected. I believe I have a dental appointment coming up on March 18. If my wife turned to me with her calendar in hand, a certain look on her face, and said that my appointment is on April 18, I would shrug my shoulders and believe her. I also believe that if I leave campus after 4pm today, it will add 10 minutes to my drive. I believe that I save money shopping at Costco (please tell me I’m right). Any time I’m asked to consider joining a business venture that resembles a pyramid scheme, I believe it is not worth trying (FYI for all you schemers!!). I believe all these things, but I could give them up without much counter evidence. In consequence, they are minor.
Doubting important beliefs
There are other beliefs in which we find ourselves much more deeply invested. I am, for example, deeply invested in beliefs about my children’s health and well being. I believe that my kids are, on the whole, healthy and well. But something happens to me intellectually when they, as it sometimes happens, come down with some sickness or health issue that is a bit unusual. My mind begins to play out various scenarios about what the future could look like in case this is the beginning of some serious health issue. I sometimes lose sleep. I pray…a lot. And I can begin to seriously doubt that my child is okay.
So far, when this has happened, our kids have thankfully been fine and the doubts were, to some degree, unfounded or at least premature.
Christian doubt
This is similar to the experience of Christians when they doubt. Christianity is not a set of ordinary beliefs. It is a set of deep beliefs about the world, and our purpose and place in it. It involves beliefs about how we should live every moment of our lives. And it also involves a belief about eternal hope.
Sometimes we may encounter a challenge to our Christian beliefs and we worry that we may be wrong. We worry that what we’ve believed in and given our lives to is a big lie. We sometimes think we may have stumbled over the smoking gun of Christianity- the objection that cannot be answered that others have either ignored or missed.
What should we do when we doubt?
I’m convinced that we sometimes allow our doubts to have their way with us too much. That is, we let our imagination run too far in front of the evidence. When I’m worried about my kid’s health, I’m letting my “what ifs” cause me to lose sleep and worry about something that is not yet warranted.
What should I do in these times of struggle? I’m probably always going to have concern for my children. That’s just the deal. But intellectually speaking, I need to be reminded there’s not yet reasons to doubt my beliefs. In other words, I shouldn’t stop believing that they are okay until I have reasons and evidence for this.
[share-quote author=”Travis Dickinson” via=”travdickinson”] Our doubts don’t win by default…We should, in a way, doubt our doubts. [/share-quote]
Likewise, when it comes to our Christian faith, it’s perfectly okay and normal to doubt from time to time. But we shouldn’t let those doubts simply have their way with us. Our doubts don’t win by default. We need to investigate the doubts. We must, in a way, doubt our doubts. We need to hold our doubts up to the fire and determine whether these doubts are genuinely a problem.
The injustices of the church
Here’s an example:
Let’s say someone comes up to you and says Christianity is a terrible view because Christians have done terrible things. Let’s say this hits home for you and you are challenged by it. You certainly do not want to align with a terrible view and you agree that Christians have done terrible things in the past.
But instead of letting this doubt have its way with you, you should doubt the doubt. You should begin to reflect on this challenge and read what others have said on both sides.
For me, what I find helpful on this issue is to realize that any crackpot can call themselves a Christian and do things in the name of Christ that are horrific. And this is true of any and all views. But this doesn’t mean the views are thereby wrong or terrible.
A genuine injustice is only a problem for the Christian view if this injustice is specifically supported by the teaching of the Bible.
One way to get at this is to look to the life of Jesus. He is, by all accounts, the exemplar or model for all Christians. If the injustice is supported by the life of Jesus, then it is a problem. If not, then it’s most likely not. It would just be someone acting unlike Jesus; acting unchristian.
There’s of course a lot more to be said, but I find that this provides a blueprint for resolving this sort of issue. The typical injustices that are cited, it seems to me, are always out of step with Jesus. I think we need to recognize there have been many injustices perpetuated in the name Christ and we ourselves have all probably acted poorly in front of those who know we are Christians. But in these times, we and they act contrary to Christ.
A stronger faith
Now what we’ve done is doubted the doubt and found that it does not defeat our Christian beliefs (or so it seems to me). Other challenges may be more difficult. Some of my doubts along the way have of course caused me to revise my view. But so far, I haven’t found a smoking gun objection that defeats the reasonableness of Christianity.
