Tuesday, 16 Jun 2009, noon · Saint Richard of Chichester, pray for us
This seems to be the motive for all moral relativists:
Because if you can convince me, then suddenly your beliefs become more real. Right?
The more people you can get to jump on your…train, the more your mission is made. So until you get me to swallow your world and believe what you believe, you’ll never have the kind of faith you want to have. You’ll always have a little bit of doubt. You’ll never know if you’re quite right. You’ll always kind of be wondering if it’s real.
Thursday, 3 Jul 2008, 2 pm
Today is the feast day for Saint Thomas the Apostle. I chose Thomas (or maybe he chose me) for my patron saint for my baptism/confirmation a few years ago. I have an affinity for Thomas, partly because it took me nearly forty years of doubt and skepticism to finally accept the gift of faith.
Thomas, as most people know, gets a kind of bad rap for doubting. Perhaps it is warranted. Perhaps not. It is interesting to note that of the four Gospels, it is in the Book of John where Thomas is mentioned the most.
At the Last Supper, it is Thomas who asked the question leading to Jesus’ deep Christological statement:
Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?”
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.”
In today’s reading from John 20:24-29 NAB:
Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve,
was not with them when Jesus came.
So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.”
But Thomas said to them,
“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands
and put my finger into the nailmarks
and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
Now a week later his disciples were again inside
and Thomas was with them.
Jesus came, although the doors were locked,
and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.”
Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands,
and bring your hand and put it into my side,
and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”
Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
Jesus said to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”
I suppose this is the scene that gives Thomas his nickname. But if we read just a few verses of above this in 19 & 20:
On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.
It seems to me that Thomas was just asking for the same experience as the other Apostles. He did not want to be left out.
I wonder where Thomas was on that first evening? Why was he not with the others when Jesus first appeared?
As my spiritual director pointed out, Thomas received what he asked for but realized it was more than he needed. The text does not say that he actually touched Jesus. He knew when he saw him. And John credits Thomas with a new declaration of who Jesus was, “My Lord and my God!”
During Mass near the beginning of the Liturgy of the Eucharist when the priest first holds up the bread/Body, and then again when he first holds up the chalice of wine/Blood, there is supposed to be a long tradition (although my catechesis did not include it) of saying to ones self, “My Lord and my God.” The congregation is kneeling at this point, and although Scripture does not say it, I imagine Thomas kneeling too in front of Jesus and the others saying the same declaration of belief. Such a humble statement needs an outward sign as concrete as a physical gesture to represent the inner experience.
Thank you Thomas. Blessed are those who witnessed. Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.
Sunday, 3 Feb 2008, 9 am
I discovered an essay titled “Hope” almost a month ago. I do not normally write in response to other people’s writing, and I am reluctant to even post this now, but the tone of the essay bothered me because it seemed to pit hope and faith against each. I agree with many of the statements in regards to faith, but many of the attributes assigned to hope are better suited to doubt. (What follows comes from an email I sent to the author.)
Faith does not struggle with hope. Faith is not tested or refined by hope. It is doubt. It is doubt that “scrutinizes faith, its object.” The object of hope is outward, upward, onward, forward. It is doubt that “doubts the vehicle of faith long before even looking at its content.” It is doubt that pursues “abstractions and test hypotheses offered by faith, offered on faith.” And it is doubt that whithers away at the plausibility of faith’s statements and weakens its ties to authority, to the past, and to the collective.
Faith must have a boundary upon which to form itself like the banks of a river, to resist and push against. Doubt, not hope, is this boundary. Doubt is the edge, the friction that shapes and sharpens faith. It is doubt that whittles away much of the content of faith until it is tested, purified like gold in the furnace. Doubt reminds faith that it cannot guarantee anything, and an honest faith learns and knows this. It is hope that pushes or pulls faith back into the struggle with doubt.
Hope, pure hope that is, has no “intellectual and intuitive content.” It just is. Hope has no past; it lives only in the now, in the present moment, and looks toward the future. As the original essay points out, the past is part of where faith draws its strength. It is hope that keeps faith alive when faith’s reliance on authority and the past dissolves from inconsistency and paradox.
