I love this part of the slide presentation: “Biblical faith is not striving for certainty: it’s the willingness to commit in the face of uncertainty.”

The word Robb Ryerse uses in Fundamorphosis is “certitude”. He, like me, sought certitude in all things faith or bible. It didn’t work out. And I shouldn’t be surprised because faith is being certain of what we do not see. I was seeking certitude I could see…

http://whchurch.org/sermons-media/sermon/sledge-hammer-faith

The main issues have parallels: both systems leave almost no room for doubt (which often is just as valuable as faith), both systems abruptly stop the dialogue once it is clear that a person’s behavior can’t be conformed, and both shun people who start to wear their heart “on their sleeve”.

I find that I cannot pursue being a whole human being with faith alone. Pursing “faith alone” led me on a dark path where my inner life became a hallow, empty shell as I watched over 100 of my friends disappear from fellowship primarily because they wouldn’t conform to the ideology I held onto.

And my hallow shell was often not empty: it would easily become filled with the slosh of sinful thoughts. Then I would have to cleanse my mind with more bible study. My life was a constant re-cleansing that, in the end, ended up just simply empty. So empty in fact that I no longer wanted to live at one point.

Sometime around that time the Spirit suddenly indwelled me so that I am now so full of life, joy, hope, love and excitement! I am now pursuing being a whole human being: heart, mind and soul. I no longer seem to need to cleanse my mind because my heart is full and my soul is satisfied with the grace of God. My mind seem to just follow suit now and is cleansed by the Spirit. I feel renewed day by day now, instead of just trudging on in a half-awake state of existence. It’s like the difference between just surviving and thriving.

Not sure I’m articulating this well, but I feel like the center hole in the Venn diagram above ought to be love, joy, peace, hope, faith, courage, justice, holiness!

Apparently, C.S. Lewis was also one of those people. Once he received a letter from someone asking about the genocide recorded in the book of Joshua. Lewis replied:

The ultimate question is whether the doctrine of the goodness of God or that of the inerrancy of Scripture is to prevail when they conflict. I think the doctrine of the goodness of God is the more certain of the two. Indeed only that doctrine renders this worship of Him obligatory or even permissible.

(from The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, vol. 3, p. 1436)

C.S. Lewis continued:

Some things which seem bad to us may be good. But we must not corrupt our consciences by trying to feel a thing as good when it seems totally evil.

What I’m trying to say is this. People who raise such questions are often rebuked for having deficient faith. But perhaps people who never think to raise such questions have a deficient heart.

I hope some of our readers would attempt to understand me beyond writing me off. Rachel Evan’s recent blog entry speaks to all of these things:

The Scandal of the Evangelical Heart

“But the questions that have weighed most heavily on me these past ten years have been questions not of the mind but of the heart, questions of conscience and empathy. It was not the so-called “scandal of the evangelical mind” that rocked my faith; it was the scandal of the evangelical heart.”

That is why truly listening to others, especially a contrasting opinion, may be the best medicine. It is often far closer to the truth than our own opinion of ourselves or our church.

This is my “best” personal story to illustrate this: Once my son, while in kindergarten or 1st grade, was asked by his teacher to write down three things that his dad likes.

I thought my son would write something like this:

1) My dad likes Jesus.
2) My dad likes to study the Bible.
3) My dad likes to teach the Bible.

Instead, my son wrote:

1) My dad likes to eat peanuts.
2) My dad likes my mom.
3) My dad likes to watch football.

Go figure!!!

Isn’t there a tool that we can use from wordpress?

“Missionaries, perhaps more than others, have tended to regard themselves as immune to the weaknesses and sins of “ordinary” Christians; it took a long time to discover that they were no different from the churches from which they have come, that in the words of Stephen Neill they “have on the whole been of feeble faith, not very wise, not very holy, not very patient. They have broken most of the commandments and fallen into every conceivable mistake” Indeed, in many parts of the world, including its traditional home base, the Christian mission appears to be the object not of God’s grace and blessing,but of God’s judgement…..when a disaster has occured, nothing is really wise, or even kind, save ruthless examination of the causes.”

These days I am remembering the sincere shame I felt as a teenager as studied I Western history. I’m glad to return to it after shutting it off for so many years.

Can you rotate it and post it as an article?

http://www.wordle.net/create

Here is our word cloud. I think this just picked up the first few articles. Not sure how deep this went, but it was free:

http://www.ubfriends.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/ubfriends-wordcloud.pdf

Someone has produced clouds for all 66 books of the Bible to show the words that appear most frequently:
http://www.66clouds.com/index.html

Could you produce a word cloud for UBFriends?

I also read an article, a pew survey I think. Guess who was most knowledgeable about the bible and all world religions? Atheists. And Jews knew more than Christians. If I was frustrated by UBF’s rejection of Christianity, I am even more frustrated by Christianity’s rejection of humanity.

I would have guessed the word for UBF to be “sad”. That is how almost all UBF people come across to me, full of sorrow and pity and on a good day, flattery. But maybe that is also because that is how I felt most of my 20+ years there.

Another interesting experiment: In a browser, type the word ubf and then pause to see what comes up. That is enlightening to see what people around the world have been searching for in regard to ubf.

I love the idea of focus groups! Yes it would be helpful to see what adjectives come up about us here… I’m sure mine would be “bitter, hateful, unrepentant, hell-bound…” :)

My predictions: Witty, handsome, thoughtful, intelligent, …

(just kidding, of course)

I read an article about the opinion of academic intellectuals regarding Christians, Jews and Muslims. Though their opinion of Jews and Muslims were not good, it was the worst toward Christians.