What I have found is that I come out the other side of this process with an even stronger faith. I’ve not only resolved an intellectual challenge to my beliefs, but I am more confident as a result of it. And that’s a very good thing. My doubts have led me to a stronger faith.
(This article is an updated repost)
Logic, it seems to me, can only be explained by the existence of God.
By far, most people in the history of the world have believed in the existence of God. But some of course come to believe that God does not exist. Now I think it is painfully clear that people who reject God never do so only on the basis of arguments and evidence. I can say this confidently because we humans never come to our core worldview beliefs without emotions, desires and past experiences figuring in in significant ways. It is certainly true of people who come to Christian belief and it is equally true of those who come to deny those beliefs.
Though we may be, in some ways, driven by emotions or desires, there is still always a logic to our beliefs. That is, there are always reasons why we believe what we do. These reasons may be good or bad and they may or may not be formed in a very reflective way. But there is logic there whenever we form a belief.
But what is logic? If you think about it logic is a bit odd. We believe things on the basis of reasons. The reasons we have provide logical support for our beliefs (again, good or bad). We will even base our very lives on the logic of our core beliefs.
Suppose you have a big decision to make. You need to decide whether you will go to college. You take out a piece of paper and list out all of the reasons for and against going to college right now in your life. Let’s say there are clearly more and much stronger reasons for going to college than reasons against it. So you now believe, quite rationally, college is a good idea for you right now in your life.
What happened in that process?
Well it seems you (knowingly or unknowingly) used the principles of logic to come to a decision. In other words, you went with the reasons that accorded with the principles of logic.
An example of a principle of logic is the principle of non-contradiction (PNC). According to Aristotle:
…opposite assertions cannot be true at the same time (Metaphics IV 6 1011b13–20)
Put somewhat differently, this principle says…
for any statement A, it can’t be the case that A and not A at the same time.
This is necessarily true for any statement you want to plug in for A.
It can’t be the case that the Boston Red Sox won the World Series and did not win the World Series at the same time.
The Red Sox could win and not win the World Series in different years (and this true for this year and last year). But they could not, at the same time, both win and not win. To assert something like this is to assert something necessarily false and not even sensible.
The truth of the principle of non-contradiction isn’t a matter of mere opinion (try denying the principle of noncontradiction without using it!).[1]
It is widely held that the PNC and all logical principles are objectively and universally true. Many philosophers will say they are true in all possible worlds! This means that logic is not tied to the way our world is. Whatever it is, it exists as a feature of reality that couldn’t not be the case and it is used every time we make and support a claim.
If logic is this real thing that exists outside time and space, then this entails that the natural world is not all there is. In other words, the supernatural (as in supra-natural) must exist.
Now how do we explain this? It seems to me one has to say either that logical facts exist as brute facts or they are explained by God. If one says they are brute facts, then this just means they are unexplained. So this means that for logic to be explained, one is lead back to God as its explanation.
I’ll leave the technical issues aside here, but my own view is that the eternal truths of logic are grounded in the mind of God. Being aware of the principles of logic is us literally being aware of features of God’s mind. Help me out Chris Pratt?
Okay, so here then is the irony. People use logic to argue against the one thing that grounds their ability to make that very argument. And this is God.
I’m convinced that without God we are left without an adequate explanation of life’s most important aspects.
Check out my book Logic and the Way of Jesus: Thinking Critically and Christianly
[1] To deny the truth of the PNC, you’d have to say the principle is not true and we are only able to say this by the PNC. This makes the denial self-refuting.
Doubt is feeling the pull of an objection. We doubt when we encounter a claim that challenges one of our beliefs and we find the claim at least somewhat plausible.
Doubts can come from anywhere. Sometimes there’s someone in our lives who is pressing us on a belief or it may be something we think of all on our own.
Our kids are almost certain to come across challenges to their Christian beliefs. Our culture has become steadily post-Christian and so, at some point, our kids will be pressed by someone or themselves simply have a challenge in their own thoughts. Sometimes these challenges will be easily addressed, but other times they will cause them to struggle.
All too often kids face down their doubts alone. This is in part because a pastor or parent’s advice for their doubt has amounted to telling them “knock it off.” Or they have been told to pray these doubts away. We should of course pray about these things, but, for most of us, this doesn’t work.
So the most important thing to tell your child when they face doubts is…
You are normal.