At times, hope blazes bright as the noonday sun. At other times, hope is the tiny spark of light in a cave of total and complete darkness. Hope lights the path for the weak legs of faith to walk, often with barely enough light for the next step. And when there is no light for hope to lead by, it is the strength of faith that takes the next step into the darkness until hope is rekindled.
Yes, “hope is more difficult to maintain than faith.” And yes, hope would conclude that “only in suffering and anguish can anything authentic emerge.” But hope knows this is what helps purify itself and its friend faith.
Faith and doubt face each other in opposition. Faith and hope stand shoulder-to-shoulder together, as a team, looking onward, looking forward. Often faith wants to look back, and that is when doubt slaps faith in the face or causes faith to stumble. Hope reminds faith to keep looking forward. When doubt overshadows faith, hope lights the way for faith to see. When doubt overshadows hope, faith carries hope while rekindling its flame. Hope keeps faith alive and gives direction; faith rekindles hope when all seems lost.
Sören Kierkegaard wrote, “When a spider plunges from a fixed point to its consequences, it always sees before it an empty space where it can never set foot, no matter how it wriggles.” It is the combination of both faith and hope that sees into the empty space and lets the spider take the plunge. If the spider was either faithless or hopeless, it would be helpless.
My apologies if this response is not received with the charity and compassion it was intended. It is written by one who has been at one time hopeless, and at another time faithless.
Keep hope alive. Dare to move faith to trust.
P.S. For another perspective on faith and hope, I recommend Charles Péguy’s marvelous poem, “Master of the Three Virtues”.
There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him, that in the end, the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.
Sunday, 11 Nov 2007, 10 pm
In The Shattered Lantern, Ronald Rolheiser quotes Dag Hammarskjöld:
I don’t know Who—or what—put the question, I don’t know when it was put. I don’t even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone—or Something—and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.
When I read this, I immediately jumped in time and space to the memory of the morning of a retreat several years ago where faith found me. The poster behind the speaker was the name of his talk, “God’s Friendship.” I was sitting there kind of dumbfounded and saying to myself, “Hmmm, I never thought of it that way before.” It is not like I had not heard the saying before. That one particular moment was a moment of grace where I was open to see something in a new way. (By the way, that is one definition for grace, seeing things in a new way.) It opened me up further to see and accept the speaker and his words in a new way. By the end of the talk, I could say yes to faith.
After stepping out of this memory, my first thought was misleading, “This was where I remembering hearing the question.” My second thought was slightly off the mark too, “No, the question had been asked many times before in many different ways. This is where I remember saying yes.” The third thought struck true, “This is where I said yes and meant it.” Something was different this time. The seed had landed not on the path or among the rocks, but in good soil and it started to take root. I wanted it. Faith is a gift. It is freely given. I believe it is always being offered. It can only be received. You cannot take it, or fake it. But you can receive it if you honestly want it.
I keep forgetting this. Existence is meaningful. There is purpose to my life regardless of what meaning and purpose I assign it. I am yours Father, and that should be enough. It is enough. Thank You for the gift of faith.
I think it was Thomas Merton in New Seeds for Contemplation who talks about how doubt shifts. He describes doubt moving from the existence of God to oneself. The doubts concerning God and His promises always seem to remain, greatly diminished perhaps, but the focus of doubts switches from the external to the internal, to you and your abilities, to your faith or lack of it, to your hope or lack of it, to your love or lack of it, to you and your openness to accept grace, and ultimately salvation.
In C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, the narrator has a dream of visiting hell where he observes people wallowing in their own selfishness, obsessions, and attachments to earthly things. He along with a few fortunate individuals who are not yet too lost within themselves are transported to the lushious green fields outside of heaven. Off in the distant east is a mountain range where the sun is just about to rise. The narrator and his traveling companions are like ghostly whisps of smoke here on the edge of heaven. They are not yet real enough, solid enough, to enter. The ghostly people do not even weigh enough to bend the grass under their feet. Each blade of grass pokes painfully into their feet on each step. The narrator tries to pick up a leaf, but it is too heavy, too real for him to lift.
