Do People Actually Reject the Living God?

With the prevalence of social media, it is easy to find people very vocally proclaiming why they do not believe in God. Oftentimes, it is because of how other people have presented God or done things in God's name, usually connected to hate, violence, and vengeful wrath. Rosaria Champagne Butterfield shares many examples of this from the LGBT community in The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. These individuals say they could never believe in a God like that. In The God-Shaped Brain, Tim Jennings shares an anecdote of a patient saying that, to which he responds, "Good for you. I wouldn't believe in that God, either."

The traditional Christian response is to assume that these individuals are truly atheists or agnostics and do not love and appreciate the Living God. But I've been wondering if that's necessarily true. In these types of situations where the only explicit exposure someone has had to the construct of the Divine is this negativistic view of God and this construct is rejected, are these people necessarily rejecting the true God? Or are they simply rejecting a false, man-made God? Is it possible that they, in fact, recognize, appreciate, love, and even worship the Living God who transforms people's lives but just don't recognize him by name because of what they've been taught?

When labels and categories can be so destructive because of stereotypes and misrepresentation, is the label someone gives God necessarily important if they recognize him and relate to him anyway?

Saying It Like It Is

"He says it like it is." This can be a compliment or a cursing criticism, depending on the person saying these words. People like Mark Driscoll get praise for their no-holds-barred approach to confrontation. They also get criticized for being rude and wrong in their content.

When it comes to Driscoll, I tend to be the latter camp. Yet when some ethical issues have come up at work lately, I found myself being praised by others for "saying it like it is." And criticized by others for not being serene.

I found myself questioning my actions and wondering what the right approach was. Was Jesus outspoken and angry? Or was he a pacifist? Ultimately, he was both. There are a couple of excerpts from John Eldredge's books that I think really summarize these issues quite nicely.

However, I find it interesting how people really struggle with finding a balance of both. Where I am currently is that the ideal is to be calm, serene, and cooperative. This encourages cooperation, collaboration, and growth within an institution. It also can encourage people to feel safe to grow and face their own challenges.

Yet when that no longer works and major problems continue to manifest, I believe being feistier is warranted. Sometimes we need to stand up for our rights, the rights of others, and right conduct. That means we need to fight at times. There are, of course, better and worse ways to fight, but at times, fight we must.

The problems occur when we stay in one extreme all the time, regardless of circumstances. This creates a lack of a change (with complete serenity) or unsafe, instable environments (with constant condemnation).

What do you think? Is there a balance? Is there a time to say it like it is? What does that even mean?

Consider Ignoring Why Is God Ignoring Me?

My most recent review for the Tyndale Blog Network is Gary Habermas' Why is God Ignoring Me?: What To Do When It Feels Like He's Giving You the Silent Treatment. Tyndale House Publishers provided me a complimentary copy of the book to review.

With the focus of this blog on doubt and struggles, this is one of the most relevant reviews. When I saw the title and description, I jumped at the chance to review it, very excited with what I saw. I was hoping it would be a great resource to send people to when they are struggling or experiencing a dark night of the soul.

The description stated the book "gives us the freedom to ask our tough questions... and the wisdom to find the answers." This is the kind of thing I live on and love promoting. In the introduction, Habermas states that "what we tell ourselves is of utmost importance in terms of how we 'feel' about God's seeming silence" (p. xiii). I completely agree with that, as our anxiety about doubt often causes the problems. This anxiety prevents us from asking the tough questions, but rather let them sit and fester.

The problem is that the introduction is where the book stops being helpful. It transitions from a book that really could help people sit with the discomfort of experiencing silence from God into a book that truly fulfills the subtitle "what to do when it feels like He's giving you the silent treatment."

Habermas' proposition is that God does not give people the "silent treatment," but rather it is people's perceptions of God and his actions that make it appear like God is silent. While I agree that is often the case, this completely disregards authentic times that God may not be overtly speaking to us, specifically as in a dark night of the soul, in which God tends to be more passive.

Framing this experience as solely due to the individual's error not only invalidates the person's experience, but can make it worse. Therefore, I would not recommend this tome to anyone experiencing a dark night. The closest Habermas gets to describing a God-initiated silence is stating, "God's silence could also be a reprimand or time-out response" (p. 130). This can be true, but still puts blame on the individual in a negative way that is not congruent with a dark night.