Doubt is a normal part of the process as we move along this journey of living the Christian life. It is not necessarily evidence of weak faith or that one is not genuinely saved or that they are doing something wrong when it comes to their Christian walk. All it means is there is some objection that is striking them as somewhat plausible. And this is just a normal part of the process of growing in faith.
Here’s the reality: we should ALL find some objections to our views somewhat plausible, at least from time to time.
Consider your political views. If you think ALL of your political views are just obvious and ANYONE who disagrees must be deluded or morally deranged, then you are probably not thoughtfully engaging. There are a wide range of political views out there and it’s likely some really well-meaning and intelligent people hold the exact opposite view of yours. And when we take the time to understand why well-meaning and intelligent people hold different views from us, we often see that a view is far more plausible than what we initially thought. Keep in mind, we can find claims plausible even if we don’t believe them. This is what happens in sales– things we don’t believe are made plausible.
There are objections to Christianity that I, as a seminary professor, can find somewhat plausible. Now I am not in a situation where I’m wavering in my Christian commitments, given these objections, as I once did. But this is because I dug in and investigated and am now confident in addressing these objections. But I can still, in a way, feel the tug these objections otherwise have.
I often say that I want my kids to doubt their faith. I realize this is fairly provocative. Why would I say such a thing?
It’s because I think there are really good answers to the objections of Christianity!! I think Christianity stands on robust evidence and its a really, really good story. It’s what C.S. Lewis would call a True Myth. I want my kids to feel the pull of an objection and then have the experience of finding answers that address those objections. This is powerful! And its powerful precisely because it brings confident faith.
I also want my kids to doubt when they are in my care and under my roof, rather than when they are out there in the world, say, in a biology class or getting bombarded by some hostile unbeliever. I want to be right there guiding them through this process.
The only way I know to address doubt is to investigate and find answers to our questions. We are often very slow to investigate because doubt has a way of making us feel like we’ve stumbled on the as-of-yet-undiscovered-smoking-gun-objection to Christianity. That is, we think we have found the envelope that contains the missing evidence that falsifies the whole thing and we are afraid to look inside.
However, I say look inside.
Whenever I have investigated an objection with which I’m struggling, I have found that, first, it’s not the smoking gun of which I was afraid. Second, there are thoughtful Christian answers indeed. I don’t have everything solved, but there are good answers that go a long way to addressing our doubts.
Here’s where you, as a parent, need to be informed and ready to guide your child. I’m guessing your child may not be ready to read through all 880 pages of Evidence that Demands a Verdict or Bill Craig’s graduate level Reasonable Faith. But you should.
I, and a couple of coauthors, recently wrote Stand Firm: Apologetics and the Brilliance of the Gospel as an accessible guide to apologetics that emphasizes the reasonability and the attractiveness of Christianity. In short, we think the Christian gospel is brilliant.
Here are a few other accessible resources:
Natasha Crain’s books and blog.
J. Warner Wallace’s books and website. Each of Jim’s books have a kid’s version that they can read.
Sean McDowell’s book Apologetics for a New Generation.
What are some other resources you have found helpful on your journey?
Click here for a FREE book!!
I love philosophy for a lot of different reasons. One of those is that philosophers often have a particular skill that is lost in many discussions of politics, religion and anything else in which people are deeply invested.
Here’s the skill: inviting and welcoming others to press one’s idea without being personally threatened by being pressed.
Call this: thoughtfulness.
Thoughtfulness is a genuine intellectual virtue. It is hearing, and I mean really listening to, an objection for the purpose of finding truth. The reason why this is intellectually virtuous is when we get good objections, we are either going to be able to address those objections or we won’t. If a view can address a really difficult objection, one’s view is ipso facto now better supported. If it can’t, then we are going to have to reject or change our view. But our rejection or change will be due to something epistemic (rather than something nonepistemic, like social pressure). Either way, we’ll be on stronger rational grounds.
Now I’ll be quick to say that I’m generalizing about philosophers quite broadly. Let’s just say not ALL philosophers have this intellectual virtue and certainly no philosophers exhibit this virtue all of the time. We all (and I am chief) have our weak moments. Also, some are able to engage thoughtfully in certain areas (say, systematic theology or metaphysics) but then become unhinged as it relates to something else (such as politics, religion, or when they are on a church committee).
It’s hard work, but we should all strive to be thoughtful. We sometimes fail to be thoughtful, I suspect, because we are scared we are wrong. We don’t want to honestly look at an objection because there might just be something to it. So we distract ourselves from being thoughtful.
