I've been thoroughly enjoying your writing this summer. I usually read you early in the morning on my phone and I am almost always wanting to respond as I feel your writing is almost conversational and invites the reader to do so. I've even started a number of responses but failed to finish them as my aging hands have difficulty writing on my phone. But I wanted to be sure you knew that your words are finding their way into the heart and mind of a fellow pilgrim in Pearisburg, Virginia in the US. Thank you!
This particular post brought to my mind and heart a friend and former co-worker at a small Christian school. I met him in the late 90s at church and eventually hired him to teach photography, film, and art, PE, and a few other classes as needed. In the early years he traveled extensively with my varsity basketball team taking photographs. Those were amazing times and we grew quite close. He was one of those friends you can go from zero to sixty directly into deep conversations without having to go through weather, news, or sports on the way to more serious topics. After 15 years or so of friendship and working together he moved back west to Oregon to be nearer his family. We have stayed in touch through texts and the occasional lengthy late night (for me) phone call. Through the years he has stepped away from his faith. He has shared with me why over the past year. He says he can't believe in or follow a God whose believers would simply forget and not care about all those left behind in the afterlife. The concept of "no more tears" in heaven has convinced him that God's character as revealed in Scripture is anything but loving. One of his close friends from Virginia visited him out west for the express purpose of understanding why he walked away from his faith. His visitor's eventual response to his concern was simply, "well you're right," he explained that in heaven we will be so overcome with the glory of the presence of God we will forget everything and everyone else. My friend's questions/struggles break my heart but not as much as the "certainty" of his visitor's response. First, the more keenly I feel the presence of my Lord in my life the more I am overcome by those struggling and hurting. I am moved to prayer, action, and yes tears. I don't believe that will ever change. Second, can't we see that through history and in our own lives the more "certain" we are about secondary doctrinal issues the further we divide, distance, and harm others. I am certain of my risen Savior, but what life after death is really like, describing life in heaven or hell, these are matters on which Scripture is at best deeply veiled. In reading your posts I feel you share this opinion.
At my school I received a great deal of pressure from more conservative elements to teach a literal 7 day creation in Bible classes. My stance was always, why? We don't know, I don't know, and frankly I don't care "how" God created the world. I'm much more interested in why! And I'm amazed that a loving God knew what it would cost him personally to create the world and chose to pay that price for us. That a loving God bows before a lost soul like me and you to wash our feet.
I can feel your feels in that youth room and I wish your leader had told your group "great question, I just don't know, but maybe we can trust a loving God!" "And maybe we should base our conclusions on what we do know about Jesus?" Maybe Jesus answered so many questions with questions so that we could learn to do the same...
Thank you so much for taking the time to write this, William. I found myself nodding throughout!
One of the things I have become increasingly convinced of is that faith is not strengthened by pretending difficult questions do not exist. Some of the most important questions we can ask are precisely the ones that make us uncomfortable.
I was particularly struck by what you said about certainty. There is a difference between being certain of God’s love revealed in Jesus and being certain about all the details of things Scripture itself often leaves mysterious. I think humility is not a weakness of faith; it can be one of its deepest expressions.
Like you, I find myself returning again and again to Jesus. Not simply to the answers he gives, but to the way he responds to people. He does not seem threatened by questions. He often meets them with another question, an invitation, or a deeper way of seeing.
Your friend’s struggle is a painful one, and I think you are correct that simplistic answers can sometimes create more distance rather than healing. Sometimes the most faithful response we can offer is not “I have solved this,” but “I don’t know — but I trust the character of the God we see in Christ.”
Thank you so much for sharing this, and thank you for being a paid subscriber and reading my work. It is genuinely humbling to think that these words are travelling from Suffolk to Pearisburg, Virginia, and becoming part of someone else’s morning. It is always what I hoped when I started Sacred & Secular.
It is a wonderful reminder that writing is really just one pilgrim sharing a little of the path with another.