Solid, bright and illumuninous people approach the ghostly people from the direction of the mountain range. Each ghostly person recognizes one of the bright solid people who, after conversing for awhile, invite them to cross over into heaven. Everyone one of the ghostly people struggles with this choice. Each must choose to let go of their own selfishness, obsessions, and attachments to earthly things. Some choose to let go and begin to move in the direction of the mountains in the east, slowly turning into solid, real people as they go. Some do not, and turn inward on themselves instead of reaching out.
I doubt my ability to make this choice, to let go of earthy things for heaven. I do not know if my deepest desire to see the face of God is greater than my selfishness, my pride, my attachments. I hope it is, but I don’t know for certain. Is my urge to reach outward stronger than the urge to withdraw inward? One leads to heaven, the other to hell. One is love, the other is not.
I know that Lewis’s story is a literary device and powerful symbol. There is not one big choice made after death. No, that choice is made by all the little choices over the course of a life time. And no, God is not an accountant god talleying up all the choices to make sure the good outnumber the bad. It goes back to something like the Hammarskjöld quote above—did I answer “yes” to the question? Do I still try to answer yes each day?
There is a painting and a semi-famous icon based on scripture of Jesus knocking on a door of a dark house. The weeds have grown up around the door and it has no handle. The door can only be opened from the inside. It is dark outside except for the light eminating from Jesus’ himself. The scene poses the question: will the person inside open the door when Jesus calls? Only the person behind the door has the power of the choice, to open the door or not, to answer “yes” to His question. (And love waits patiently for the answer.)
But what if the person behind the door wants to open it but cannot? What if he or she is so paralyzed by fear or bounded by their slavery to attachments that he or she cannot get up from the middle of the floor to reach the door? What if the terror is so much that he or she cannot even call out for help?
I do not know the answer to these questions, but faith reminds me of the Apostles in the upper room. The door was locked too that one morning when they were hiding and afraid. And Jesus appeared to them within the room. No locked door stopped Him because He knew their answers in their hearts. He knew. And He came.
Near the end of The Shattered Lantern, Rolheiser tells this story.
There is a contemporary parable about a Cretan peasant, a man who deeply loved his life and work. He enjoyed tilling the soil, feeling the warm sun on his naked back as he worked in the fields, and feeling the dirt under his feet. He loved the planting, the harvesting, the very smell of nature. He loved espeically his wife, his children and his friends., and enjoyed being with them, eating together, drinking wine, talking, making love, and simply being united in a shared life. And he loved Crete, his tiny country. The earth, the sky, the seas, it was his!
One day he sensed that death was near. He was not afraid of the beyond, for he had lived a good life. No. But he feared leaving Crete, his wife, his children, his friends, his home, and his land. As he prepared to die, he grasped a few grams of soil from his beloved Crete in his hand and told his loved ones to bury him with it.
He died, awoke, and found himself at heaven’s gate, the soil still in his hand and heaven’s gate firmly barred against him. Eventually St. Peter came through the heavenly gates and addressed him: “You’ve lived a good life, and we have a place for you inside, but you cannot enter unless you drop that handful of soil.” “Why? Why must I let go of this soil? I will not! What’s inside those gates I don’t know. But this soilI know—it’s my life, my wife, my work, my family, it’s all that I know and love, it’s Crete! I will not let go!”
A silent Peter left him and closed the large gates behind him. There seemed little point in arguing with the peasant. Several minutes later, the gates opened a second time and this time a very young child emerged. She did not try to reason with the man, nor did she try to coax him into letting go of the soil in his hand. She simply took his hand and, as she did, the soil of Crete spilled to the ground. Then she led him through the gates of heaven. A shock awaited the man as he entered heaven. There before him lay all of Crete.
The man had answered “yes” to the question. He may not have explicitly stated it, but he lived it in his love for family, friends, the land, and for life. The Apostles said yes too, even though they themselves had abandoned their Friend in His hour of glory.
I hope to live my “yes” to You. You are the question. You are the answer. Please help me continue to say yes. Help me to live my yes. Help me be the yes.