How do we do distract? Here are 3 ways we distract ourselves from being thoughtful and engaging the ideas of others:
Emotions are really not your friends when it comes to defending and engaging ideas. Sure, we are and should be passionate about what we believe. But there’s a big difference between defending an idea passionately and feeling so threatened we have to yell (online or otherwise!). Look, if an objection is so obviously bad, then you shouldn’t have anything to worry about. Just critique the idea. Getting emotional about ideas will almost always work against rationality.
What’s amazing about this is we tend to get super emotional about issues in which we are deeply invested. But presumably we are deeply invested in ideas which we see as clearly true. If that’s right, then we should be able to defend the ideas and rest assured on the evidence without getting all worked up. Maybe we are not able to defend the ideas and this is a problem.
If you can’t help get upset when your ideas are challenged, this is an excellent reason to genuinely evaluate said ideas.
I’m convinced that most ideas are serious ideas that are put forward in a serious way. But how do we know if an idea is serious? One way to know is if it has a long tradition and especially if, within the tradition, there are genuine scholars, past and present, who hold the view. If a view is truly ad hoc, then it can be dismissed. But otherwise, it should be treated as serious.
A good example of this, for me, is Mormonism. It’s difficult for me to understand how anyone believes Mormonism in an kind of informed way. To think that God was once a man who worked his way to an exalted state and has populated our planet with his spirit children is is, in my view, fraught with difficulties of all sorts. Or to believe the ever changing Book of Mormon is inspired Scripture is hard for me to buy.
However, Mormonism is a serious belief and it should be engaged seriously. This is a view that has existed for the better part of two centuries and there are very fine scholars who defend it. I shouldn’t, therefore, merely dismiss it. I should attempt to listen to the reasons Mormons give in defense of the view and critique the view accordingly.
I’m not saying one needs to take all views as a serious contenders. Just don’t simply dismiss the view especially when it is seriously held. If it is ludicrous, then you should be able to say why it is ludicrous.
If we simply dismiss a view, then it may be because we are afraid to try and actually confront it.
Even when it seems clear a person deserves to be called a name, it’s almost always not worth it. There’s almost no discussion on these fronts that goes by today without someone being called a liar. Someone might be being dishonest in a discussion, but 99% of the time you will not know if this is the case. How could you? You would have to know someone is intentionally trying to mislead or misrepresent. Disagreeing with you is not lying. Even being factually inaccurate on something is not, by itself, lying. Maybe one is just wrong. And if they are so obviously wrong, then say why they are wrong.
So don’t call names. It’s too easy and it completely ruins a discussion.
If you are quick to call someone a name, mock or impugn their character, this suggests you don’t want your views challenged. You are being a bully and nobody likes a bully.
So what should we do to be more thoughtful?
First, we should do our level best to listen to the views of others. The next time you are in a discussion, here’s a novel idea: clarify what someone means before critiquing!! Try to repeat back how you are understanding what they have said and then, after that and only after that, critique the view. You can critique beforehand, but you’re likely to be critiquing a view they don’t actually hold, and this is pointless.
Second, we should invite having our views critiqued. Dogmatism is wide spread in our cultural moment. This is true of many Christians, to be sure. Christians tend to be rather dogmatic and can often be dismissive of opposing views or objections. But I’ve got to say, I often see extreme dogmatism from atheist circles and discussion groups. There are many things that are not genuinely open for discussion for many atheists. When one tries to challenge or take a different viewpoint, one gets ridiculed, called names, and summarily dismissed. It’s not everybody and it’s not everywhere, but Christian/atheist discussions are very often not fruitful.
But I think who takes the cake on this is our politicians and pundits. When was the last time you saw a politician honestly hold his or her position out for critique and possible correction? The problem of course is many of the views are not held because they are true but because they are politically expedient. This makes for a toxic intellectual culture, for sure.
Now this isn’t always fun. It can be a bit painful to see a weakness in our deeply held view. But the point is we are always better for it. The moment we fail to be thoughtful is the moment we fail to genuinely seek after truth.
Bonus Tips
(Here are a couple of bonus tips:
Bonus tip #1: Be original. I’m a big fan of sarcasm and wit. I don’t mind someone objecting to me, but I really love it when it is interesting and somewhat witty. This is good times. What I don’t care for is when people trot out the same ol’ tired quips and memes and then pronounce victory. It’s not genuine discussion. Memes are not arguments and 99% of the time the meme is not something you’ve created. Be original. It’s much more fun.