Besides the poor framing of the book, the content overall is relatively good. It's just too focused on giving answers rather than really asking questions and struggling with the answers. I completely agree that we often expect God to work in ways that he does not always work. Habermas describes an Incarnational perspective very well, which I appreciate. He also talks about how our past, emotions, and thoughts can cloud our ability to see God at work. That's totally true. This book can be useful for people in those circumstances.

I had a couple of significant frustrations with some of the content, though:

Habermas frequently refers to unanswered prayers. While the Garth Brooks song Unanswered Prayers is one of my favorite songs, it is also one of the songs that annoys me the most. I think the concept of a prayer being unanswered is complete baloney. Yes, that is my theological perspective, but still. The way the term is often used is for prayers that are not answered the way we want them answered. That does not mean there is no answer. It's just a no. Or not yet. That's an answer. Framing it as unanswered leads to more problems than the convenience of using a simple phrase.

Habermas has an entire chapter entitled "What Do You Tell Yourself" that falls squarely in my area of expertise of the cross-roads of psychology and spirituality. His point in this chapter is that at times, "many of your problems have very little to do with God" (p. 108). Again, I agree with this statement. However, I dislike how he handles it.

He basically takes a cognitive therapy perspective about challenging false beliefs. Fair enough. I do that a lot in my blog. However, Habermas puts the whole problem and solution in our thinking. I disagree with this from a psychotherapy perspective and definitely from a spiritual perspective. While our thoughts definitely can cause problems, other elements of our psyche can, too.

He even moves into poor exegesis when he says, "the Bible tells you that you are free not to feel anger, not to hate, and not to return to others what they have given you" (p. 110). While transformation through Christ may make these things more likely, the one I do have major issue with is the freedom from anger. Anger is not bad. God gets angry. We should get angry at times.

In fact, Habermas takes such a strictly cognitive approach that he discounts feelings completely. He cites C.S. Lewis and asserts that "we must tell our emotions to take a hike" (p. 113). This is one of the statements for which I have the least tolerance. While our emotions can cause problems, they are also a blessing. The American church and the American people would do well to pay more attention to their honest and authentic emotions. If we did that, we may actually experience God more and perceive less silence.

Article Round-up

It's done! I took the EPPP this weekend. Now I have to wait for the scores... Interestingly, I'm more afraid of the shame of failing than having to study more and spend the money again (although I really don't want to do either of those). That could be an interesting topic for another time.

In any case, here's some articles I've found interesting over the last week or so.

Starting off with a devotional, Day 28 of Dr. Larry Crabb's Lenten devotionals is particularly good!

This is a great article on depression and the church and some of the weaknesses of the church in affecting depression.

Who Are the De-Churched. This is a REALLY good article. I feel quite similar to the relationally de-churched. It's stuff we've discussed a few times on this blog.

Elemental Preaching. This is a great article on the purpose of preaching written by my pastor from my time in Berkeley. He's a great guy with great ideas.

3 Lies the Church Tells About Sex. Pretty self-explanatory article. And VERY accurate, with significant implication.

Breaking Through Workaholism. I need to internalize several of these. :)

How (and How Not) to Bring Christ to Work. I like the Incarnational emphasis on this. Very relevant to other discussions on evangelism on this blog.

When It's Good to Get Mad. Another article with some topics that we've hit on here before.

Hope for Another's Success

Continuing from yesterday, when we forgive another or have a conflict with another person, group, or organization, we often are told to pray for them and hope for their success. I believe that is biblical. However, I do not believe we often practice accurately.

When we refer to success, we usually mean that the person/group achieves their goals. I have to say that I do not believe that is biblical. People and groups do awful things. I truly doubt Jesus would have us pray for them to continue that.

Rather, I believe that when we hope and pray for another's success, we are to hope and pray that they become closer to Christ and succeed in his name.

Doing this in practice can be difficult. As one elder said, we should not criticize our brethren in Christ. I have been on the receiving end of unjustified attacks, and no good is produced from them. And such dissension and attacks have led to the fractured nature of the Church now. Yet evil is done, and it needs to be addressed. I posted a letter from John Eldredge a few months ago on this topic, in which he supports calling out incorrect practices.

However, this can be a slippery slope. What is the balance?

