I posted this awhile ago, fairly early in this blog’s history, but I feel like it’s more relevant right now than it was when I posted it last time. So here it goes again:

If I ever do become a Christian, I am resolved to still be friends with the queers and the pagans and all the rest. And not “still be friends” in an artificial way that means my only goal is really to fix them and to make converts out of them and if I didn’t think I could convert them I probably never would have talked to them. Not that. I mean really just still be friends. I am resolved to not get so wrapped up in a church that the only people I am confortable with are fellow-Christians.

I am resolved to be humble about my faith, to accept that people have a lot of well-founded concerns and misgivings about Jesus and about Christianity (shoot, I have a bunch myself right now, which is why I’m still nowhere near the point where I would call myself a Christian).

I am resolved to never, ever, ever be that smug guy who knows all the answers and has all these scripture verses to prove it and has God all figured out and claims that everyting is so simple if you would only see things my way (which is of course not my way, but God’s True Way of Truth).

If I decide to become a Christian it will because I can see the wonder and the overwhelming beauty and majesty of Jesus, and because I can feel a change that He has worked in me, and my reaction to that will be wide-eyed wonder and humility. But it will never be self-righteousness. Never.

That’s my resolution.

One of the funny things about this blog, wherein I document my spiritual journey to some kind of truth or meaning or whatever, is that whichever twist or turn I take, there’s always a chorus of cheerleaders telling me I’m doing the right thing. That’s why when my journey then takes me away from whatever detour it had me wandering through, I’m often reluctant to say so, in fear of disappointing the people who were excited that I stopped by.

I first noticed this with paganism. When I was looking into neopaganism and druidry, I attracted many neopagans and druids who were excited by the path my journey was leading me down. When it then led me back away from paganism, they mostly kind of faded into the woodwork (with some exceptions- I’ve picked up some good friends along the way). And I was sad to say that I didn’t think paganism or druidry was going to be where I ended up, because I knew those people would be let down in a sense. On the other hand, pagans tend to be really nice, nonjudgmental people, and as long as I’m not making fun of them or damning them to Hel, I’m pretty sure they’ve still got my back.

However, this dilemma was much more acute with atheism. When I ultimately spiralled into nonbelief, I was greeted with accolades and cheers from some of the internet’s atheists, for finally freeing myself from the shackles of atheism and being a mature human being who didn’t need deities as crutches anymore. When I decided that atheism wasn’t going to really work for me, I was reluctant to say so. For starters, accolades are nice. And the opposite of accolades is scorn, and I didn’t really want that.

Of course, I wasn’t really going to let how other people decide how I believe or don’t believe, but there was a minute where I was at least a little bit cagey about saying anything. I was getting so much support for declaring my atheism, and when I recanted, that support would probably vanish.

I say all of that by way of introduction tot his post. My goal hereis to explain why I stopped believing in God and why I started again. This might be a long post, so hang on to your hats.

When I first started seriously questioning the Mormon church last summer, my initial criticisms were centered around my feeling that Mormonism wasn’t Christian enough- Mormonism and Mormon scripture didn’t track closely enough with what I thought Christianity was all about (based on the New Testament, Church history, and the true Christians that I had come across over time). I felt like Mormonism was not leading me closer to Christ, but actually keeping me away from Him. Thus, in leaving Mormonism, my initial question was “what kind of Christian should I be?”

When I started this blog, my wife and I had only recently decided to actually leave Mormonism behind us, after struggling with it for some six months. I had also just read Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz, and I felt like becoming a Christian was something I wanted to do, but I wasn’t sure how to go about doing it. For some reason I didn’t feel like I already was a Christian, like I was already really committed to Jesus.

The problem was that my reasons for believing in Jesus, and in fact my reasons for believing in God at all, were basically the same reasons I believed in Mormonism. That is, I had simply been raised to assume that they were true, and this assumption was backed up by emotional “spiritual” confirmations. In deciding that those bases were insufficient for continued belief in Mormonism, I also took out the foundation, as flimsy as it may have been, for my entire belief in God. In other words, the same conclusions that made me question my belief in Mormonism made me ultimately question my belief in Jesus Christ and in any kind of God whatesoever.

