Passing Out With Contacts Meets Walking Out on God

True story: when I first got contacts in junior high, I was so excited about it and yet so weirded out by this piece of plastic going into my eyes that I passed out in the eye place as soon as they were put in my eyes.

Once I recovered, I spent the whole next week blinking often and hard. My body took several weeks to get used to this uninvited guest intruding in my eye. My friends at school would mock me mercilessly by blinking hard back at me.

Since then I have often wondered who was the first person to ever try putting contacts in their eyes. Seems like a rather dicey proposition to me.

During my five years on campus at UNC, I had an inordinate number of students walk away from the faith. A few of them cited how "unnatural" the whole thing felt--like it was something that they were trying too hard to believe or do. It felt alien, constricting.

But I wonder if the correctives offered by Jesus and the rest of the Scriptures aren't rather like how my body responded to my contact lenses. In order to see correctly, something foreign had to be introduced. And it took my eyes a while to get used to it. But eventually I adjusted. I pop contacts in with aplomb each morning, no passing out.

The truth of the matter is that the words of Jesus and the Scriptures ARE alien. They ARE foreign. They aren't intuitive. If they were, we wouldn't need them so desperately. And what I find is that we often over-estimate our own ability to discern what is good and right.

So I suggest that we need to be brutally honest in prayer to God about the things that we find constricting, challenging, or just plain weird in the Scriptures.

But we also need a healthy dose of humility before the reality that what doesn't make sense to us now sometimes makes sense much later. And sometimes we're certain about something that later turns out to be the wrong decision.

Skeptical About My Skepticism Part Two: Pastors, Money, and Another Option

"Sometimes I can't help but be skeptical when a pastor talks about money," someone admitted to me recently. "Even if I know them, I always feel cynical about it."

I had to admit that I was in the same boat. This is pretty ironic given that I make my living by asking people to support me financially in order for me to be in ministry and on campus full-time.

As we talked through this particular application of the problem of skepticism, we stumbled across yet another way that skepticism is a poor, blunt instrument that falters in leading us to the life well-lived.

It makes sense that we are somewhat dubious about requests or teaching about money from religious types. But in the end all skepticism does is keep us from dealing with the issue.

The real issue is that money holds power over us like almost nothing else does. The real issue is that for many of us money is an idol that is killing our souls, destroying our joy, ruining our lives and our families and our witness and our ability to be in relationship with God.

Money for many of us is toxic. But we don't deal with it because we're stuck in this veneer of skepticism about the person who's calling us to deal with our issues. Again, we see that skepticism is a terribly unhelpful instrument for assessing what is true, good, or right.

This does not mean, of course, that we are to be stupid. But these are not the only options: stupid or skeptical. There is a third way: wisdom.

Wisdom has all the sophistication of skepticism without the arrogant self-reliance and cynicism. Wisdom leads us down paths of saying "yes" and "no" (to money and anything else) in ways that are humble, authentic, good, deep, virtuous. Wisdom invites us to delight in and savor life. It laughs more. It takes the self neither overly-seriously nor overly-lightly. It bears delicious fruits of love, joy, peace.

None of these characteristics mark the path of the skeptic.

I've got a long way to go to be able to shake my inner-skeptic--especially when it comes to certain issues like money. But one thing is for sure: I'm more and more aware of how thin my life is when he's in charge. Holy discontent--at least that's a start.

Becoming Skeptical of My Skepticism

Every so often, I find myself allowing skepticism to take the lead in my life. Particularly when it comes to the religious stuff. I allow the inner-voices of skepticism and the voices of skepticism that I've imbibed from students and from my culture drive the bus in terms of my engagement with God.

The culture, of course, celebrates this: "way to think critically about this religious stuff!" To be dubious is to somehow be empowered.

But the actual result is boringly predictable: skepticism unbridled does not bring any satisfaction or resolution. To allow the voice of skepticism to hijack any part of my life is a fruitless exercise. I can simply and ridiculously talk myself out of trusting or believing anything. When skepticism takes the lead, it's not a huge mystery where I'll end up.

