Comforting words...

About a month ago, after coming to the realization that my faith was quickly disappearing, my wife and I talked and I realized I should bring it to the attention of the pastor of the church we are currently attending. So, we called and schedule a time for them to come over and hang out after church one Sunday. We had a great talk, and the pastor followed up with me via email later in the week.

I thought I'd post our email exchange. I found his love and compassion to be very apparent in his approach with me. Good stuff here! For those still left scratching their heads trying to grasp my doubt in God at the moment... please feel free to read our email conversation shared here. It may be insightful.

Read on, read on...Before our meeting together, I wrote my pastor this:

"Hey there Mr. Pastor!

Just touchin’ base with you… we are on for this Sunday after church for grub and hangin’ out at my house, yeah? We are lookin’ forward to it!

Life finds me in a very, um…. NEW and interesting place right now. I’m sure at some point, our conversation on Sunday will venture in to spiritual things, and so I thought I’d share with you via email a little bit so that you can be brought up to date a little bit on whats going on with me. Following is an excerpt from an email I wrote to my dad in September of this year. This is not a quick, knee jerk, emotional email … nor as it designed to defend where I’m at… it does, however, give a general feel for what exists in the depths of my heart.

Just yesterday, I was talking with my pops and he reminded me that this leg of my life’s journey began quite a while ago… even BEFORE the church stuff hit the fan. He reminded me of the fact that about one year to any public turmoil started at NH, I put out a voicemail to each of the elders asking the question, “What is the basis for your faith? When all around you fails, your intellect has no answer, and the bible’s promises seem contradictory or too distant to cling to… what keeps your faith doing?”

One year later, it all hit the fan… my faith was shaken, I hit the books (Bible primarily, assisted by commentaries and essays and such), found unanswerable questions… and the peace that comes through faith has eluded me since. My faith is… no more. Destroyed by what I’m calling disillusionment and an inability to reconcile my intellectual challenges with what is taught by both the Bible and quite separately, the church. Though, I have not lost hope that it will return… for now … my faith is as gone as gone can be.

So, without further delay… here is what I wrote to my pops in September of this year. :

see: "A Written Confession"

Much love Mr. Pastor!… hope to see you Sunday! (ps. Don’t feel the obligation to reply to the email as we will talk soon, but if you are so inclined, know that I do in fact check my email about 1 million times per day, weekends included.)

I sent the email off, we got together after church, and talked. It was a good talk.... heart to heart sharing. He expressed his love for us and his confidence that God would see me through this time. Later, he wrote this:

Hey Miroslav,

When my wife and I got home from your house the other day she mentioned that it seemed like I was not taking your dark journey seriously enough. In her opinion it seemed like I was downplaying the seriousness of your searching and just saying, "O, never mind, everything will be o.k., you're just being silly." That was certainly not my intent. I was intending to say that I have complete confidence in eternal God who made the heavens and the earth, who understands the mysteries of our universe. I know that He is able to reach out to you, even if you are not able to find Him. Please don't interpret my confidence in God to be apathy to you. That said, I would like to begin an email conversation with you regarding your search. Please get the ball rolling by answering this question: "What would God have to do to convince you that He is worth serving with your time, money and talents (ie: giving your life to Him and dying to self) once again?"

Mr. Pastor

I wrote him back soon after with this (nice and wordy, just how I like it):

Mr. Pastor,

Rest assured that I did not find your response to my quandry to be lacking compassion. I know you well enough to know you love me and care for me. I think I understand pretty well what your hope is for my situation... That God is bigger than me and can answer me and meet me in my desperation.

I LOVE the idea of an ongoing dialogue about this stuff. Though I have to warn you that I enjoy writing, debate, and theology... so don't be surprised to find that my emails tend to get a bit um... lengthy. hehe. Also, I will be writing totally off the cuff with not much proof-reading for content, so let me state ahead of time that these are just my immediate thoughts and I may from time to time overstate or understate any given thought or opinion. Fair enough?

SO...on to it then.

"What would God have to do to convince you that He is worth serving with your time, money and talents (ie: giving your life to Him and dying to self) once again?"

Where to start in answering this question? It has been posed to me before (or a variation at least) by both my dad and friends. I want to be clear that I DO want to serve God again, ... but only once I know that who or what I'm serving actually exists and that I'm not acting out of habit, social pressure, or grabbing hold of a faith just for faith's sake.

