Item One: New Vlog

Something came up, so I’m taking a brief detour from my discussion of spirituality. Because my readership has suddenly taken off, I am going to experiment with a vlog again. If done right, it could replace this written blog and be easier for me and the reader-listener. It will parallel this blog post for a while, maybe going a little deeper into each topic. I will attach the first two episodes at the bottom.

Item Two: Why Am I Still a Christian?

I am asked this question from time to time, and I even ask myself the same question. What brought this up was a simple but brilliant cartoon someone sent me. This cartoon captured what I’ve been trying to explain for decades.

The point of this cartoon is that most of Christianity resides at the bottom: “There is a God.” It is a simple world of subjective truth. “I know God is there because I feel Him.” For me, it was the land behind the looking glass, of magic, and where everything seemed (but wasn’t) good.

The second layer is where you, in disillusionment, begin to see the world objectively, and the looking glass is broken. You see the meaningless suffering, honestly, and such hard thoughts crowd out the possibility of a God.

The third layer is where you, rather than submitting to despair, continue your honest study of the objective cosmos. There, once again, in objectivity, you find the living God, clearer than ever before, and built on objectivity rather than the subjectivity you had in the first layer.

As this cartoon shows, it is dangerous for a Christian to venture upward, rising on study (as shown by the books), because their Christian faith will be challenged by objectivity. For this reason, a lot of conservative Christians at least want to burn books, only allow their kids to go to Christian schools, and not to college. It is the fundamental reason that the Christian nationalists, who have hitched their wagons to the despot Trump, are trying to dismantle science and higher education. It is their rightful fear of knowledge.

But what most people don’t understand, and I didn’t know until I experienced it, is that when you ask those hard and honest questions, it will challenge your faith. But unfortunately, many get stuck in the second layer of agnosticism or atheism. That’s what almost happened to me. But I didn’t stop there. As I continued, I found Atheism with as many absurdities or more than Theism. Then I began to doubt Atheism, and finally, more study (not less) led me back to God.

But the problem for us is that the vast majority of those in the first layer have been taught that knowledge is “of the flesh,” and call us, who have found a wonderful world in objectivity and a much bigger God, illegitimate. So, the church gives no space, and that’s tragic.

There is nothing wrong with staying on the first level; it is not an inferior position (in our eyes), but it does require you to sacrifice objective curiosity and, as I mentioned previously, to be more vulnerable to subjective false “truths,” from fake financial investments, to fake medical treatments, to fake presidents. But it is not an inferior position as a Christian than those who look at the hard questions directly in the face.

A personal footnote to that last statement is that I have a son on the frontline in Minneapolis, along with his three sons. My heart aches for what is happening there and in our country. I’m praying constantly for peace in this nightmare.

New Vlog The Feral Christian: Curiosity Untethered

Episode One; Introduction: https://youtu.be/vZm18fLiA8U

Episode Two: Part A: Five Reasons (at least) Why I Returned to God: https://youtu.be/OX95CuMCWFs

As always, peace, Mike (curious pilgrim)