I was waiting for some kind of mystical experience, some kind of contact with the divine that was the real deal, not the easy “warm fuzzy” self-delusion of Mormonism’s Holy Ghost. I was waiting for God to reach out and shake me, to let me know that he was real, to give me some kind of contact. But it kept not happening.

With that in mind, I began giving a loud voice to my innner skeptic. I started reading Ebon Musings’s essays on atheism, which are honestly extremely compelling and very difficult to dispute. Eventually, I was in a place where I had to admit that I had no real reason to believe in God other than wishful thinking, and if I was to be honest with myself, I would have to admit that I simply did not believe.

It seemed like a destination of sorts. It wasn’t what I was shooting for when I set out towards Byzantium, but maybe the place we intend to be is often a lot less realistic than the place we really wind up. I wasn’t a nihilist or anything; I still had some core beliefs that I was more or less confident in. But I could not say that I affirmatively believed in God.

The thing was, I wasn’t happy. I didn’t really want to be an atheist. I actually like religion! Specifically, I was (and still am) convinced that while an aheist can be a very good and moral person, and that a religious person can be a complete jerkwad, nevertheless for me personally, religion in general and Christianity in specific were going to have a much greater potential to make me the kind of person that I wished I was. I could be a good person and an atheist, that was never in question. But no atheist philosophy was going to actually transform me into a New Man. And Christianity made that promise.

But my problem was that if I was going to believe something, it would have to be more intellectually honest than my beliefs had previously been. No putting doubts on the shelf. No convincing myself until I was convinced. Nothing like that. I wanted to believe, but I didn’t want it so bad that i was willing to delude myself into believing.

So I went about tentatively trying to figure out how I could believe in God despite my loud internal skeptic (but without squashing him and pretending he didn’t exist) and despite the very good and compelling logical arguments against God’s existence, and the generally weak and limp logical arguments for God’s existence.

I read some Kierkegaard. I thought about how God and logic would interact, if there was a God. I thought about doubt, and whether there was a place for it within faith. I read Brian McLaren’s Finding Faith. I thought about hope.

In the end, I made a place where I thought I could theoreticaly believe in God. I had room for God in my framework again. However, having room for God, i.e., acknowledging the possibility of God, doesn’t equal belief in God. If, at that point, I had simply declared myself a believer, I would have been guilty of doing the very thing I was most loathe to do: talking myself into believing. Instead, I let it simmer for awhile.

At the same time, I started thinking seriously about Jesus Christ, and I found him extremely compelling. Christianity still kind of gave me the heebie jeebies, so I was still reluctant to even express interest in the religion. But the man? The more I thought about Jesus, the more I felt like there was something to him. Something more. I wasn’t really sure what it was, but I knew I liked it, and maybe I even needed it.

I then let this stew for a bit. The more I thought about God, the more I thought that maybe God exists after all, despite my efforts to logic him out of existence. And the more I thought about Jesus, the more he seemed electrifying, powerful, important. Much more so than a simple wise moral philosopher, however great he may have been.

When I read C. S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces, I finished the book and realized that after reading it, there was no way I could ever say that I do not believe in God. I can’t explain it very well, because the book touched me on an extremely personal, maybe even primal level. But it completely evaporated all of my defenses. It didn’t resolve my concerns or wipe away all of my doubts or anything, but it spoke loud and clear to me: nevertheless, there is a God. It was a life-changing experience that I can’t do justice in writing or even in speaking- it was so strange and powerful that I have a hard time articulating exactly what it was about the book that changed my whole way of looking at God.

Once I had made room for the possibility of God, Till We Have Faces showed me that God was a sure thing.  All of my anger, my logic, my insecurity, my waffling, and my careful arguments are made completely insignificant when faced with God’s existence.

In any case, that’s where I am now. I am sure that there is a God, and I suspect that Jesus might actually have been God. I’ve not got a lot more than that. I suppose it’s a start. I can’t really be the poster child for honest atheism anymore, but I probably never should have been. I’m not at my destination yet- in fact I don’t know if I’ll ever really “have arrived”- but I like where I’m sailing right now, and I’m interested and excited to see what’s ahead.

