Skeptical Faith

Google Image Despite 40 years of being a pastor, John Chadwick, 73, a retired Iowa minister, said that in the face of the pandemic, he feels that his faith no longer provides the answers he needs. "I look at the virus, and I wonder," he says. "As a pastor, I always say, 'We need to trust God in all this.' And that's OK, to say that. But I gotta admit, for me, I wonder where God is, which is not great for a pastor. I realize that, but that's where I am today." Chadwick was among people interviewed by National Public Radio (NPR), for a recent article found on its web site, about how the pandemic has affected their faith. Age-Old Problem Many can relate to Chadwick. God’s apparent absence, especially during times of stress, is an age-old problem for believers and non-believers. The author of Psalm 42, probably written 600 years before Christ, is among those for whom it was a problem. “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When sh...

Google Image I recently mentioned to my wife, Amparo, that the self-quarantine during the pandemic feels like house arrest. Admittedly, it’s not quite that severe, but like many people, we haven’t seen our loved ones – including our children and grandchildren – in person for what seems like years. In our case, it’s been since Christmas. And that hurts. But I’m reminded that humans have a great capacity for adaptation, if not acceptance. We eventually begin to see the abnormal as normal, hardship as tolerable. I’ve always believed, and still do, that the Holocaust, that indescribable evil endured by millions in the Nazi death camps, was the most severe hardship imaginable. Yet, even there, people adapted, and in the years that have followed, many lessons were taught, if not learned, from the Holocaust. Phases In his famous book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl, a survivor of several Nazi camps, describes phases through which most prisoners pass. The first, not surpr...

Google Image One of my favorite gospel passages, probably because it’s easy to see in the mind’s eye, is the story of Jesus and his disciples crossing the Sea of Galilee. After a long day of preaching from a boat, from which he provided the parables of the sower and the seed, the lamp under the bushel, and the mustard seed to people seated on the shore, Jesus invited his disciples to accompany him across the lake. Exhausted, he fell asleep in the boat’s stern and kept sleeping even after a violent storm came up. The boat began to take on water and the disciples, fearing for their lives, woke Jesus and said (probably yelled), “Teacher, do you not care if we perish?” I’ve thought of this story many times in my life, when things weren’t going well, and when I felt distressed and helpless in the face of local, national and international disasters, natural and man-made. I’ve sometimes felt this way, and thought of this story, during this pandemic. Also Called Lake Gennesaret...

Google Image Like many families during this pandemic, my wife, Amparo, and I have had many Facetime sessions with our children and grandchildren. In one recent session, our grandchild, Leo, who is a year old, confidently falls backward into the arms of his mother while laughing uncontrollably. We all have seen this behavior in children, and it occurs to me that it is almost a perfect analogy for a joyful, trusting relationship to God. In a blog in 2014, I cited an article in America Magazine about atheist Richard Dawkins’ book, “The God Delusion,” and how he delights in mocking and baiting believers. His taunts, I wrote, should make us think about what we believe, why we believe it and how weird it may be to “the world.” And, we should recall the nature of faith itself. Faith's Primary Meaning The author of the America article, Stephen Bullivant, a lecturer in theology at St. Mary’s University College in London, reminded readers that faith’s primary meaning is “trust.”...