Yes, faith can provide these things.. but let's think about it. How easy is it to live in a society that tells you that you don't matter because you are not successful, don't work hard enough, don't look a certain way.. don't have enough material goods? How easy is it for those whose family is fragmented? Family, and parenthood seems to be one of those things that gives meaning, regardless of faith. How easy is it when so many jobs that served others are gone, replaced by automation? How easy is it to find a church with folks that really will be committed to the others in their congregation besides having a cup of coffee after the service? So many of the natural things that have given us meaning, even without faith, have been chipped away. It is difficult to tell someone without these things that they will be replaced by having faith as they live out their lonely, disconnected lives. It is complicated...
Richard, I wonder if you would distinguish between what you describe here and, say, the dark night of John of the Cross, or perhaps other markers of a drawing-deeper into the love of God that may come with a kind of meaning-collapse?
I recently read Brian McLaren's Faith After Doubt, and he offers a model of faith development that describes the process you're discussing here. However, my view is that it's a model that specifically applies to those from a kind of fundamentalist origin of faith - and therefore not faith as such, or faith as it necessarily needs to be experienced. (McLaren alludes to this by wondering if there's a way to simply start at the later stages, but comes up short.) I think the emotional distress caused in this kind of doubt is both different in kind and in severity because its origin is so totalizing. Thoughts?
Richard, what would you say helped you have a more confident faith and get out of a, I guess you could say, overly intellectualized, doubt ridden faith? It seems like your beginning at the prison was a turning point--perhaps a way to get out of your head and lead people spiritually who don’t have an overly intellectualized faith. I’m wondering if looking for opportunities like that in my life would help me do the same...
I may be wrong about this, maybe missing the boat about what you're describing, Dr. Beck, but I don't think that anyone with a real and saving "faith" in Jesus Christ can ever lose it. If one could, I'm sure that I would have done that already. Before I had such a faith, I believed absurdly based on New Age teachings that I was God and you were God and everyone is God. That "faith" didn't last the first blast of reality and did nothing for me even while I had it. It was replaced, almost against my own will, by the faith I have now in Jesus Christ when the Real God showed up in my life in answer to a prayer that I was ignorantly praying at the time . . . "God, please lead me to do Your Will" . . . and like a true God Father He "made me an offer I couldn't refuse." This "faith" has lasted now some 47 years and has gone through so much life stuff that's been at times good, bad, and, even, ugly, and sometimes even all three at once . . . but this faith persists, and I do expect it to keep persisting all the way through this finite bit of eternity clear through to Glory because Jesus Christ is hanging on to it and to me. And I don't mean to be whatever it is one would call it, but I think that every "faith" other than the one that I've just described that's based in the person of the living Jesus Christ is as empty and impotent as the New Age belief that I once had. That may rub some readers the wrong way, but that's been my life experience, and I can't change it, nor would I want to do so. I wish that everyone could find such a faith like this.
Yes, faith can provide these things.. but let's think about it. How easy is it to live in a society that tells you that you don't matter because you are not successful, don't work hard enough, don't look a certain way.. don't have enough material goods? How easy is it for those whose family is fragmented? Family, and parenthood seems to be one of those things that gives meaning, regardless of faith. How easy is it when so many jobs that served others are gone, replaced by automation? How easy is it to find a church with folks that really will be committed to the others in their congregation besides having a cup of coffee after the service? So many of the natural things that have given us meaning, even without faith, have been chipped away. It is difficult to tell someone without these things that they will be replaced by having faith as they live out their lonely, disconnected lives. It is complicated...
Richard, I wonder if you would distinguish between what you describe here and, say, the dark night of John of the Cross, or perhaps other markers of a drawing-deeper into the love of God that may come with a kind of meaning-collapse?
I recently read Brian McLaren's Faith After Doubt, and he offers a model of faith development that describes the process you're discussing here. However, my view is that it's a model that specifically applies to those from a kind of fundamentalist origin of faith - and therefore not faith as such, or faith as it necessarily needs to be experienced. (McLaren alludes to this by wondering if there's a way to simply start at the later stages, but comes up short.) I think the emotional distress caused in this kind of doubt is both different in kind and in severity because its origin is so totalizing. Thoughts?
Richard, what would you say helped you have a more confident faith and get out of a, I guess you could say, overly intellectualized, doubt ridden faith? It seems like your beginning at the prison was a turning point--perhaps a way to get out of your head and lead people spiritually who don’t have an overly intellectualized faith. I’m wondering if looking for opportunities like that in my life would help me do the same...
I may be wrong about this, maybe missing the boat about what you're describing, Dr. Beck, but I don't think that anyone with a real and saving "faith" in Jesus Christ can ever lose it. If one could, I'm sure that I would have done that already. Before I had such a faith, I believed absurdly based on New Age teachings that I was God and you were God and everyone is God. That "faith" didn't last the first blast of reality and did nothing for me even while I had it. It was replaced, almost against my own will, by the faith I have now in Jesus Christ when the Real God showed up in my life in answer to a prayer that I was ignorantly praying at the time . . . "God, please lead me to do Your Will" . . . and like a true God Father He "made me an offer I couldn't refuse." This "faith" has lasted now some 47 years and has gone through so much life stuff that's been at times good, bad, and, even, ugly, and sometimes even all three at once . . . but this faith persists, and I do expect it to keep persisting all the way through this finite bit of eternity clear through to Glory because Jesus Christ is hanging on to it and to me. And I don't mean to be whatever it is one would call it, but I think that every "faith" other than the one that I've just described that's based in the person of the living Jesus Christ is as empty and impotent as the New Age belief that I once had. That may rub some readers the wrong way, but that's been my life experience, and I can't change it, nor would I want to do so. I wish that everyone could find such a faith like this.