Monday, 3 Sep 2007, 1 pm
I ventured out of my blog hermitage yesterday afternoon to find much discussion on the spiritual suffering of the Blessed Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa).
It reminded me of something I had written awhile ago. The words are mine but I do not claim credit. The inspiration, and the meaning between the words, comes from elsewhere.
As flowing water falls to seek the lowest point,
it gives all its energy away until none remains,
and then returns to its source to fall again.
What does the water gain from this falling?
What does life gain?
It seems many people were surprised to learn of her spiritual emptiness and dryness. It just goes to show you that we all take different paths. (And that you shouldn’t read too much of pop religious material. It is just candy, nothing too deep.)
The opportunity to love is the reward for loving. Loving is its own reward. We just don’t see this very well on this side of heaven. Giving goes with receiving. And Bl. Teresa gave almost everything she received spiritually and everything materially. It follows that she would feel empty. She held nothing for herself.
There was also much discussion about her doubt. Again, I am not too surprised. She was after all, human. Doubt is a cold-hearted fact of the spiritual journey. Although that person sitting next to you in church looks confident in their faith, they have had to struggle with doubt as much as you, maybe even more. Ask them? Everyone must face doubt, but not alone. Jesus is right there with us in our doubt, whether we know it or not. From a post the other day:
On the thin border
between faith and doubt walks Christ,
calling all to trust.
Jesus calls for a total and complete trust. A total and complete giving over to Him. A total and complete emptying of oneself of dependence on things of this world, even dependence on oneself, so that one can depend totally and completely on God. If that does not involve doubt—doubt in what is not seen, doubt with oneself—then it is not faith; it is something else. “Narrow is the gate…”
Bl. Teresa is an example for me in answering a question anyone serious about their spiritual journey must face: Do I love God for His consolations? Or do I love God for God’s sake? Do I want to be with God because of what He can give me, or do I want to be with God just because? Although she may have wished for the consolations, Bl. Teresa has shown everyone that she would rather love God (and others) for God’s sake.
A commenter on another weblog noted that sometime ago before this recent round on Bl. Teresa’s suffering, Fr. Cantalamessa, the preacher to the pope, outlined three purposes for her suffering: to provide the humility necessary to inoculate her against the fame and praise the world would shower upon her; to enable her to experience the isolation and desolation of the sick and rejected she ministered to; and as a special gift, a share in the Lord’s spiritual suffering during His passion.
Whether we are married or not, we all sleep spiritually alone until the Wedding Banguet in heaven.
FYI — This Wednesday, September 5th, is Blessed Teresa’s annual memorial day.
Thank you Father for the timing of this. Although I am no where near the levels that your Blessed Teresa experienced, this has helped to put a handle to some of my own experience with dryness and doubt. Thank you for reminding me to remember that it is You I seek, not your consolations. The opportunity to love, to give, is my reward. From You, in You, through You, all is gift. You are in my emptiness. You are in my doubt. Even if I do not see You, You are there. I love You.
Saturday, 1 Sep 2007, 7 pm
I don’t remember where I read it, but this one line has been stuck in my mind for the last few weeks. It was something along the lines of “gorging on emotions.” The idea of feeding upon my emotions is bothersome. It sounds self-cannibalistic. It sounds down right stupid (a word I use sparingly). I dislike the connotation of unhealthiness and its allusion to gluttony. But as I reflect on my certain moods, this line has a ring of truth. There are at times this reinforcing cycle of emotions and mood. Why do I feed on my emotions? And what or who do my emotions feed?
On one level, this reminds me of how C.S. Lewis describes the devils in The Screwtape Letters. They are ravenous creatures who seek out souls (and other weaker devils) to consume in order to attempt to satisfy temporarily the pangs of emptiness within. Do I gorge myself, or even politely dine at times, on my emotions just to fill some emptiness within?
On another level, this “gorging on emotions” reminds me of how I can easily distract and entertain myself with my own thoughts. Do I dwell and walk among my emotions just to entertain myself? Is it out of boredom? If it is for distraction, what am I distracting myself from?
Is it a matter of my emotions controlling me, or me controlling my emotions? Is this analogous to my thoughts controlling me or controlling my thoughts?