I don't quite recall my answer to my dad and my friends back when they asked it, but I will say that upon reading it here in the email, the first thought that comes to my head is to say this: nothing. God does not have to do ANYTHING to convince me of anything he doesn't want to. Right? I mean, that point is just to say that he is not obliged to perform or prove himself to me or any of his creations for that matter.

And not only does he have no obligation to convince me, but I would go as far as to say that if he wants to convince me, its not me who gets to determine HOW that convincing will occur, nor can I really pretend that I know how it all works.

I guess what I'm trying to say by those statements is that the God of the Bible does not seem to be bound by any rules or formulas as to how He reveals Himself to us people. To some he appears in person (Abraham, Job, Doubting Thomas, Disciples, Paul, etc.), others he performs miracles for to demonstrate his love (Israel, various healing acts, etc.), others simply hear about him and believe (Roman centurion, woman who touched his garment), and still others seem to just get a vague story and find a saving faith (I'm thinking of Matthew 13 here, or the repentant criminal that hung next to Jesus who confessed last minute). One of the messages that appears pretty clear to me in Matthew 13 is that Jesus doesn't make too much of an effort to spell things out to people... and why? because, he says:"The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them." A pretty deep thought if you really think about it.

Apparently, by the stories told in the Bible, his level of "performance" or demonstration is not what causes faith (now I'm thinking of the story of Jesus explaining why he won't raise others from the dead, because even if they were raised from the dead a bunch of times, they still would not believe).

The second angle I would take on this question is that I don't think it applies to my situation very much. Several people that I've spoke to have tried to paraphrase my heart's troubles by saying, "Ok... so you are mad at God?" or "Hmm... so you have been let down a lot and are turning your back on God?" or "So you don't understand God and so you are telling him he has to prove himself to you." .... NO NO NO. All I'm saying is this: I DO NOT KNOW MUCH OF ANYTHING FOR CERTAIN and I can't pretend that I do. That inner faith and confidence that is in all ways completely intangible, unexplainable, and even referred to as "foolishness" in the Bible (at least by unbelievers) ... it is gone. I did not choose to push it down or abandon my faith. Its like ... hmmm., the best way to try to get across what it feels like on my end is this. Just as a new believer will tell you ten times over that what he/she has received was not of themselves and was freely given to them fully apart from their doing and that they don't understand it at all, thats what this feels like.... just the reverse. Make sense?

It is for the same reason, I don't think that a debate with a non-believer as to why they are wrong and Christ is right ever yields much. Its not whats missing. They don't need their mind to be convinced, or God to prove himself, they need faith to be given to them. Isn't that what the Bible teaches? Isn't that why Christ himself gave no answer to those who put him on the cross?

So, to sum it up, I think I've avoided answering your question entirely because I don't think it applies to either myself or the God of the Bible. Not meaning to be a jerk here... and not trying to be elusive. Thats just my honest thoughts on the question. I don't think that my lack of faith can be pinned down to a list of demands that I'm going to issue to God. If he exists and I'm his creation, I don't have the right to be issuing demands. If he exists and is the God of the Bible, he doesn't seem to work that way anyways. If he did, the raped little girls of the world would not continue to be abused, and the children dying in Africa would have food in their mouths... for surely they cry to God to show himself in such ways....

ping... pong.... ball is in your court. :)

Miroslav

Mr. Pastor wrote back a while later...

Miroslav,

O.K. So that was way too long to wait for a response from me I know. But life has been a little too busy for some weeks now. Yet, here I am and I am honored once again to be part of this conversation and part of your journey. I love you brother. But you know that.

I just received news that one my good friends died of a heart attack. He was 36 years old, just married a year or so ago and has a newborn daughter. Wow. That puts life in perspective. I feel fortunate that we can even have a discussion about anything.

Now to your repy. I get it. Wrong question. But it was the obvious place to start.
Let's try again. But I really connect with your illustration that you've experienced saving faith in reverse. That's chilling.

Maybe you will be able to re-discover your faith if we begin with your first love. Instead of starting with what's broken and moving towards how to fix it, let's try were you ever truly in a place of faith? Did you ever understand and believe in the God of the Bible in more than an intellectual way? So, describe your greatest moments of connection and certainty.

Mr. Pastor

Hmmm... Good idea I figured. So I wrote him back:

Mr. Pastor,

No apologies necessary! REALLY! And of course I know you love me.

