Christian Testimonies - Revisited (2nd try)

Note: This is my 2nd attempt at posting this testimony, after having the first one lost during Blogger's technical difficulties.

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As promised in my last post, I'm sharing a copy of an email I received from a reader and fellow sojourner that embraces evolution while still retaining faith. I'd also like to point you towards my Christian Testimonies post in which I request faith accounts of believers. This post seems to be the most popular on my blog, and if you are a believer, feel free to contribute. In light of my current agnosticism and periods of unbelief, I know it might seem odd for me to post a testimony. However, I recognize we are all on a journey, myself included, and even if faith eludes me right now, perhaps I can be the instrument by which someone else finds faith.

I read your blog off and on when I find the time. It is very thoughtful (and therefore you must be also). When I first read "my story thus far" I practically cried, only because your heartache so closely mirrored mine. You are on a difficult road, but you should know you aren't alone. Well, in brief, I want to let you know that I'm a heretic. I'm an evolutionary believing biologist for over 20 years. I went to a conservative Christian university with excellent biologists who were also Christians and also evolutionists. Through the years I've had Fundamentalists (which I once would have called myself) call me a heretic and infidel down through the years, and some more polite ones say that they would pray for me (and by all means I welcome prayer, but that won't serve to unwravel evolution). Anyway, these are the areas where I'm a heretic (or not, as the case may be). I believe that it is highly likely that most of Genesis is not historical (I'll leave out my thoughts on whether or not it is theologically relevant, except to say that I think it is relevant if there is in fact a God). I won't even go into what I think is historically "true" and what isn't true in the Old Testament because I'm not enough of an expert to be relevant. I believe the virgin birth may be possible (if there is a God), but I don't believe it is central to the person who Jesus was, nor am I sure that the earliest Christians believed it. Therefore, though I acknowledge it could have happened I don't honestly see a lot of support for it in the New Testament. I think the church's approach to the issue of homosexuality is in error. I believe calls to accepting the Biblical literature as "all true" is more heretical in some ways than the manner of my approach. I think the conventional Protestant understanding of hell is wrong, and I don't think a clear picture of what hell is (or heaven, for that matter) can be achieved without picking and choosing the emphasis of some Scriptures over others. I don't think we should worry about it, either (I do worry about heaven in that I just hope there is one). In the Gospels Jesus talked more about hell in the context of the religious elite and those that were already following him than those who did not know Him. I believe that if there is a God, he can handle my "heresies." I trust that He is much bigger than what an ancient tribe of people could discern, and certainly much bigger than what conservative Christians today can discern.

The Resurrection is impossible. A man could not possibly rise from the dead. Needing Jesus as a personal sacrifice to atone for our sins sounds sort of silly. Afterall, why would an all powerful God need to do this (I know I'm making light of a lot of theology which deserves more thought than my casual dismissal here, but I digress)? I make sense of Jesus as a sacrifice for my sin only in the light of His cultural context in a society that was in part already defined by sacrifices. Sometimes I see it as a way for God to tell us "Here is my son, already, now stop killing all these animals." I find this to be an ancient world that I can not even begin to relate to. And yet...I cling to the Resurrection as the last hope. I know it couldn't happen, but isn't that what constitutes a miracle? Indeed, if there is one way for God to show us what life is about in a manner that is beyond our own evolution, Jesus is it. The Israelites wanted a Messiah, they got somebody who was counter evolutionary. If I didn't have hindsight and tried to predict what the Messiah would be like (conformed to my own evolutionary defined outlook on life), I would not predict Jesus. He is the opposite of myself, and most of humanity, unfortunately. I'm afraid we haven't "evolved" much, either. Look at the leading choices for President by conservative Christians. What a joke! I see little of these people that overlaps with the Person of the Gospels. It's as if God, if He exists, took the moment to proclaim what He was really like, not all the silly rubbish we think He should look like. Apparently He was so counter evolutionary that we still have a hard time following the basics of what the Gospels proclaim that He proclaimed. Of course, he turns out to be the opposite of most of us and of what most of us would have expected. Humility, love, sacrifice, peace, forgiveness etc.. If there is a God, this is the only sort that I could believe in because it is so clearly the opposite of my own nature (sadly) that it is easier for me to grasp that this revelation of God might be authentic. He then validated all of this by death and then life, apparently. I can't prove it, and the whole thing seems ridiculous, but I still believe it because it makes sense to me in a weird paradoxical way. The very heart of the Gospel has always been an intellectual scandal. Sure, the NT authors may have gotten it all wrong, and Paul might have just been a bit loopy (though I don't think either is the best explanation), but my impression is that they also understood the scandal (even considering that their culture believed in the possibility of resurrection). Regardless, people subject to the same idiocy that I am (e.g. the stupid and regrettable things that I do day to day) recorded something completely outside of their evolutionary inclinations. I cling to hope that they are right, not knowing with any certainty that they are. I have had authentic religious experiences in the past where I was certain God was showing His love to me. I've heard countless others from other people, and yet I've doubted them all...which in someway seems more intellectually dishonest than not. Are they all rubbish, is the collective religious experience of humanity useless, or is God that whisper blowing on the back of our necks amidst the windstorm? In the end, I don't know, but I cling to hope. It's all I've got. Others clung to it before me. I'll hold on too, not with the confident (sometimes arrogant) faith of those whom you know all too well yourself, but with a fragile string of faith that nervously scrapes the precipice while I dangle from the cliff. Funny, only in my doubt and questions have I found what authentic faith really is...I think. I'll fight the good fight because what comes out of it it best defines the way in which I relate to all those things around me that I love and struggle for. Family, friends, justice, love, life, redemption and hope. Everything that matters the most and makes sense to me makes more sense in the light of the Gospel then in the dark without it. So with hope upon hope, maybe God really did give us a glimpse into our future when we first peered into the empty tomb.

I'm not saying you should have faith based on anything I said. For all I know what I've said may give you more doubt. What I'm saying is go ahead and doubt, but keep hope alive which keeps faith alive, you never know when you might encounter some revelation that will suddenly make sense of it all for you (and you'll also know from experience that you still haven't made sense of it all). Be a heretic, it's O.K., God, if He exists, is bigger than the labels we put on ourselves. I'm not saying chuck all of Scripture out the window, I'm saying it is O.K. to struggle with it and with the common dogma applied to it. It's even O.K. to not believe it, but it serves better as a source of strength than a source of doubt (and yes, parts of it I turn to for strength while other parts fuel my doubts).

Take care and God bless,
Name removed for privacy

Reprinted with permission of author