A while ago I started reading Tom Wright's "The New Testament and the People of God" recently. Although I was hoping for something intellectual and encouraging I found it dry and academic. Dry and academic enough for me to hunt around in the local library to find a Nic Hornby Novel - "How to be Good" - to read in parallel with it. It was a great read a great look at what it practically means to "do good" as a middle class westerner. The idea of reading in parallel slowly slipped into reading instead of I moved onto re-reading Chuck Paulaniuk's "Invisible Monsters" instead of Tom.
There was something about "New Testament and the People of God" that I just found really uninspiring and I'm usually always up for a wrestle with an academic theological tome. It's not Tom's fault I think I've some what unconsciously as well as consciously been wrestling with what I believe a little bit more than usual of late and I feel like "New Testament and the People of God" wasn't helping in fact quite the opposite. One of the things that been at the core of my wrestling is the principle of Ockham's Razor. Ockham's Razor is often summarised as "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the right one". Lately I've been wondering even if I think my Faith is plausible what happens if I don't think it's probable. At the moment many of my beliefs don't seem as probable as I once felt they were.
What I am feeling is somewhat similar to the feelings that Mother Teresa expressed to a friend in a candid letter.
What I am feeling is somewhat similar to the feelings that Mother Teresa expressed to a friend in a candid letter.
Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear, the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak ... I want you to pray for me that I let Him have [a] free hand.
Right now I am feeling a silence and an emptiness. As much as I tend to live my faith in my head it's moments like now that I realise how much of what I believe is grounded in a heart felt sense of otherness. Despite this my anchor is still the Jesus I find in the Gospels. I still I admire him, desire to be more like him and see the world become more like what he called the kingdom of God. I have now started reading Joan Chittister's "Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope" where she says...
The first gift of struggle is the call to conversion - the call to think differently about who God is and about who I am as an individual. It calls us to think again about what life really means and how I go about being in the world. These are deeply spiritual questions that touch our notions of God as well as on our ideas of ourselves.
Sometimes I think I'd rather not struggle with my faith. But I'd rather struggle and grow than stay stagnant. So, struggling it is. In her own experience Joan Chittister says that when we are sure of the absence of God that is when we become aware of the presence of God. Although the struggling and emptiness is still there I have comforting niggling feeling that she is right.
2 comments:
Ockham's Razor is often summarised as "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the right one".
Or, "Entities are not to be multiplied without necessity."
Chris, are you familiar with the theologian Alister McGrath--particularly his debates with prominent atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins? He's responsible for some of the most waffly and unconvincing apologetics I have ever encountered. I was just wondering if Tom Wright was anything like McGrath.
Hey Arthur, No I'm not familiar with Alister McGrath, sounds like that maybe a good thing. Tom Wright tends to be more a historian type theologian. Doing things like putting Jesus in his Jewish context rather than arguing the existence of God.
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