On Hiatus

Saints in darkness

The world seemed shocked this fall when it learned that Mother Teresa experienced several decades of spiritual dryness and a profound sense of being disconnected from God.

CT readers should also recall similar periods of feeling spiritually abandoned in the lives of great Protestants: Oswald Chambers and William Cowper, for example, and especially Martin Luther. It was not in Luther’s monastic years, when he was struggling for acceptance with God, that he felt the absence of God most deeply. Like Mother Teresa, it was after his special experience of God’s grace and after he wrote his watershed 95 theses that his periods of Anfechtung, his word for doubt, turmoil, and despair, came upon him. To discover grace is not to escape spiritual tribulation.

Luther described times when trying to preach or speak of Christ, “the word freezes upon my lips.” He said, “Had another had the tribulations which I have suffered, he would long since have died.” Luther’s call to be a professor forced him to find a new approach to the Scriptures and, in turn, Christian experience. According to historical theologian Robert Rosin of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, the tools of Renaissance humanism liberated Luther from medieval philosophical categories and helped him move toward a more straightforward reading of the text. Luther discovered that Christians do not approach God through a logical ergo (as the Scholastics had done), but through a nevertheless. Luther learned from Scripture that Christians must look beyond their own experiences, feelings, and thoughts in order to contend for the faith.

For Luther, Anfechtung was to be expected in the life of faith, but this subjective experience could never triumph over the objective reality of God’s promises in his Word.

Full story

OK God, lets do this thing

Sunday night had me feeling the urge to pick up the Bible again after a little hiatus. For those of you that missed this post, I haven’t been reading the Good Book as religiously as I usually do (pun totally intended). After picking it up, I sat on the couch flipping through it’s many pages, but I just had no idea where to start. Finally I settled on the Book of Hebrews. This book from the New Testament was maybe written by the Apostle Paul (but more likely by someone else) to some Jewish Christians and some non-Jewish Christians who lived among Jewish people.

I read the first four chapters on Sunday. I read slowly, wanting it all to sink in. I enjoyed what I read and it reaffirmed for me the faith that I hold dear. There was no big epiphany, no chorus of angels singing to me through blinding light, but thats probably for the best. If it had happened I would only go back to the Bible expecting another emotional high. When the inevitable happened, and the emotional high failed to appear, I would have given up on the Bible in disappointment. I think faith is what happens when nothing happens.

Tonight I am going to go back. I am going to try reading it again without expectations. Maybe thats part of the problem, I read the Bible with so many expectations and ideas for so long that I stripped it of all its mystery and wonder. Maybe the time has come for me to read it for what it has to say to me.

Megadeth: A Call to Arms

Best real metal song ever written about Jesus I think.

Photo Friday – Strength

This week’s entry.

The price of hate

Halloween was not very happy for Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church.

A federal jury in Baltimore, Maryland, Wednesday awarded $10.9 million to a father of a Marine whose funeral was picketed by members of a fundamentalist church carrying signs blaming soldiers’ deaths on America’s tolerance of homosexuals.

Church founder Fred Phelps said the church would appeal the decision, adding it would “take about five minutes to reverse that thing.

This will elevate me to something important,” Phelps told reporters. “This was an act of futility.”

Later, Phelps said the case was about “putting a preacher on trial for what he preaches.”

All it was, was a protestation by the government of the United States against the word of God. They don’t want me preaching that God is punishing the country by killing their servicemen.” Full story

Phelps’ comments are very telling. His church and it’s crusade has less to do with God’s will and more to do with them making a name for themselves. Their cult has chosen an easily identifiable group, homosexuals, and chosen them to be the lightning rod for God’s wrath. While they may claim they are being put on trial for preaching God’s word, the reality is that they have completely missed the point of what it really says.

What many don’t realize is that this highly visible group is made up of about 50 people, most of them from the same family. They have about as much chance of making payment on a 10.9 million dollar judgment as I do, and trust me I don’t have that kind of cash lying around.This victory was purely a symbolic one, but that doesn’t make it any less worthwhile. You cannot dress up hate in the garments of religion. You cannot laugh at mourners and call yourself civilized. You cannot use the Bible to spit in God’s face.

I imagine Sunday’s sermon at Phelps’ church will include some words about the “persecution” they are facing. Cults love to throw that word around whenever they are caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Let him say what he wants, society as a whole understands the truth. But just in case that by some small chance Fred Phelps reads this blog posting of mine, I would like to take this opportunity to remind him that persecution is not being penalized for doing wrong, it is being punished for doing right. You sir have never done anything of the sort.

Happy Halloween.