I don’t think it is about control, but of remembering which contains the other. Am I my emotions, or are my emotions a part of me? Am I my thinking, or is my thinking a part of me? I sometimes forget, in certain moods more often than others, that my thoughts and emotions are a part of me. They are not who I am. This seems especially hard to recognize with emotions because they are so closely connected to mood and attitude, and even thoughts.
I am made in the image of God, and God is not thoughts and emotions, therefore I am not thoughts and emotions. They are part of being human, gifts of being.
Just because I may feel sad does not mean that I am sad, that is, my being is sadness. The English language attempts to equate the two, my I-am-ness with sadness. To say that I am sadness contradicts and negates all the joy and happiness in my life, both now and in the past and future. The feelings of sadness are in the forefront of my attention, displacing but not eliminating the feelings of happiness.
Enough with semantics. What or who do my emotions feed? What or who benefits from this gorging? Where is the pay off (reinforcement)? It is the very thing I just described—my false self (as Thomas Merton would say), the egoic little me (as Eckhart Tolle would say). The false self—the preoccupation, attachment, and over-identification of self as my thoughts and emotions—is really an empty entity. It needs something to make itself feel real and important, and what better is there than emotions and “feelings”? The false self distorts the purpose of emotions as a part of being human into something else, into something to consume and temporarily fill the emptiness and nothingness of itself.
On the thin border
between faith and doubt walks Christ,
calling all to trust.
Only in Christ can one have complete and total trust. This means that I should not even place trust within myself, that is, my false egoic little me. Only Christ can feed. Only He can fill the emptiness within. My doubt lies not in Christ, but in letting go of myself, to let go of something that “feels” real but is really no-thing, and reach for Reality Himself.
Oh to dare to trust.
Wednesday, 9 May 2007, 5 pm
While watching the six o’clock news, I am forced to face the poverty of my spirit. I am powerless. I am impotent. I am not in control. There is nothing I can do to effect a change.
But I do feel compelled to do something. And though practically none of my experience reinforces my behavior, I choose to pray for those people in the stories told on the six o’clock news. I pray for the repose of the souls who have died, healing for the injuried, mercy and conversion of the murderers and criminals, and God’s blessings upon all, especially for the survivors, family members, and their friends.
I am not a lone individual sitting in my living room watching the six o’clock news, isolated from the people in those stories. I am connected to them. We are one. Maybe I am not suppose to change anything. Maybe I am. I don’t know. I do know that I am changed by hearing their stories.
Tuesday, 10 Apr 2007, 10 am
On the thin border
between faith and doubt walks Christ,
calling all to trust.
Monday, 29 Sep 2003, 2 pm
In an earlier entry, I mentioned something about having doubts. Doubts are funny things. You are never sure about them. (Sorry, pun intended.) But seriously, it is the fact that you are unsure that makes things challenging. I don’t know about you, but my mind craves certainty.
I have reached a point in my life where I can see two levels of doubt concerning God. The first is the one most people grapple with, that is, is there a God? And if so, does He interact with this world?
To resolve this issue of doubt, the only thing I can say is that it takes a “leap of faith.” I know that sounds like a copout. Somehow, you must step outside of yourself for a moment, step outside of your doubt, skepticism, intellectualism, emotions, and simply believe. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. It is something that you cannot do by yourself. No matter how much you try to force yourself, you will not be able just to believe. It takes God to help you. He has to call you. He calls everyone. The trick though, is knowing when He is calling you. Most of the time, I believe, most people do not hear Him because His call is lost among all the noise of the world. And if you do happen to hear His call, you still might not be ready if the “soil” of your heart is not ready. (If you are still waiting for this moment to happen, it will. Just ask Him. It will not happen over night. It may take years, as in my case, but it will happen if you are listening with an open heart.)