Bonus tip #2: Don’t say someone is committing a logical fallacy unless and until you are clear what that logical fallacy is and how and when it applies. It’s really easy to signal the strawman or non sequitur or false equivalence alarms, but these are very often false alarms because the signaler isn’t straight on how these fallacies are supposed to go.)
In my last post, I argued that God as the bearded guy in the sky should be rejected. I have no interest in God as the bearded guy in the sky or any deity who is fundamentally human-like or finite. So this means I have no interest in a God who is an exalted man who has populated the planet with his spirit children, as in Mormonism. I also don’t have an interest in a God who extends mercy and the reward of 72 virgins only to those who follow his legal system, as in Islam. Allah is certainly a bigger conception of God than the bearded guy in the sky conception but it still falls very, very short.
I am interested and do affirm the existence of God as the greatest conceivable being. This is a God who has all great making properties in a maximal way. Being moral is a great making property and God, on this conception, has this property maximally. This means not only that all and every action is morally perfect, but also that God is the very ground of morality. Having knowledge or creative power and being everywhere present are also great making properties that God has maximally.
This is a God truly worthy of worship and our devotion.
What is more, the existence of God as the maximally great and perfect being is eminently defensible and reasonable. God, on this view, stands behind reality and all that exists. God is the first cause (in the broadest of senses) of all that exists. God then explains the existence of its peculiar features such as the universe itself, the design and fine tuning of the universe, moral facts, consciousness, beauty, human value, etc. In fact, I believe God is the best explanation of the most important facts aspects of life.
I am a Christian theist precisely because I believe the God of the Bible is that being.
Now I can already envision the memes and GIFs being readied that highlight how heinous and morally reprehensible the God of the Bible is, especially the God of the Old Testament. If I thought the God of the Bible was heinous and morally reprehensible, then I would not believe in him either. I don’t. In fact, I don’t think there is anything in all of Scripture that contradicts thinking that the God described is the greatest conceivable being, perfect and maximal in all of his ways.
Let me first say, I definitely do see why some people think the God of the Bible should be rejected. When certain passages of the Old Testament are taken in isolation, it can be very difficult to see a morally perfect being. I get this and I don’t make light of these passages. They are difficult.
But this issue, for me, comes back to how we see God. Let me illustrate.
Is it wrong to physically assault someone?
Well, it depends actually. Boxers physically assault each other all the time, but that’s not morally wrong. I may physically assault (or try to) someone who is breaking into my house with intent to harm my children. But that would not be morally wrong. In fact, it would be morally praiseworthy. There are lots of scenarios in which it would be completely wrong to assault someone, but it depends one who is in view and the context of the action.
How about this? Is it wrong to cut someone open with a knife?
Well, again, it depends. If it is a surgeon performing a lifesaving operation, then it is morally appropriate. If it is a sociopathic deviant, then it is, of course, morally wrong.
Is it wrong to order the killing of someone?
If it is a judge vested with the legal authority to do so and does it in a legally just way, then it seems morally appropriate. If it is a mob boss looking to take out a business owner who hasn’t paid his dues, then of course it’s very wrong.
An important question one has to ask in considering whether the God of the Bible is morally perfect is whether he has the authority, especially as judge, to order or to cause the death of people. It seems very difficult to see any reason that God, as the bearded guy in the sky, would have this authority. However, God as maximally great and perfect being who stands behind the universe as the metaphysical first cause would indeed have the authority to move in judgement on people. It seems clearly part of the notion of moral perfection to bring about justice on lawbreakers and those who do evil. On the Christian view, that’s all of us. God has the right to move in judgement against ALL OF US.
I don’t think this solves all issues, of course, as we grapple with various Old Testament passages. But, for me, it goes a long way in working out the apparent tension between seeing the God of the Bible as the maximally great and perfect being.
Sometimes people change their minds and come, for a variety of reasons, to reject belief in God. What has always been very surprising to me is how often the God they are rejecting is not the God I believe in either.
For example, suppose someone says:
“I just got to the point where I could no longer believe in the bearded guy in the sky.”
Okay, but the only problem is neither do I. And neither does any thoughtful Christian I know.