I’ve been tagged twice, by Kay and by Cragar, with the Eight Random Facts meme. It’s kind of a departure from this blog’s regularly scheduled programming, but I figure it will be fun to play along. And I have a headache and feel crappy this morning, so I could use some fun.

The rules of getting tagged are simple. If you get tagged…

• Post eight random facts about yourself.
• Tag eight other bloggers (hopefully those who haven’t been tagged before).
• Post these rules.

And without any more ado, I shall proceed with eight random facts.

1. I am an enlisted infantry soldier in the National Guard. I haven’t been deployed overseas yet, but there’s a good chance I’ll wind up in the sandbox before my enlistment runs out. I have been deployed stateside for hurricanes in Florida and to guard train stations in New York City.
2. Scary movies really, really scare me. I’m not talking about all horror genre stuff, here- just because a movie is about ghosts or werewolves or whatever doesn’t mean it’s meant to scare you. But stuff that’s meant to scare you works on me. Seriously; I shriek like a little girl. Ask my wife.
3. I have a bizarre fascination for Finland. And I have no explanation for it. My favorite composer? Sibelius. My favorite language? Finnish. My favorite part of World War 2? The Winter War. I even own an English translation of Vaino Linna’s The Unknown Soldier. It’s fantastic- the best war novel I have ever read. Except for maybe For Whom The Bell Tolls.
4. I have another blog, called The Goblin’s Lair. It used to be a passionate little political thing, but since starting law school gave me a passion-ectomy, I haven’t written on it very much.
5. I almost never watch broadcast TV. I simply don’t remember to tune in, even to shows I love. And when I do remember, I get irritated at having my life dictated to me by a programming schedule. that being said, I watch tons and tons of TV shows on DVD. My wife and I will watch as many as seven or eight episodes of a favorite show when we’re really into it.
6. I have a degree in elementary education. I’m even certified to teach K-6 in the state of Florida. I did my student teaching and got my degree and certification, but I decided to go to law school instead of actually teaching full-time. So instead of being stressed out and poor but Making A Difference, I shall be stressed out and rich, and I will donate money to people who Make A Difference.
7. I prefer science fiction to fantasy. I prefer harder sci-fi to space opera (Star Wars and Star Trek pretty much fill up all the room I have for space opera). What fantasy I do like is usually darker swords-and-sorcery stuff like Elric or Conan. High fantasy bores me to tears.
8. I currently prefer the DC universe to the Marvel universe, but I’ve flip-flopped on this issue more than once in my life. At the moment, though, the only books I regularly buy are Astro City, the Justice League, and Green Arrow.

Now I have to tag eight people to continue the never-ending meme. I hereby tag…

Katyjane at Katy’s Blog

Dando at Mormon and Evagelical Conversations

Jonathan Blake at Green Oasis

Peter at For Peter’s Sake

Beata at Club Beata

Az at Arizona Awakening

Mike at Emerging Pensees

Becca at Beccababes’ Blog

Enjoy!

I had a great discussion with my mother a few days ago (she’s a true believing Mormon) about the difference between faith and testimony in Mormon theology, and I’ve been mulling around some thoughts about it ever since.

“Testimony,” as commonly used by Mormons, is an unfortunate term. It’s an umbrella term, a thought-construct composed of several different distinct but related concepts, but they’re all blurred together into one conglomerate noun in the Mormon vernacular. When the Holy Ghost bears witness of the truth of x, a Mormon calls that your testimony. When you tell others the religious things you believe or “know,” that’s also your testimony. Those two I can handle, but the third main use is the most vague and elusive, and the one least based in (even Mormon) scripture and theology. It’s this idea that a testiony is a thing, a noun, an intangible object that you actually have and need to nurture and work on so it grows.

It’s not the same thing as Faith, which is given some pretty clear and basically consistent definitions in the New Testament and the Book of Mormon. Paul (or whoever wrote Hebrews) said “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (NIV). In the Book of Mormon, Alma said faith “is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true,” and Moroni said faith is “things which are hoped for and not seen.” None of those are really the same thing that Mormons are talking about when they talk about their testimony. Testimony is the assurance of the truth of Mormonism via mystical experiences.

