postscript to “schizophrenic?”

How weird…:    just after I published the last post I stumbled over a post I had written a while ago but not published. It had the heading “authentic, passionate or schizophrenic?”. It said the following:
Is it possible to live with the following two attitudes at the same time?

I am honest about not believing the [...]

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schizophrenic?

First: Sorry for not showing up on my own blog! I messed it up.

I realized how difficult it is to write and respond regularly on the blog; and so I decided this week (against my initial goals) that instead of constantly having a bad conscience about not writing regularly, I’ll just change my goal: I’ll [...]

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division of labour

It must have been about two weeks ago. I felt really tired of carrying  the responsibility of bringing myself back to faith.
“God”, I suggested, “how about a division of labor. You take the responsibility of bringing me back to faith. I take the responsibility of being honest and to  stop trying to believe it if [...]

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word of wisdom

A wise person recently told me (with respect to my faith problems) that some things die when you dissect them. Obviously true. Animals, for example, die when you dissect them. And I am very open to the idea that faith might die, too, when you intellectually dissect it.
Or in another metaphor: In quantum physics (if [...]

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changing the perspective on atheism

Just read an autobiographical piece by A N Wilson on why he de-de-converted. I liked the tone of his narrative. Not all his reasons for coming back to faith convinced me. But one thing that I found very noteworthy is this extract:
When I think about atheist friends, including my father, they seem to me like [...]

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snapshots of the emotional jungle within (iii)

Here’s some more incoherent emotions of mine:

Sometimes I interpret my faith of the last years as being based on an infinite longing. I interpret my faith of the last years in the following way: I didn’t have much reason to believe that God exists – but neither did I have much reason to believe anything [...]

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snapshots of the emotional jungle within (ii)

Miscellaneous emotions that come up when thinking about reconciling myself with faith:

At the moment, I sometimes feel like just spitting out all the anger I have at the complacency many Christians have about basing their faith on implausible arguments. At the moment, I sometimes feel like looking down at the naïvité of some Christians. (How [...]

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snapshots of the emotional jungle within (i)

Even if all intellectual obstacles preventing me from reconciliation with the Christian faith were resolved there would still remain a host of emotional obstacles. These emotional tensions might possibly have more force than my intellectual burdens.
For this series of posts, I first aimed at a neat list of the objects making up the emotional landscape [...]

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wanting to believe (degree 10)

It was a big eye-opener for me, when my girlfriend recently asked me “On a scale of 1-10, how much would you like to be a Christian?” and even after reflection, I was  still fairly positive that my spontaneous answer of “10″ was right.
I want to be able to continue the kind of life I’ve [...]

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can you believe in “a” god

Here’s a basic dilemma I’ve carried with me for many years:

I consider it more plausible than not that there is a God.
For every single specification of God I know of (Conservative Christianity, Deism, Mormonism, liberal Christianity, …), I find it more plausible than not that it depicts God wrongly.

So, I’m stuck: I tend to believe [...]

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back in the game

It’s Easter and my blog is now resurrecting
I’m sorry for the long absence. I had the stupid idea in my head that spending the last 12 years at the university made it necessary for me to gain some practical experience in the so-called “real world”. However, this just meant working way too much [...]

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quick note again

sorry, dear potential blog readers, for being so absent.
I was offered an internship two months ago which I – most stupidly – thought I was able to additionally cramp into my already tight schedule. This proved wrong and now I need all my energy to work, sleep, eat and lead life and have no energy [...]

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quick note: sorry

sorry for not showing up in the past days… I know it’s not good for the flow if I take so much time to answer… but life’s just too intense at the moment, got sooo much work to do. It’s so difficult: how shall I work through faith decisions, existential issues, meetings with God, [...]

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bible VI

OK, I hope this huge outpouring of words didn’t deter potential readers too much…
I think my best chances for reconciliation with the bible must begin with researching (and maybe imitating) how people (including my former self) who do get along with the bible read that book. That’s where I must dig in my treasure hunt.
If [...]

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bible V

A sixth attempt at finding my way back to the bible would be take one problem at the time and explain it away.
For two problems (contradictions in the infancy stories and the question of a cruel war God in the old testament), I did a bit of this (with the help of a website the [...]

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bible IV

Here’s a fifth attempt at how I might reconcile myself with the bible.
One thing is for sure: The bible strongly speaks to certain persons (at certain times surely including me). It’s like the book is alive. It’s meaningful.
So instead of trusting the bible because I have some explanation of how it can be reliable in [...]