Now I realize that the “bearded guy in the sky” moniker may just be shorthand or a kind of tongue-in-cheek way to refer to a more robust conception of God. However, the point is this conception, or anything that it may refer to, is radically different from the biblical conception of God. The biblical conception of God is one where God is wholly other, eternal, maximal in all perfections, knows and intends the end from the beginning, the creator of all, the self-existent being and upon whom all other being depends. So if we imagine a spectrum of concepts where the bearded guy in the sky is at one end and the very rich biblical conception of God at the other, I want to suggest many times people are objecting to something closer to the bearded guy in the sky rather than the biblical understanding of God. Said somewhat differently, the biblical God can withstand many of the objections the bearded guy in the sky cannot.
We can see this with discussions about the problem of evil. The key premise in an argument from evil is to say there is evil for which God would have no justifying reasons. On this version of the argument, it is conceded that the concept of God is not logically contradictory with just any evil. Rather it is evil that has no justifying reason that is inconsistent with the existence of God. It unlikely that every ounce of evil in the history of the world has a justifying reason, the atheist claims, thus, this implies a good and all powerful God does not exist.
I can’t help but think there is something like a bearded guy in the sky in view in the key premise of the argument (namely, that there is evil for which God would have no justifying reasons). It’s true there’s a lot of evil, pain and suffering in the world. But is it really plausible that God could have no justifying reason for allowing it? Well this seems plausible only if we are talking about God as the bearded guy in the sky. But it doesn’t seem at all plausible (at least to me) if we are talking about the biblical God. Why couldn’t the eternal, self-existent God who sees the end from the beginning have justifying reasons for allowing the evil we see in the world? We need not know what those reasons are specifically to reasonably believe that the infinite God of the Bible could have them.
It’s important to see that this isn’t a dodge or an appeal to mystery. It is more of an appeal to the bigness and holiness (in the technical sense) of God and to say that many times perhaps we struggle because we have a much smaller and less interesting view of who God is.
I recently heard a former Christian say the turning point for him came one night while camping out under the stars. He asked God, if he was there, to give him a sign. He hoped to hear an audible voice or see a shining light. But nothing happened. He moved to looking for something out of the ordinary like a shooting star or a big wave to crash. Nothing happened. He got desperate and asked for anything, a fuzzy feeling or the wind to pick up. But nothing happened. He subsequently walked away from the faith.
I can certainly relate to having the desire to see God show up in obvious ways to help assure me he is truly there and he loves me. But doesn’t it seem a little unreasonable to demand that God relates to us in the way we want him to? Maybe the way we want him to doesn’t serve God’s purposes and maybe, just maybe, God’s purposes are far higher and far better than mine.
I close with a passage from a very insightful essay confronting the issue of the silence of God by Mike Rea. In the essay, he stresses the need for us to approach God on his terms and not the terms we set for him. He says:
You might be tempted to object that, on this view, God is like a father who neglects his children, leaving them bereft and unloved while he sits in stony silence thinking “I just gotta be me.” But to object like this is to fail to take seriously the idea that God might have a genuine, robust personality and that it might be deeply good for God to live out his own personality. One odd feature of much contemporary philosophy of religion is that it seems to portray God as having a “personality” that is almost entirely empty, allowing his behavior to be almost exhaustively determined by facts about how it would be best for others for an omnipotent being to behave. But why should we think of God like this? God is supposed to be a person not only of unsurpassable love and goodness but of unsurpassable beauty. Could God really be that sort of person if he’s nothing more than a cosmic, others-oriented, utility-maximizing machine? On that way of thinking, God—the being who is supposed to be a person par excellence—ends up having no real self. So, as I see it, silence of the sort we experience from God might just flow out of who God is, and it might be deeply good for God to live out his personality. If that’s right, and if our suffering in the face of divine silence is indeed unreasonable, the result of immaturity or other dysfunctions that we can and should overcome anyway, then I see no reason why even perfect love would require God to desist from his preferred mode of interaction in order to alleviate our suffering.[1]
So I think we should be very careful when we say a good, all powerful God would (or wouldn’t) do _____________________. Maybe God is bigger and richer and far more confounding than that.
[1] Rae (2011) “Divine Hiddenness, Divine Silence” in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 6th edition, edited by Louis Pojman and Michael Rea (Boston: Wadsworth/Cengage). See here for a copy of the full article.
