Bart D. Ehrman
Jesus Interrupted (2009)
I've got less than 100 pages of Ehrman's book left, but as his writing unfolds before me, I'm gaining a greater understanding of what he's trying to communicate. There is, indeed a danger of a Christian's faith taking a serious hit by reading Ehrman's scholarly opinion (which is based on lots of research) that the Bible is a far less than perfectly consistent document. Yet, in the footnote accompanying the above-quote, Ehrman states that the "textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament" did not lead to his loss of faith, but rather it was "the problem of suffering (in the world) "that eventually led me to become an agnostic."
I actually suspect that the issue of suffering for Ehrman was much more personal than simply a feeling of anguish over the suffering of the world wide population of humans, both in the present and throughout history. In his recorded debate with Dr. Michael Brown on whether or not the Bible provides an adequate explanation for human suffering, Ehrman states that his father's diagnosis of cancer and subsequent death had a significant impact. Ehrman further states during the debate, that a Christian "ministered" to his father, anointed him with oil and told him point blank that God would heal him. No, not that God might heal him, could heal him, or had the power to heal him but, according to Ehrman's account, the Christian said that God would (apparently without a shadow of a doubt) heal him.
Ehrman says his father was tormented for the rest of his days by this pronouncement and was not healed but instead died.
I can't possibly know everything that happened relative to these events and exactly how Ehrman's faith was deconstructed since I only have one book and one recording to go on. However, based on not only the words but the tone of both Ehrman's voice in the recording, and the "tone" of Ehrman's words in his book, he seems to be very angry.
Keep in mind, I can't know this, I can only infer some sort of meaning from the two sources I just mentioned.
What's this got to do with you and me? Plenty.
What is faith?
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. -Hebrews 11:1-2That's the standard Christian response to my question but it doesn't even begin to touch on what faith really means. In the class I taught last night, as part of our discussion on what Jesus taught about humility and mercy, someone asked "How do you know that you've really been forgiven?"
Good question. There's no objective event that occurs when you are forgiven of your sins by God. Both Luke 5:20 and James 5:15 say that faith is the required ingredient for forgiveness. Mark 16:16 says that "he who believes and is baptized shall be saved." In other words, God doesn't give us a certificate of proof when he forgives us of our sins. We "know" we are forgiven, based on the relevant passages in the Bible and particularly by faith.
James, I am very concerned about the slippery slope you are on. You are reading the same books (Ehrman, etc.) that my formerly zealous intellectual Messianic friends read....and they ended up rabid atheists spewing the most horrid blasphemies against the God of the Bible all over the Internet. It breaks my heart to watch these train wrecks unfold before my eyes. The cognitive dissonance you are experiencing is dangerous. I have seen this confusion take its toll on others very close to me. Please be careful! Praying for you.....and all of us.
Tandi's comment on Judah Himango's blog post
Set Your Hope On Moses
And yet, there are many, many believers across history who have suffered as much or more, have questioned the Bible severely, and who have undergone crises of faith, and still clung tightly to the living God. The answer to keeping your faith or losing it isn't based on external conditions alone. Faith is personal. No two people experience faith in exactly the same way, anymore than no two married couples experience their love and attachment to each other in an identical fashion.
Bart Ehrman and people like him (including my own brother) who once had a faith and then lost it, have decided to put it away (saying a person has "lost" their faith implies that it was accidentally misplaced, not that the person made a conscious and deliberate decision to not have that faith anymore) for individual and personal reasons. It's the difference (in general terms) between one married couple whose relationship survives a series of terrible problems and continues to exist and even perhaps becomes stronger, and another married couple who goes through the same problems and decides to divorce. The only difference for us is that God is always faithful in His relationships; it is we human beings who are the weak link in the relationship.
Ehrman made a decision to tell God that he wanted a "divorce". His decision doesn't have to affect anyone else and it certainly doesn't have to affect me. Does that mean my faith is blind and that I deny all objective evidence and cling to God in a superstitious manner? Not at all. It does mean that faith is more than examining the books of the Bible from a purely historical perspective, and viewing God's word from a strictly literalist, all-or-nothing, point of view.
I can't grow and strengthen my faith unless I challenge it. I can only challenge it by stepping outside my comfort area into the danger zone, and exposing myself to different perspectives on who Jesus is and what he means. Too many believers sit in church pews week after week as if they were in a warm, comfortable womb, and allow their Pastors to teach and preach only on how much Jesus loves us and how forgiveness is always available...and who completely ignore any responsibility we may have to God and to our fellow human beings as believers and disciples of the Jewish Messiah.
Hard questions and even questions that have no apparent answer don't mean that faith is lost. It means that faith is challenged. Some people's faith can survive the challenge, much as Jacob survived his struggle with the angel (Genesis 32:22-32). Faith can win the struggle against impossible odds and even if we are "injured" in the way Jacob was, we are also stronger.
500 years ago or so, someone said it this way:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
John Donne
Meditation 17
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.
2 comments:
I like the following quote regarding keeping the faith from Rabbi Yisroel Cotlar:
"The Holocaust was a tragedy of the greatest proportion. Our minds can't even begin to relate to the number 6,000,000... logically, no faith or tradition can survive such a tragedy. There is no way to rebuild after such destruction.
But the Jew is different. His faith does not depend on things making sense. His belief does not come and go, for it doesn't rely on circumstances or external factors. It is built-in. It's inherently there. A Jew believes.
A Jew realizes that there is much in the world that we do not understand -- mortal creations cannot expect to grasp the ways of their infinite Creator."
Obviously he's speaking of Jews as a whole. But I think it's still relevant to your post of trying to keep faith in-spite of evidence to the contrary. Our faith has to be built in.
Gene, both here and on Derek's recent blog post, you invoke the unity and sense of community of the Jewish people who, in order to survive virtually unthinkable horrors over thousands of years, have developed an interwoven sense of identity of themselves and of their relationship with God.
While Christians can also point to a "tradition" of persecution, it's based on being members of a "faith community" rather than a "people group". I also said a couple of days ago that a Jew is a Jew just by virtue of being born. Christianity is a choice and, when the going gets tough, a Christian can potentially set aside their faith and "escape" persecution. A Jew can't stop being a Jew...ever.
I don't think Christianity has the same safeguards against "loss of faith" as do Jews, so we're at a disadvantage. Also, western civilization and thought is pretty much based on things always making sense, so faith and going against the odds is an endangered species, especially lately, as our world spins ever closer to universal, politically correct, secular humanism and atheism. No one wants to be seen as irrational, unintelligent, and superstitious. This is why so many kids lose their faith when they enter university.
In some ways, maintaining your faith is in and of itself, an act of faith. Like God, faith cannot be put under the microscope and be examined, it cannot be interviewed, probed, dissected, or biopsied. Yet it can be tested and is just as real as God. When we allow faith to become unreal to us, from our point of view, God ceases to exist.
However, from God's point of view, we are still very real and very accountable.
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