In fact, skepticism has proved to be the least helpful tool in the toolbox for discovering anything remotely resembling truth, purpose, or reality. To be fixed in a posture of permanent skepticism is anything but empowering. It's boringly predictable. Nothing productive actually ever comes out of it.

Augustine argued that faith was the proper instrument for seeing and apprehending God. You need a microscope to see inside a cell. You need a telescope to see the moon. And you need faith to see God.

Trying to reason or "skeptic" your way into seeing God is like trying to use a microscope to see the moon. The results are predictably fruitless.

It's not that reason doesn't have a place in the life of faith. Augustine argued that Christianity is "faith seeking understanding." We lead with faith. We bring our questions with us. Some get answered. Others don't.

But as long as we allow anything other than faith to lead the way, we will end up in very predictable dead-ends when it comes to our spiritual life.

See Comments

I was going to change direction today, but my good friend Macon left a shining example of a stirring and insightful comment (as is his wont), even pre-caffeinated. This sparked my own, distant and faint echo of a lesser thought that I posted in response and I will leave it at that for a while.

Happy New Year, everyone!

No Doubt Part 2: The Poor Man's Way

So while I disagree with Shanley's means (doubt) I actually thoroughly agree with his ends. Shanley's chief concern seems to be that certainty cuts us off from community. To come to a place of certainty about things means that you are done with dialogue or conversation with fellow human beings.

I think that Shanley's goal is good. Most of us have known people who are so certain that they know everything about everything that it is, indeed, impossible to have genuine discussion or dialogue. Some of us are that person. Hopefully you know who you are.

But the problem is that to become cut-off and smug is a possible but not necessary consequence of certainty. In other words, it is possible to have certainty in a winsome way that does not end discussion but, to the contrary, promotes it in a healthy way.

The Biblical word for this is posture towards certainty: humility.

What Shanley has done, at least in the way that he talks about it, is exchange "humility" for "doubt." Doubt as it functions here is simply a poor-man's humility. Doubt requires none of the self-discipline or character or integrity or patience or wisdom that humility does.

Doubt allows room for discussion without the responsibility to act or respond wisely in light of the experience of the conversation. Indeed, perpetual doubt does not require any action on our part at all except to go on doubting endlessly and pointlessly.

Rather than exist in this perpetual posture of doubt that is exhausting intellectually (it takes a ton of work to doubt everything) and vacuous emotionally (eventually doubt robs us of the ability to enter into any joy seriously) and untenable philosophically (to be certain about doubt as the best way to live is to be certain about something, and so the thing collapses in on itself), it might actually be better to pursue a life of genuine humility, though that road is certainly no easier.

No Doubt Part 1

So the movie Doubt came out recently and I read an interview with writer/director John Patrick Shanley. In the interview, Shanley, of course, celebrates a life philosophy of doubt. "I would endlessly dispute anything" Shanley bluntly states in the interview.

He argues that certainty ends the conversation...or at least that it tends to do so. He exorts us to be in unceasing dialogue with other people. He says that doubt opens us up to genuine dialogue and exchange of ideas.

I think that Shanley is simply reflecting a deepening and growing cultural value. Doubt has become exalted as one of the most authentic and "real" values. To believe or trust or hope blinds us, it's argued. To doubt is the only way to get to the bottom of anything.

I see this cultural value playing out in various Christian communities. Particularly for people who grew up in the church--to continue to believe often feels naive and to doubt seems more intelligent.

Now certainly for many people doubting is a part of owning their faith. But doubt is not and cannot be a permanent posture for a life of any genuine quality. Shanley says that it's not exhausting to doubt everything. But that's clearly not the case for many people. For many, a life of doubt leads them eventually to the shadowland of a life of apathy or cynicism.

And to say that doubt is the best tool to foster conversation is to say something with a strong degree of certainty. So Shanley is fairly certain that doubt is better than certainty. He's not doubting his posture of dubiousness.

And so eventually this whole thing crumbles. Shanley ought to be doubting his doubting-ness--it's impossible to maintain with any real cohesion a philosophy of eternal and permanent doubt. Eventually it all implodes.