About 4 years ago, Paul Gould, Keith Loftin and I were at a restaurant planning out an online apologetics course. A comment was made that we should write a book with this material. So we did! And that book comes out in 1 month (11/1)!!
There are a number of great apologetics texts out there. Here are a few notables about our book for those who may be interested.
The book is intended as an up-to-date book informed by current scholarship without the reader requiring any specific training in apologetics. Between the three of us, we have roughly 50 years of combined experience teaching Christian apologetics at all different levels of expertise. So our hope is that it can serve someone who is brand new to the area of study as well as be interesting to an intermediate student of apologetics.
Here’s the table of contents:
Many apologetics textbooks are, let’s just say, a wee bit lacking in creativity. We included original artwork in every chapter. Judith Dickinson (a.k.a., to me, mom) sketched pictures of, among others, C.S. Lewis and Alvin Plantinga. Check these out:
Wayne Miller, a PhD student at SWBTS, drew some great cartoons for illustrations:
We also including a few graphs and charts.
Beyond all of these things, the heart of the book is to defend the idea that the gospel is brilliant!! I love this term ‘brilliant’ in this connection. It has, for us, a double meaning. First, the gospel, as idea, is brilliant since it is smart. It is, in fact, the biggest idea I know. This is to say the gospel is profound, rational to believe, and eminently defensible. Much of the heavy lifting in the book is to defend this.
But the second sense of the term ‘brilliant’ is that the gospel is beautiful and desirable. We try, in each chapter, to connect the rational defense with the desirability and attractiveness of Christianity.
Here’s an excerpt from our introduction:
…what we find in Christianity is a perfect blend of reason and romance. Nowhere in Scripture is there a call to separate head (reason) and heart (romance) in our love of God and man. This is good news! Christianity does not require us to abandon the intellect or emotions. Christianity is both true and satisfying. Consider C. S. Lewis’s description of his pre-conversion mind:
The two hemispheres of my mind were in the sharpest conflict. On the one side a many-island sea of poetry and myth; on the other a glib and shallow “rationalism.” Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless. (Surprised by Joy, 170)
Lewis discovered that it was only in Christianity that his two hemispheres could be brought together into a coherent whole. In Christianity he had found a place to stand and a story that understood his longing for both how things are (truth) and how things ought to be (goodness and beauty). Christianity is true myth.
Our publisher, B&H, will be supplying the reader with a variety of supplements on their website. Among other material, we shot 2-3 videos per chapter that help introduce and augment the material in the book. This will be made available via Word Search from B&H Publishing Group.
The book is currently half off for preorder at Lifeway.
The book will work for a classroom, church small group, or for anyone looking to go deeper in the defense and desirability of the faith.
It went like this. Megachurch pastor, Steven Furtick, preaches a sermon in his typical millennial-hipster-mixed-with-seeker-sensitivity-on-steroids way on the topic of doubt. He even titled his message The Benefit of the Doubt (blushing). In the theatrical sermon he yells a lot and at one point cries out: “someone to my backside back me up on this!” That’s largely irrelevant, but I did find that really funny.
In the theatrics he places value on doubt for the Christian believer. His basic point seemed to be it is okay and natural and even valuable to experience doubts while living the Christian life of faith.
Owen Strachan, professor at Midwestern Seminary and popular blogger, however, took issue with this. The Christian Post even characterizes Strachan’s piece as a rebuke of Furtick for what Strachan thinks are unbiblical claims about faith and doubt. Strachan says:
Coming to faith in Christ necessarily means that you do not doubt the gospel of grace. Coming to faith in Christ means that you believe in Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Jesus presented himself as the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). Jesus demands total repentance and total trust in him, and he is right to do so. Jesus rebuked doubting Thomas (John 20:24-29). What specifically did Christ say to Thomas in verse 27? “Do not disbelieve, but believe.”
He goes on to say:
Let me say as this plainly as I know how: there is nothing of doubt in faith. God is not honored by doubt; doubting is not obedience to God. It is disobedience. We all falter in our faith…We are all the father of the child who has a demon in Mark’s Gospel. Every Christian must pray, “Help my unbelief, Lord, and forgive me for it!” (see Mark 9:14-29). But there is a major difference between categorizing doubt as sin and categorizing doubt as in any way neutral, acceptable, allowable, or virtuous.