All of this reminds me of a scene in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. During the climax of the movie, Indiana Jones is following his father’s notebook through the cave to the Holy Grail. He comes to a giant chasm with no way across. He looks in the notebook and it says that one must take a “leap of faith.” Indy looks again at the chasm and chagrins. It is too far across to jump, too far to use his whip, too far to use anything that he may possess. Only a “leap of faith” will get him across. He stands helpless at the edge of the chasm. He looks back down through the cave he just came. He knows that he cannot go back. He stands up at the edge of the chasm, hesitates just a second to take a deep breath to steel his nerves, then takes a step forward into nothingness. By a simple act of faith, the will to believe, he steps outside of all of his doubts and skepticism. He steps out onto a hidden bridge across the chasm of doubt. That is what it means to take a “leap of faith.”
It is hard to take the “leap of faith.” The mind wants certainty. The mind wants to know. The mind wants to evaluate the pros and cons, to estimate the risks and benefits, and to make a connections between the facts. But none of these exist for the mind to get a hold of. To take a “leap of faith,” the rational mind must give up what it is most comfortable doing. The mind has to take a step into nothingness in order to believe.
Now, once the theological doubt about God has been settled and you believe in God (called faith), there enters a second level of doubt. No, not about God, but about yourself. This type of doubt is much harder to describe. It too is also about stepping out into nothingness. Thomas Merton had this to say about this type of doubt in New Seeds for Contemplation:
In a certain sense we may say that there are still “doubts,” if by that we mean not that we hesitate to accept the truth of revealed doctrine, but that we feel the weakness and instability of our spirit in the presence of the awful mystery of God. This is not so much an objective doubt as a subjective sense of our own helplessness which is perfectly compatible with true faith. Indeed, as we grow in faith we also tend to grow in this sense of helplessness, so that a man who believes much may, at the same time, in this proper sense, seem to “doubt” more than ever before. This is no indication of theological doubt at all, but merely the perfectly normal awareness of the natural insecurity and of the anguish that comes with it.
The very obscurity of faith is an argument of its perfection. It is darkness to our minds because it so far transcends their weakness. The more perfect faith is, the darker it becomes. The closer we get to God, the less is our faith diluted with the half-light of created images and concepts. Our certainty increases with this obscurity, yet not without anguish and even material doubt, because we do not find it easy to subsist in a void in which our natural powers have nothing of their own to rely on. And it is in the deepest darkness that we most fully possess God on earth, because it is then that our minds are most truly liberated from the weak, created lights that are darkness in comparison to Him; it is then that we are filled with His infinite Light which seems pure darkness to our reason.
Both types of doubts, the theological doubt in the existence of God and the personal sense of helplessness, are hidden bridges to God. It takes God’s help and a “leap of faith” to cross over both chasms of doubt.
Monday, 18 Aug 2003, 2 pm
Over the last month or so, little things have been popping up here and there that have reminded me of my old self—the self-reliant, skeptical agnostic.
I used to believe in a Creator-God, the Initiator of the Universe. I was not sure if He interfered with things on this planet, and if He did, science would find an explanation for it. Science seemed to have most of the answers I was looking for at the time. I had developed a sense of morality and ethics that paralleled Christianity’s, but did not rely upon God. As for Jesus, well, I saw him as a great moral teacher. And then I found my faith…
Karl at St. Stephen’s Musings posted a link to an article in the newspaper The Oregonian called “Jesus of Nazareth: lord or lunatic?” that gently slapped me into remembering my old ways of thinking.
In the article, David Reinhard asserts that you cannot accept Jesus as just a great moral teacher. Sure, Jesus talked a lot about morality, but that was only half of his story. He also called himself Son of God. As in the article, here is the full quote from C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either he was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
In other words, you either accept all of Jesus, or none of Him. You cannot have it both ways.
Now here is the rub: when I was an agnostic, Reinhard’s article would not have changed my mind or heart about Jesus. I would have stubbornly stuck to my faulty beliefs. I would have been content in my dark, little room. Again, I am reminded of the quote from my previous entry:
“I know you inside and out, and find little to my liking. You’re not cold, you’re not hot—far better to be either cold or hot! You’re stale. You’re stagnant. You make me want to vomit. You brag, ‘I’m rich, I’ve got it made, I need nothing from anyone,’ oblivious that in fact you’re a pitiful, blind beggar, threadbare and homeless.” Revelation 3:15-17 (The Message)