My deepest condolences to a lost friend. I agree that such tragedy places our struggles and frustrations in life in a whole new light.

On with the new question:

Maybe you will be able to re-discover your faith if we begin with your first love. - GREAT THOUGHT!

Instead of starting with what's broken and moving towards how to fix it, let's try were you ever truly in a place of faith? Did you ever understand and believe in the God of the Bible in more than an intellectual way? - yes, yes, and YES. I trusted Christ in every area of my life in a very real and tangible way (though obviously I was not perfect in applying my faith at all times)... I also encouraged others follow and trust in Him as well, citing my own testimony, the Bible, and the Holy Spirit as evidence to His reality. I viewed EVERY life event as one small part in the greater story of God... I believed in heaven, hell, original sin, Christ's attoning blood, salvation through faith alone, and the singular Truth of Christ, that is to say that there are no other gods but He alone. (I'm writing believed here as if I totally DO NOT believe any of it now, but please don't take it to be such a strong negative stance).

So, describe your greatest moments of connection and certainty. - eek. This could be a long email! Hmmm... for sake of ease, lets start with what I've already written about on my blog. Here are my greatest spiritual moments in immediate memory and the blog-link to see what I've written about each already. Of course, my current writing challenges what I previously described as GOD WORKING IN MY LIFE... since now I'm in a state of disbelief, but I assure you there was no doubt in my mind at the time:

1) Worship experience - from childhood to present day is the most reliable way for me to connect with God. (best "first love" one on one experience with God and me alone. First , but not only, experience of the Holy Spirit, confirmation of God's presence and reality, and the loving/abba side of God)

2) My confession of a life-long porn addiction and reversal of lifestyle. (best experience in confession and repentance)

3) My part in leading an Agonia class through very tough marriages (this was my best experience in walking others through TRUE pain and hurt and applying Biblical principles to find forgiveness and peace... Also revealed to me the limits to human reasoning of justice, and the depth of heartache and evil in the world).

Good start?

And the most recent email response from him is here, which I thought was a great summary and temporary conclusion to our conversation.

Miroslav,

Your blog is great. Long, but great. I haven't read everything on there, but looked through it all.

So, back to the issue at hand...

I'm linear. I like to think in lines of progression. Since we started over, I asked if you had ever experienced faith. Your answer was a resounding YES. You have very real and tangible memories of saving faith. God has, in the past, allowed you to taste of His goodness and the reality of His resurrection power that is able to change lives and transform relationships. Amen? So, I have no doubt that you have entered into an eternal relationship with Him. He has promised to be your loving heavenly father and you have in turn promised to be His obedient child.

If all this is true, and I believe that we have established that it is, then your problem is not that you have lost your relationship, but your fellowship. Let me explain. Your relationship is something that can never change. God is just as much your Father now as He was five years ago. Let me illustrate what I mean.

When I lived away from home, I had a relationship with my family. My mom lived in the city still and we did not see each other or even talk on the phone for months at a time. During these times I felt the distance in our relationship, but I was just as much my mother's son and she was just as much my mom as when I was in her presence. Our fellowship was broken by distance. Our relationship was unchanged.

If I had decided that I never wanted to return home and see my mom again, our fellowship would suffer and we would lose a lot of our feelings for each other, but she would still be my mom and I her son. If you never had a relationship with God, that would be your greatest need. But you are His and He is able to keep you safe from sin for eternity.

You are in the same relationship that you were before in regards to your Heavenly Father. He is still your Father and you are still His son. What you are experiencing is a break in Fellowship. Something is stopping you from experiencing communication and communion like you once had. So, from here we need to answer the question, "What would stop you from experiencing the feelings that you once felt?"

There are a few possibilities:

1. God may have chosen to remove His blessing from you so that you might demonstrate belief despite circumstances as He did with Job.

2. You may have experienced a great hurt in your life that has caused you to doubt.

3. Satan may have tricked you into thinking that your faith was based on feelings and not on facts.

No matter the reason that you are suffering now, God is still the maker of the World, the Savior from your sins and the One who alone can open your eyes to understand this journey.

I suggest that you don't demand to understand this dark time, but rather choose to obey God in the midst of it. If you do, you will come to know God on a deeper level than you ever could have without the doubt.

"Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen." Hebrews 11:1

"Now without faith it is impossible to please God, for the one who draws near to Him must believe that He exists and rewards those who seek Him." Hebrews 11:6

In His Grip,

Mr. Pastor