Faith is consistently couched in terms like “hope.” Your testimony is the things you know. You might talk about faith in terms of certainty, but you would never describe a testimony using the word “hope.” Sure, the terms are similar, but they’re not identical.

In Mormon theology, such as it is, the requirments for salvation are faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the holy ghost, and enduring to the end (which includes getting the necessary ordinances and priesthood, and continuing to develop faith, repent of sins, and renew your baptismal covenant by taking the sacrament). Testimony per se is not a requirement for the Celestial Kingdom. There’s not testimony checker at the pearly gates. Nevertheless, Mormons constantly talk about the necessity of having a testimony, as if it is basically the most important thing in Mormonism.

It has no real connected place in Mormon theology, so why is it necessary? All of the critical steps (the principles and ordinances of the gospel) for salvation are obtainable without ever once feeling the Holy Ghost, much less Getting a Testimony.

There’s a weird inconsistency yhere that bothers me. Basically, what it boils down to is that Mormonism in practice focuses almost obsessively on the need for the individual to experience successive, ongoing conversion experiences. No wonder Mormons are able to simply ignore their doubts and criticisms of the church that they hear! They are spending their time and effort constantly converting themselves. Why? I think it’s because without constant conversion-as-reinforcement, Mormonism doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny. Testimony may not actually be a requirement for salvation in Mormonism, but if you aren’t constantly cultivating mystical confirmations of the Church’s truth, you’re far less likely to stay a member of a Church that is heavy-handed, authoritarian, wildly implausible, and extremely demanding.

I don’t really believe there is such a thing as “having a testimony.” I think that you can experience God through the Holy Spirit, and I think you can yourself bear witness to things you believe are true, but as far as this nebulous thing that you have, I think it’s a mental and cultural construct with no real existence. It’s a doublespeak term tat obscures what’s going on. Faith is something that you have. Testimony is something you hear or give.

Given that opinion, why then does it bother me when people say I must not have ever really had a testimony, seeing as how I left the Church. I mean, if I don;t believe that testimony exists, at least the way they’re talking about it, why do I care if they say I never had one? Again, it comes down to the nebulous doublespeak use of the term. When someone says I never had a testimony, they’re actually questioning whether I ever was really ommitted to the Church, and that pisses me off. I was raised in the Church, and I was a faithful member. I scrupulously tried to keep the commandments. I graduated from early morning seminary. I served an honorable mission and I worked incredibly hard, both physically and spiritually. I read the Book of Mormon again and again, not as a skeptic, but as an earnest believer. I married in the temple, which took great personal sacrifices on my part and on my wife’s part. I always paid a full tithe, and I gave generous fast offerings. I magnified my callings. I prayed daily. When doubts came, I did my best to resolve them. I tried to me a member-missionary, and I even tried my best to do my home teaching. I did everything I was supposed to do to “get a testimony,” and I did it with pure intentions, because I honestly thought it was all the right thing to do.

The Church promises that if you do this stuff, you’ll Get A Testimony. Thus, when people say I must not have had a testimony, they are insinuating that I never did the things that were required to get one, and that impugns my integrity and my earnestness, and that bothers me a lot.

I have to say that I believe that the Church is simply not true, at least it is not true the way it claims to be. It may be a fine place for some people, but it is certainly not God’s one true church, restored in these latter days in preparation for the second coming, led by living prophets, etc. I have no problem with people disagreeing with me, but I do have a problem with people assuming that the only reason I came to the conclusion I did is that I wasn’t really genuinely committed and faithful in the first place. That’s just insulting.

I know I promised that I’d come back and try to articulate exactly why Till We Have Faces was so significant to me, but I’ve been at a loss for the last week.  I’ve tried to explain it to my mother, my wife, and to my brother, and each time I’ve ended up saying, “Trust me; you’ve just got to read this book.”

