All posts in Faith

  • August 9, 2016

    Certitude: A Disaster Waiting To Happen

    Doubt

    Certitude: A Disaster Waiting To Happen
    Brian Zahnd

    Do you love your faith so little that you have never battled a single fear lest your faith should not be true? Where there are no doubts, no questions, no perplexities, there can be no growth.
    –George MacDonald

    In my spiritual memoir, Water To Wine, part of the story I tell involves my own journey away from cheap certitude toward an authentic faith. It is a phenomenon of modernity that certitude (mental assent toward something as an absolute empirical fact) has become confused with faith (an orientation of the soul toward God in the form of deep trust). That this phenomenon is prevalent among certain streams of Christians is strangely ironic since this involves genuflecting at the altar of empiricism and privileging knowledge over faith. Privileging empiricism above faith as the final arbiter of truth is a hallmark of modernity, but it is also antithetical to Christianity.

    Certitude is a poor substitute for authentic faith. But certitude is popular; it’s popular because it’s easy. No wrestling with doubt, no dark night of the soul, no costly agonizing over the matter, no testing yourself with hard questions. Just accept a secondhand assumption or a majority opinion or a popular sentiment as the final word and settle into certainty. Certitude is easy…until it’s impossible. And that’s why certitude is so often a disaster waiting to happen. The empty slogan “the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it” is cheap certitude, not genuine faith.
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    No Comments / Books, Empiricism, Faith, Uncategorized /

  • July 29, 2015

    George MacDonald’s Spiritual Journey (And Mine Too)

    george-macdonald

    George MacDonald’s Spiritual Journey (And Mine Too)
    Brian Zahnd

    “I have never concealed the fact that I regarded George MacDonald as my master; indeed I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote him.” –C.S. Lewis

    “I can testify to a book that has made a difference to my whole existence…and it is by George MacDonald.” –G.K. Chesterton

    George MacDonald (    1824–1905) was a Scottish novelist, poet, preacher, mystic, lecturer, theologian whose writings have had an enormous influence on many Christian thinkers, including C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton. In my own spiritual journey I would list George MacDonald’s Lilith as a top ten influence.

    George MacDonald understood as clearly as anyone that salvation is not so much a conferred status as it is a lifelong journey — a continual pressing into the revelation of God in Christ. But to be a public theologian, thinker, writer and on an ever-evolving spiritual journey, rankles the self-appointed gatekeepers of religious certitude. Thus George MacDonald was regularly (and wrongly) accused of heresy for simply not toeing the line of the Scottish Calvinism predominant in his day.

    In the mid 1860’s George MacDonald received a letter from a troubled reader asking why he had lost the “old faith” and embraced what many regarded as “unorthodox” views. MacDonald’s candid reply is brilliant and beautiful and I would like to share it with you. (Plus, as one who has often been criticized for moving beyond an earlier fundamentalist/charismatic certitude, MacDonald’s defense will aptly suffice as my own.)

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    43 Comments / Books, Brian Zahnd, Christianity, Faith, Jesus, Theology /

  • September 29, 2014

    Beyond Elementary School Christianity

    John-Atkinson-Grimshaw-Paintings-Figure-on-a-moonlit-lane-St.-Johns-Road-Ryde-Isle-of-Wight-1880-82

    Beyond Elementary School Christianity
    Brian Zahnd

    In his groundbreaking book, Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning, James W. Fowler describes spiritual development in a series of stages from zero to six. Fowler describes stage two as the faith of school children. This is a stage where metaphors are often literalized and a strong belief in the just reciprocity of the universe is held dear. At this stage of faith the idea that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people is a controlling axiom. I won’t summarize all the stages here, but Fowler describes stage five as the capacity to acknowledge paradox and experience transcendence.

    Fowler’s final stage is characterized by compassion and the view that all people belong to a universal community. This is the mature stage where the spiritual journey breaks out of the paradigm of “us versus them” that dominates so much religious thought and controls so many religious institutions.

    In his forthcoming book, A More Christlike God, Canadian theologian Brad Jersak comments on Fowler’s stages of faith and the current plight of evangelicalism making this stinging observation: “Entire streams of Christendom are not only stuck at stage-two faith, but actually train and require their ministers to interpret the Bible through the mythic-literal eyes of school children. Growing up and moving forward is rebranded as backsliding; maturing is perceived as falling away.”
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    34 Comments / Christianity, Faith, Prayer /

  • May 26, 2010

    LOST – The Final Episode


    Here is a brief reflection on the final episode of LOST. Read more

    2 Comments / America, Death, Faith /

  • March 5, 2008

    The Road of Unknowing

    “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out not knowing where he was going.” -Hebrews 11:8

    God is a mystery
    Jesus is the answer
    -Paul (Colossians 2:2)

    Life is a mystery
    Love is a dancer
    -Larry Norman (1948-2008)

    Whatever faith may be, it’s certainly not certainty.
    Certainty is an edifice built on empirical proof.
    Faith is a journey on the Road of Unknowing.

    The “need” for certainty is a birth defect in the children of the Enlightenment.
    Confusing faith with certainty creates a lot of needless anxiety in the children of God.

    We walk by faith, not by sight.
    We walk by faith, not by certainty.
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    No Comments / Apologetics, Faith, Uncategorized /

  • February 21, 2008

    Knowing and Believing


    Unless I see…I will not believe.
    Thomas

    Blessed are those who have not seen yet believe.
    Jesus

    The fig trees are budding
    The vines are in blossom
    How delicious they smell
    Rise up my love, my beautiful one
    Come with me
    Song of Songs

    People are often confused about knowing and believing.

    The atheist and agnostic will say to the believer, “You don’t know there is a God, you believe there is a God” — as if that were, aha, gotcha!

    Believers (yes, they are called believers, not knowers) often try to up the ante by saying something like, “I don’t believe, I know!”

    There is some confusion going on here.

    Let’s see if we can make some sense of it
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    No Comments / Apologetics, atheism, Faith /