Brett's faith summary

Ok, so it's been awhile since I've really explicitly stated where I am. Actually, maybe I've never really done this. This is where I am in my beliefs as of 5/22/08.

1.) I am a Christian. That means that yes, I love Jesus and I stand in awe of the man He was. It baffles me how much the all-powerful God of the universe loves me.I am pretty well convinced of the case for the Christian faith. I do still have many doubts and, to be honest, issues with God. Most of this stuff, however, is within the realm of THEOLOGY, not APOLOGETICS. Picture Christianity as an island. I've struggled through some stormy seas to get myself onto the island. Getting onto the island was a matter of apologetics/truth seeking. Now that I'm on the island, I've got some issues with the island itself. It's like I've finally decided I can really swallow Christianity, but although Jesus is easy to swallow, there's some stuff that doesn't go down quite as easy. However, I am starting to even find light shed on some of these tough questions (hell, for example is something that I can actually stomach now).

2.)Other religions: It turns out I was nearly correct as a naive high schooler thinking that there was either Christianity or atheism may be right(I was blind to the idea that OTHER religions/philosophies may be right). Now I feel that really there are two worldviews that I could really accept: Christianity and Skepticism ("I don't know") Actually, maybe I'd throw Deism in there too. Islam, Judaism, even my beloved Buddhism just cannot compare to Christianity in terms of intellectual viability. A historical study of Islam or the Koran is impossible. Buddhists will tell you to leave reason at the door. Judaism is of course Christianity without the most powerful reason for belief (and the most appealing part!!).
I can't go much deeper in one paragraph, but let's just say that if any other worldview had to withstand the scrutiny that Christianity has had to for the last two millenia, they would absolutely dissolve. They would disintegrate!

3.) My faith is not extremely strong. It goes in waves, just like everything else. What's the most disturbing is that my faith hinges more on my my emotions/circumstances than anything. Even though I've got a solid intellectual case for what I believe, I still find myself doubting God or his goodness. It's always when I'm anxious about something or down in the dumps or just lonely that my doubting starts. I think this is most interesting when thinking in context of what people believe and why. (C.S. Lewis knew this more than anyone).

4.) I still refuse to believe something because someone says it's so. Every step up the ladder of orthodoxy has been questioned scrupulously. I also believe in and take comfort from Kierkegaard's view on doubt (that without doubt, faith is not really faith).

5.) I write now as a Christian who is still open to ideas that say Christianity is false, but that door closes more and more daily as I continue to assault my own faith with every argument I can dream or find in a book (I still find that it's very hard to prove something wrong if it is indeed the truth!!) As I come upon situation after tough situation personally, I find that all this testing and all of this questioning merely serves as a fire that tempers the steel of my faith even more, making it even stronger.

6.) I do have enough faith to attempt to carry out Jesus' commands (things like be holy, spread the gospel, etc. although this is tough with my sort of ad-hoc agnostic theology). Thankfully I do have, I feel, all I need to know and that is: We are made for relationship with God, We need to repent, God loves us, Jesus is the KEY to it all- the piece that makes the whole puzzle understandable). I'm not quite up to a mustard seed, but with God's help...

In any case, as I like to do, I'll leave you off with Chesterton's self-deprecating introduction to Orthodoxy that I feel fits nicely. To me, Chesterton is always brilliant, always paradoxical, but never dull- his humor is that of another age.

As always, I wish you the best in your journey of faith, whatever that looks like.
-Brett



For if this book is a joke it is a joke against me. I am the man who with the utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before. If there is an element of farce in what follows, the farce is at my own expense; for this book explains how I fancied I was the first to set foot in Brighton and then found I was the last. It recounts my elephantine adventures in pursuit of the obvious. No one can think my case more ludicrous than I think it myself; no reader can accuse me here of trying to make a fool of him: I am the fool of this story, and no rebel shall hurl me from
my throne.

I freely confess all the idiotic ambitions of the end of the nineteenth century. I did, like all other solemn little boys, try to be in advance of the age. Like them I tried to be some ten minutes in advance of the truth. And I found that I was eighteen hundred years behind it. I did strain my voice with a painfully juvenile exaggeration in uttering my truths. And I was punished in the fittest and funniest way, for I have kept my truths: but I have discovered, not that they were not truths, but simply that they were not mine. When I fancied that I stood alone I was really in the ridiculous position of being backed up by all Christendom. It may be, Heaven forgive me, that I did try to be original; but I only succeeded in inventing all by myself an inferior copy of the existing traditions of civilized religion. The man from the yacht thought he was the first to find England; I thought I was the first to find Europe. I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.

It may be that somebody will be entertained by the account of this happy fiasco. It might amuse a friend or an enemy to read how I gradually learnt from the truth of some stray legend or from the falsehood of some dominant philosophy, things that I might have learnt from my catechism--if I had ever learnt it. There may or may not be some entertainment in reading how I found at last in an anarchist club or a Babylonian temple what I might have found in the nearest parish church. If any one is entertained by learning how the flowers of the field or the phrases in an omnibus, the accidents of politics or the pains of youth came together in a certain order to produce a certain conviction of Christian orthodoxy, he may possibly read this book. But there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.