The best that I can manage is to say that after reading it, there’s no way I could say I don’t believe in God.  I felt like the narrator’s struggles with deity often were very close to mine, and I found myself identifying with her anger, angst, and anguish.  I particularly was moved by her first trip to the valley, and her frustration at not being able to see divine things, but almost being able to see them- just a glimpse, but not enough.  But the resolution of the novel so completely wiped all of that away, and not in a cheap or trite way, but in a way that seems like the kind of thing that would be true about a god.

When her charge against the gods answered itself, I was reeling.  When the Fox admitted that he was right about how religion missed the point entirely, but at the same time he was so horribly wrong, I felt like I was experiencing revelation.

All of my concerns about God are resolved on at least a basic, primal level by the mere fact that despite all I have to say, God is.  I guess that’s the best that I can do.

I read C. S. Lewis’s novel, Till We Have Faces, over the last two days, and it absolutely blew me away. I think I’m going to have a lot to say about it, but it may require me to take some time to unpack the novel, and maybe even re-read it.

The book was a gift to me from a friend maybe nine years ago, and I pretty much just let it sit around on my bookshelves without even the intent to read it untl a few months ago, when I decided to give it a go. Even then, it wasn’t until two days ago that I actuallky settled down to read it.

The novel wasn’t what I expected at all. My only previous experiences with Lewis were Narnia and Mere Christianity, in both of which he takes a sometimes annoyingly paternalistic tone, like they’re both written for children, and so sometimes they fail to capture the complexities and depths of spiritual concerns. Mere Christianity is not as bad as Narnia (don’t get me wrong; I think they’re both fantastic, but there’s something missing), but it still doesn’t quite seem to deal with the hard questions head-on. Till We Have Faces pulls no punches, and it is an extremely mature work. there’s something about art and literature that can go places that mere expositional writing just can’t, I think.

Like I said, I’m not anywhere near done unpacking it, but it may turn out to be so significant as to be life-changing. And furthermore, though I’ve had it for nine years, I think that this weekend in particular was the exact time I needed to read it. I was feeing particularly depressed and frustrated, and a little bit angry, and I was having serious doubts about God’s existence, and certainly doubts about God’s benevolence. This book might just have hit the spot. If you haven’t read it, you probably should.

I’m in Atlanta for the week. I have internet access, but I might be having too much fun hanging out with family to post. If I have any fantastic thoughts, I’ll either take notes and blog later, or I’ll make an exception and go ahead and post them.

Can’t close my eyes
They’re wide awake
Ev’ry hair on my body
has got a thing for this place
Oh empty my heart
I’ve got to make room for this feeling
so much bigger than me

It couldn’t be any more beautiful - I can’t take it in.

Weightless in love…unraveling
For all that’s to come
and all that’s ever been
We’re back to the board
with every shade under the sun
Let’s make it a good one

It couldn’t be any more beautiful - I can’t take it in.

-Imogen Heap

Here’s the thing: I find Jesus compelling.

The things he taught, the way he taught them, the way he treated people- he was something special, and it makes “special” sound like a lame word.  There’s something about Jesus, something different.  Something big, and something important.  There is something about him that makes me want to find out as much about him as I can, and makes me want to try to be like him and follow the things he taught.

He seems significant.  And not just as a great moral teacher.  I don’t know what I belive about God and the universe and everything, but I believe that at the very least, Jesus was connected in a way that other people aren’t.  He was connected to whatever it is out there that makes us stare in wonder at the skies and realize how big the universe is.

It’s kind of hard to explain.  But he was radically inclusive, he preached counterintuitive things in a way that seems not counterintuitive at all, but like intuitive on a different level.  Superintuitive, maybe.  He taught that the Kingdom was at hand, and he told us how to live it.  They killed him for it, but even his death just proved him right.  He won by losing.

At the risk of sounding lame and trite, I’m not going to gomuch further than that.  I’m not going to claim to know truth or God or much of anything really.  All I know is that there is something magnetic and electric about Jesus Christ that I want to have more of. This is new, this is different, and I like this.

I don’t know about theology, or truth, or cosmology, or anything like that.  But I know I want to know Jesus Christ.