My current position is that one should not make public (or perhaps even private) criticisms (especially absolute condemnations) of groups and people they do not have enough information about and do not truly understand. This would account for most of the criticisms given in this world, I bet... :)

However, sometimes we are well enough informed to make an accurate and appropriate call about whether or not a wrong has occurred. How we handle that information is important, too. Name-calling is unhelpful. We should use that information constructively. A press release is rarely constructive in this area. Frankly, I am prone to saying that private comments are the most appropriate. In many ways, it can be a form of passive resistance. This can include stopping tithes, referring people away from an organization, providing education about a group's practices, etc. But this has to be done wisely and with the appropriate information and understanding. Again, we too often do this without sufficient and accurate information, in which case we likely sin (and you know how often I use that term...). We also need to be ready to provide reasons for our statements.

It's delicate, and I'm not sure there's a clear answer about how to deal with such situations. I don't know if my current conclusions are even remotely right, but it's where I've landed thus far in this struggle.

What do you think? How should we handle such circumstances?

Forgiveness

Whenever there is conflict and an impending church split, there is also a lot of dialogue about forgiveness and praying for one's enemy. I'm not saying that there are enemies in our situation, but that's often the language used.

What I have observed is that forgiveness often takes on the form of the passive acceptance I discussed yesterday. I don't think that's healthy, and I definitely don't believe that's what God had in mind when he discussed forgiveness. It's much more active. As many people say, forgiveness is not a feeling, it's a decision. There is absolute truth to that.

However, as I said that Christian often simplify our psychological states, forgiveness is not as simple as a decision. There are intense emotions involved, positive and negative, and they need to be addressed. Ev Worthington is a specialist in forgiveness research, particularly within Christianity (he's a Christian himself). One of the things he mentioned is that it can be damaging to the person to forgive too soon... or too late. There is a delicate balance and timing.

I would also argue (and I believe Worthington does too) that forgiveness does not coincide with forgetting. We can forgive someone, but we often should remember. It relates to the boundaries we discussed before. Forgiveness is separate from the other person changing and from reconciliation. We may forgive Hitler, but would we let him lead anything? I sure hope not.

Anger and pain can still arise in us as we forgive. Sometimes a person may re-injure us, or that process of reconciliation is uncompleted (sometimes it will never be complete). That is painful. And angering. What was done is wrong. When we remember it, it is appropriate and acceptable to be anger, as long as it is not all-consuming. But we have to have grace for ourselves, as this is a process.

So what does this mean as we pray for those who have hurt us and are told to hope for their success? That's tomorrow...

Anger, Part II

Several months ago, I had a post on anger. I thought it was appropriate to do a follow-up because it's an issue that has been a part of the reactions to the Cathedral's decisions and was the topic of Bobby's message on Sunday.

As I said before, anger is a touchy subject in Christianity. We often assume it's bad. One of the things Bobby said that I appreciated on Sunday was separating the emotion of anger from the action of anger, the latter which tends to fester. I think it's an important distinction because we often confuse the complexities of emotions and our psychologies.

In fact, I realized today that I think, while psychologists often simplify spirituality, Christians often simplify our psychologies. Things aren't just as simple as anger can destroy. Can it? Absolutely. It also serves a very important, good function in our lives.

But where is the line?

That's something I've considered a lot of the last several months while the Cathedral has imploded. I have experienced a lot of anger. One thing Bobby mentioned was holding onto anger. One way we often try not to hold onto anger is by not feeling it. I argue that that is unhealthy and ironically is how we hold onto the anger. By ignoring it, we repress it, and it begins to fester inside of us until more builds up and it finally explodes. In contrast, if we can express it (in healthy ways) as we experience it, we can use the emotion of anger constructively and do not live by it.

So what if we express it and still feel anger? We often assume we are doing something wrong, like we haven't forgiven the other person well enough. That's not necessarily the case.

As wrongs continue, we continue to be angered. In the case of the Cathedral, wrongs were continually being committed (and still are). People were (and are) continuing to be hurt. That justifies continued anger. It wasn't just a one-time event to "get over." It was a continual assault. There was also a sense of betrayal on many levels, which causes even deeper pain and anger, which I believe is completely appropriate. We can deal with that anger by taking action, but most of us could do nothing but sit back and watch it all implode. That does not help the expression of the emotions. Sometimes we truly cannot right a wrong. It is not in our power. We have to find a way to resolve the issue in our psyche, then, sometimes with the help of a professional.

However, I maintain that continued anger is not necessarily bad, again, as long we don't live from it and make all of our decisions from it, as Bobby discussed during the message.

In the next couple of days, I'll also discuss forgiveness, boundaries, and praying for the success of an enemy.