Your opening paragraph is a beautiful description of the Methodist Youth Fellowship in Niagara Falls, NY, that I attended in my teens. My parents became the youth leaders, along with the Associate Pastor. I was delighted to be sharing my parents enlightened version of Christianity with friends, many of whom were schoolmates. Some of those people became lifelong friends of my parents and I am still in touch with a few of them. For me, the crisis came later in Toronto when my dad again was leading a prayer group that was much more about discussion than prayer. For weeks people sat in a circle talking about their problems until one evening I burst into tears (shocking even to me for I was 26 with a BA) and sobbed that everyone was talking about problems, such as illnesses and deep theological questions, but they had no answers. The woman next to me, who I did not know, said there was someone I needed to talk to. She sent me to Fr. Ron Armstrong, one of the shepherds of the emerging charismatic movement in Canada, and he became my introduction to the kinds of miracles we read about in the Bible, including healings physical and psychological. Not every question was answered in that context, either. But it set me on a path to answer some deep ones. Eventually, my parents came into that renewal, too.
Thank you Laurna. I really appreciate you sharing such a personal part of your journey. What strikes me is that, although our stories are quite different, they both reflect the same truth: there comes a point when inherited faith has to become our own. The questions don't disappear, but they become invitations rather than threats. I also like your observation that even in a community where remarkable things were happening, not every question found an answer. That feels very true to me. Faith isn't the absence of mystery; it's learning to keep walking with God through it.
Yes, about walking with God. However, that movement of the Holy Spirit taught me how far from total commitment to Jesus many church-goers are. And how much pride resides in lay as well as in clerical leadership. The massive closing of churches has affected every denomination and not only because followers have fallen away but because terrible policies and the leaders who do not work to change them also lack that level of commitment to Jesus. At first, I blamed the particular church I was in, Roman Catholic at that time. The abuses in a Catholic orphanage in eastern Canada rocked the Christian world. As did most people. Not long after, reports on sexual abuse of children from clergy surfaced in ALL of the other major denominations. No one in Canadian Christendom could wag the finger at another church. But getting to the base of any problem takes courage, involves risk, upsets practically everyone, and does not guarantee change. But it is the work that Jesus did with infinite grace, so His source of power is available to us, too.
Thank you, Laurna. I share your sadness over the ways the Church has failed people, and you're right that no denomination can claim immunity. For me, that's one reason I keep coming back to Jesus himself. He confronted pride, hypocrisy and abuse of power with remarkable courage, but always with the hope of restoration rather than condemnation. I think that's still the pattern we're called to follow today.
I've been thoroughly enjoying your writing this summer. I usually read you early in the morning on my phone and I am almost always wanting to respond as I feel your writing is almost conversational and invites the reader to do so. I've even started a number of responses but failed to finish them as my aging hands have difficulty writing on my phone. But I wanted to be sure you knew that your words are finding their way into the heart and mind of a fellow pilgrim in Pearisburg, Virginia in the US. Thank you!
This particular post brought to my mind and heart a friend and former co-worker at a small Christian school. I met him in the late 90s at church and eventually hired him to teach photography, film, and art, PE, and a few other classes as needed. In the early years he traveled extensively with my varsity basketball team taking photographs. Those were amazing times and we grew quite close. He was one of those friends you can go from zero to sixty directly into deep conversations without having to go through weather, news, or sports on the way to more serious topics. After 15 years or so of friendship and working together he moved back west to Oregon to be nearer his family. We have stayed in touch through texts and the occasional lengthy late night (for me) phone call. Through the years he has stepped away from his faith. He has shared with me why over the past year. He says he can't believe in or follow a God whose believers would simply forget and not care about all those left behind in the afterlife. The concept of "no more tears" in heaven has convinced him that God's character as revealed in Scripture is anything but loving. One of his close friends from Virginia visited him out west for the express purpose of understanding why he walked away from his faith. His visitor's eventual response to his concern was simply, "well you're right," he explained that in heaven we will be so overcome with the glory of the presence of God we will forget everything and everyone else. My friend's questions/struggles break my heart but not as much as the "certainty" of his visitor's response. First, the more keenly I feel the presence of my Lord in my life the more I am overcome by those struggling and hurting. I am moved to prayer, action, and yes tears. I don't believe that will ever change. Second, can't we see that through history and in our own lives the more "certain" we are about secondary doctrinal issues the further we divide, distance, and harm others. I am certain of my risen Savior, but what life after death is really like, describing life in heaven or hell, these are matters on which Scripture is at best deeply veiled. In reading your posts I feel you share this opinion.