Now, to be clear, I definitely prefer Strachan’s style, scholarship, and theology. I could never be part of Furtick’s church both for its style and its substance. However, on this one issue, I think Strachan is mistaken about the nature of doubt.
First, there is more than one sense of the term ‘doubt.’ There is, to be sure, a form of doubt that is sin. I call this toxic doubt. But the most common way we refer to and think about doubt is not in a moral category. It is epistemological. For Strachan to call all doubt sin and disobedience is just not being careful since intellectual doubt is not itself right or wrong, moral or immoral. To think so is a category error.
Intellectual doubt, in my view, is feeling the force of an objection to Christianity. It is to hear someone lay out, say, the problem of evil or to allege a contradictory set of passages in Scripture, etc., and to simply feel the pull of these problems. In short, it is a felt intellectual tension in our beliefs in light of an objection. The point is intellectual doubt is not something under our control and, thus, it makes no sense to say we shouldn’t doubt. We can’t just knock it off. It simply happens to us in our intellectual pursuits. Saying to not doubt is like saying to not find a person attractive. It is what we do with our doubts (and our feelings of attractions) that falls within the moral category.
Strachan uses a few passages to make his case here, but I find their use a bit fast and loose. Strachan summarizes the father in Mark 9:14-29 as saying, “Help my unbelief, Lord, and forgive me for it!” In the passage, the father certainly asks for help with his unbelief, but there is nowhere he is asking forgiveness for his unbelief. In John 20, it is also unclear to me that Jesus specifically rebukes Thomas for his doubts. Again, I don’t think that Thomas had any control over his having doubts. His mistake is he places his threshold of belief unreasonably high. It was only if and when Thomas himself could physically put his fingers in the wounds of Jesus that he would believe. Having intellectual doubts is one thing, but demanding a world of evidence is another.
Second, doubt has instrumental value and only instrumental value. This is a really important point. There are many things in life that have value even if they do not have value as ends in themselves. Take pushups, for example. Doing pushups has value but not as an end in itself. Those who do pushups (not me so much) do them for a further end, namely, for upper body strength. Pushups have instrumental value since, though not fun and sometimes painful, they lead to this good.
Similarly, doubt is instrumentally valuable since, when handled properly, it can lead to truth, knowledge and, somewhat ironically, an even greater faith. Without using these terms, I think this is what Furtick was saying. He was never extolling doubt as an end itself. He, as far as I could tell, was saying that working through the doubt leads us to these further goods (and went on to talk about “fulfilling our destiny” and that’s where I vomited). My point is that coming across some doubts is valuable when those doubts drive us to dive more deeply into our pursuit of God. They are instrumentally good. We don’t want to stay in the place of doubt. But they help direct us in the ways we need to be more intellectually careful. If hearing the problem of evil creates some intellectual doubts, then I think this is good if it drives us to dive deeply into the very powerful responses we have to the problem. Once we have settled a few of our questions, we somewhat ironically will have a deeper and more abiding faith.
Third, our intellectual beliefs and our faith are not the same thing. It seems clear we can intellectually believe in Christianity without having faith. This describes many people who regularly attend church. They may be in overall good shape intellectually and yet have no saving faith. Indeed, James tells us that even the demons believe (2:19). But I can also have some intellectual tension, questions, and even admitted ignorance in important areas and still fully place my faith in Christ. We do this all the time in our lives. We place our faith in things about which we are somewhat unsure and about which we have questions. We do this when we sit on a chair, get on an airplane, or commit ourselves in marriage to another. We can’t be fully certain about how it will all go, but we can fully entrust ourselves. I think the analogy of marriage is especially relevant since its most like our Christian faith. Our Christian faith is personal. Our beliefs, by contrast, are propositional.
I am, at this point, very confident that Christianity is true. I propositionally believe Christianity is true in all of its core claims and a host of more incidental ones. But I have questions about Christianity that I’m still in the process of intellectually working out. I also feel the tension that is caused from certain objections to Christianity. But here’s the point: I’ve given my life to it. I have full and abiding faith in Jesus Christ. I’m going to keep pursuing my intellectual questions with the hope that one day I won’t have those questions and the doubts will all be gone. But I’m not sinning while experiencing some intellectual doubts. I’m not disobeying or doing something necessarily contrary to faith when I process through my questions and tensions. It’s not to be celebrated, but it is also not something about which to say “knock it off.” Somebody to my backside back me up on this!!
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