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bible III

Here’s a fourth attempt at how I might come to terms with the bible again (deep down it might be the same thing as the third attempt):
Imagine a little girl that can’t count to more than ten – any large number counts as ten for her. Imagine that the girl thinks of any tall man [...]

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bible II

Here’s a first attempt at how I could come to terms with the bible even though it seems to make statements which are not true:
One of the purposes of the bible might not be to make statements – i.e. to inform us about facts – but rather to do something with us, such as drawing [...]

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bible I

I have problems with the bible. It seems to make statements which are not true.
First, it seems to make statements about the world and God which contradict each other. Second, it seems to make statements about the world which contradict things we know from other sources (such as science as practiced in western universities of [...]

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merry christmas

It’s Christmas tomorrow. And the last post just reminded me of a Calvin strip I once saw. I love Calvin & Hobbes – they’re good friends of mine.
Ah, I love Christmas, too. (Isn’t that part of what’s horrible for people who lose faith: That rituals like Christmas and wedding ceremonies are partly closed to them?).
Anyway, [...]

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strange strange world

Sometimes when I take walks I stare into the sky and I just wonder:
“Where does this whole thing – the sky, the earth, me – all come from?
Why on earth are we here?
Obviously, we are here. But it’s so strange – what sense does it make?
Why isn’t the story behind all this just written [...]

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drawn into faith

Often, I feel very much drawn into faith. I go to church and something is happening with me. I read of other Christians and I feel connected to them. I’m fond of Jesus. I am drawn towards the world of faith.
The big dilemma of mine is that I can react in one of two ways [...]

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emergent church: nothing new under the sun

Today, I brought back my copy of Brian McLaren’s “Finding Faith: A Search for what is Real” and “Finding Faith: A Search for what makes sense” to the library after having read quite some parts. I’ve already read one of his “A New Kind of Christian” books. He is one of the most prominent voices [...]

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expectations

Often, when I tell Christians about my doubts and problems with the Christian story, they’ll tell me that the problem is that I’m having false expectations about God. “No wonder you’re disappointed!”, they’ll say. “The problem is not God but your false picture of him. Don’t discard your faith but rather discard your unrealistic expectations [...]

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“low conviction followers” (III)

Big Dan wrote:
I’m trying to stay away from pouring too much time into this searching. I keep telling myself that it’s more important to do than to think.
This resonated with something that has recently become important to me.
Assume that I am in the situation that I am very confused and agnostic about the big issues, [...]

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yearning III

The second reaction says “We humans have this craving and longing. We have these desires. So let’s just fulfill them to whatever degree is possible”. This doesn’t mean a ruthless and egoistic grabbing of whatever one gets. It just means that one actively looks out for opportunities to make life more satisfying and happier. Instead [...]

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yearning II

The first reaction consists in living out this longing and consciously embracing it. This reaction is based on faith: Faith that some day, our longing for the Big Thing shall and will be fulfilled. It’s the faith that there truly is “Living Water” that is able to quench my thirst (regardless of whether it does [...]

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yearning I

This morning I woke up and the shrieks of excitement from the young woman in the hotel room next to me clearly indicated what she and the man she visited were enjoying. I didn’t fall asleep afterwards and the quiet morning hours gave me the opportunity to let my thoughts wander. It all started with [...]

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funny little self-observation

By the way, this post is written while driving round in the Tokyo Subway.
Yesterday, at the end of the conference I attended, we were invited for a reception where I had some beer. Funny thing is: After the reception, I had some time for myself and thought about my faith (as I constantly do). And, [...]

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— in between —

Hey guys
thanks so much for your lines and thoughts and stimulation!
Right now I am sitting at the airport because my university pays me to attend a conference in Japan (lucky lucky me!!!). That’s part of the reason I haven’t been so actively blogging these past days and maybe will not be so active in the [...]

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ways of knowing

Two children in the mother’s womb talk about there being a reality&life beyond the womb. They both agree that they have this strong sense that it is not all over when they leave the womb. How could they ever have criteria which tell them whether to trust this sense? Is that sense just a squirk [...]

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setting the terms of the game

Last week my coach told me that I have to let God convince me in his ways. In some sense, this seems right, in another sense it doesn’t seem right.
In the end it is still me who has to be convinced and therefore, somehow inescapably, my criteria which have to be met. So, in some [...]

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cramped

You know how it sometimes feels with my faith? It’s like a T-Shirt that doesn’t fit me anymore.

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please, please

Please, God, if you’re hearing this: please, please make this journey of doubt of mine have some purpose! I just wish so badly that all this questioning and de-construction  is useful for something.
I just wont give up hope that persisting on this journey will deepen the life, love and faith of me and others.
And even [...]