At my school I received a great deal of pressure from more conservative elements to teach a literal 7 day creation in Bible classes. My stance was always, why? We don't know, I don't know, and frankly I don't care "how" God created the world. I'm much more interested in why! And I'm amazed that a loving God knew what it would cost him personally to create the world and chose to pay that price for us. That a loving God bows before a lost soul like me and you to wash our feet.
I can feel your feels in that youth room and I wish your leader had told your group "great question, I just don't know, but maybe we can trust a loving God!" "And maybe we should base our conclusions on what we do know about Jesus?" Maybe Jesus answered so many questions with questions so that we could learn to do the same...
Thank you sir!
Thank you so much for taking the time to write this, William. I found myself nodding throughout!
One of the things I have become increasingly convinced of is that faith is not strengthened by pretending difficult questions do not exist. Some of the most important questions we can ask are precisely the ones that make us uncomfortable.
I was particularly struck by what you said about certainty. There is a difference between being certain of God’s love revealed in Jesus and being certain about all the details of things Scripture itself often leaves mysterious. I think humility is not a weakness of faith; it can be one of its deepest expressions.
Like you, I find myself returning again and again to Jesus. Not simply to the answers he gives, but to the way he responds to people. He does not seem threatened by questions. He often meets them with another question, an invitation, or a deeper way of seeing.
Your friend’s struggle is a painful one, and I think you are correct that simplistic answers can sometimes create more distance rather than healing. Sometimes the most faithful response we can offer is not “I have solved this,” but “I don’t know — but I trust the character of the God we see in Christ.”
Thank you so much for sharing this, and thank you for being a paid subscriber and reading my work. It is genuinely humbling to think that these words are travelling from Suffolk to Pearisburg, Virginia, and becoming part of someone else’s morning. It is always what I hoped when I started Sacred & Secular.
It is a wonderful reminder that writing is really just one pilgrim sharing a little of the path with another.
Your opening paragraph is a beautiful description of the Methodist Youth Fellowship in Niagara Falls, NY, that I attended in my teens. My parents became the youth leaders, along with the Associate Pastor. I was delighted to be sharing my parents enlightened version of Christianity with friends, many of whom were schoolmates. Some of those people became lifelong friends of my parents and I am still in touch with a few of them. For me, the crisis came later in Toronto when my dad again was leading a prayer group that was much more about discussion than prayer. For weeks people sat in a circle talking about their problems until one evening I burst into tears (shocking even to me for I was 26 with a BA) and sobbed that everyone was talking about problems, such as illnesses and deep theological questions, but they had no answers. The woman next to me, who I did not know, said there was someone I needed to talk to. She sent me to Fr. Ron Armstrong, one of the shepherds of the emerging charismatic movement in Canada, and he became my introduction to the kinds of miracles we read about in the Bible, including healings physical and psychological. Not every question was answered in that context, either. But it set me on a path to answer some deep ones. Eventually, my parents came into that renewal, too.
Thank you Laurna. I really appreciate you sharing such a personal part of your journey. What strikes me is that, although our stories are quite different, they both reflect the same truth: there comes a point when inherited faith has to become our own. The questions don't disappear, but they become invitations rather than threats. I also like your observation that even in a community where remarkable things were happening, not every question found an answer. That feels very true to me. Faith isn't the absence of mystery; it's learning to keep walking with God through it.
Yes, about walking with God. However, that movement of the Holy Spirit taught me how far from total commitment to Jesus many church-goers are. And how much pride resides in lay as well as in clerical leadership. The massive closing of churches has affected every denomination and not only because followers have fallen away but because terrible policies and the leaders who do not work to change them also lack that level of commitment to Jesus. At first, I blamed the particular church I was in, Roman Catholic at that time. The abuses in a Catholic orphanage in eastern Canada rocked the Christian world. As did most people. Not long after, reports on sexual abuse of children from clergy surfaced in ALL of the other major denominations. No one in Canadian Christendom could wag the finger at another church. But getting to the base of any problem takes courage, involves risk, upsets practically everyone, and does not guarantee change. But it is the work that Jesus did with infinite grace, so His source of power is available to us, too.
Thank you, Laurna. I share your sadness over the ways the Church has failed people, and you're right that no denomination can claim immunity. For me, that's one reason I keep coming back to Jesus himself. He confronted pride, hypocrisy and abuse of power with remarkable courage, but always with the hope of restoration rather than condemnation. I think that's still the pattern we're called to follow today.