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level confusions

Sometimes, when I talk with others about my crisis of faith, they interpret my doubts not as a problem on the intellectual level (“Is God real?”, “Is Christianity true”) but as a an emotional, existential problem on the relationship level. Often, this interpretation comes out of an experience of the way they experienced their problems [...]

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“low conviction followers” (II)

Assume that I am not very convinced by the God of Abraham and of my own forefathers actually being a true God. Maybe, if someone asked me to bet money, I would only make a 1:10 bid (though, strangely, it is very difficult to express one’s own inner confidence in such numerical terms as 1:10 [...]

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the strange notion of agnosticism

Some people (…) talk as if there was a continuum: atheism –> agnosticism –> deism –> liberal christianity –> conservative christianity.
I, however, think that agnosticism doesn’t fit into this continuum (and that point is really important to me). Why not?
Because being an atheist, a deist, or a christian is a decision about how to live/act. [...]

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„low conviction followers” (I)

I want to start a series of posts that have to do with being a follower of Jesus while having a low degree of confidence in the truth of Christianity. Here’s a first thought:
“Given that we can’t know whether the christian God exists or not – given that we are in this state of complete [...]

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the relevance of other religions

The fact that there are many religions has had various consequences for believers. Here’s one consequence this fact had for me in my journey of doubt. It’s kind of a re-phrasing of my last post.
A lot of my faith is founded on my “experiencing” God: It’s like I meet him. It’s like I feel existentially [...]

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drawing information from inconsistent data

Imagine that you are babysitting your two nieces one Wednesday (one of them just barely two, the other soon 3 years old). The one tells you that Grandma visited yesterday; she claims that Grandma came on her own and told stories about Grandpa. Later, the other niece tells you that yesterday the whole day they’ve [...]

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tough questions

A question that has troubled me for some time now is the following. Imagine I went to the doctor and to my surprise he would find out that due to some unexpected disease, I have 6 more months to live. I would walk home and on my way, I would start thinking about death and [...]

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miracles IV (legitimate?)

A last post on miracles: Some christians scorn reliance on miracles. To them, faith based on evidence (in particular based on sensationalist special effects) is not in line with the bible.
I agree that faith that can do without miracles might actually be something more noble than a need for witnessing supernatural events. But: saying that [...]

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miracles III (important?)

It seems to me that some masters of faith decry reliance on miracles as immature and unimportant. I, in contrast, am happy to have miracles (if there actually are miracles) as evidence for the existence of God.
For many believers, belief in the existence of God is mainly built on a very vague, squishy, hard-to-grasp but [...]

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still haven’t found what i’m looking for

There is this song that touches something so incredibly deep within me. And it’s done so with millions of other people:

(BTW, here is an really electrifying version by Cher)
Can anybody tell me whether this song is the ultimate believer’s song or the ultimate unbeliever’s song?
I know that many people (including U2 [...]

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miracles II (real?)

Quester asked: Do miracles actually happen?
Let’s distinguish two kinds of miracles:
(i) Events that maybe are miracles – events which could also easily have natural causes
(E.g.: “I didn’t sleep enough and in the morning I asked God to carry me through the day and suddenly I felt so energetic”)
(ii) Events that probably are miracles – events [...]

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miracles I

Isn’t it funny how people are convinced by different things of Christianity? And how doubts about Christianity are grounded in different things as well? If we made a list of all the pros and cons for faith, every thinker would tick his own unique combination of what convinced him or made him doubt.
In contrast to [...]

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“sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” (S. Freud)

There is this famous idea associated with Freud that a lot of our behaviour and thinking is actually driven by sexuality. I often wonder whether and how this is true for the decision for/against faith. I have two points in mind.
First, sexual fantasies are some of the most forceful powers driving the human life. They [...]

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joys/frustrations of a believer/doubter

You know what faith seems like to me?
Like a rainbow
— it’s absolutely beautiful and magic.
And the moment you try to grasp it, it vanishes.

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liberalism V

Often in the past, liberalism hasn’t opened the wellsprings of faith. It has often been an obstacle to the flow of that „living water”. Liberalism isn’t known for opening the doors to a life-changing faith which “strangely warms the heart” and feels like the magic of Narnia.
This failure is a sign of it being on [...]

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liberalism IV

There is also a psychological part to my aversion against liberalism: growing up in a rather evangelical environment, the Zeitgeist constantly gave me the impression of being a little naïve and of low intellectual ability to believe something as old-fashioned as the christian story in its more literal interpretation. This engendered the need in me [...]

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