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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   4716 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 24, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Does anyone know of any smart, young(ish) Christian thinkers with interesting perspectives? Been listening the This Cultural Moment, about being Christian in a post-Christian world. It's excellent, but I'm having trouble finding more.

How do the few motte Christians manage their faith? It's something I really struggle with. I had a religious experience where everything clicked, but my brain is not good at this sort of faith and I inevitably end up in doubt again. I hate it.

Does anyone know of any smart, young(ish) Christian thinkers with interesting perspectives?

I like Gavin Ortlund's videos. He looks like he's maybe in his 40s, so I don't know if that counts as young to you or not.

Spencer Klavan and his podcast

I struggle with faith as well, although I’m a new convert relatively speaking.

For me what I do is try to avoid intellectualizing faith too much. I’m convinced that the modern world is way over indexed on rational, intellectual thought as the means to guide our lives. Let your heart lead you, in other words.

Of course that doesn’t mean you stop using your intellect. Reason is an excellent servant but a terrible master.

Blake Giunta on YouTube (although much of his material is dated), Trent Horn, Br. Peter Diamond, Cameron Bertuzzi, Taylor Marshall, Return to Tradition, Timothy Gordon, Jay Dyer...

I'm not big into the newer crowd of Christian defenders. I'm still a fan of classic apologists like William Lane Craig, but the above has provided quite a bit of thought provoking entertainment.

How do the few motte Christians manage their faith? It's something I really struggle with. I had a religious experience where everything clicked, but my brain is not good at this sort of faith and I inevitably end up in doubt again.

I have moments where I doubt my faith, as does anyone. But I try to bear in mind that basically every holy figure in Christian history has been plagued with doubts at times. Thomas the apostle talked with Jesus, saw him do miracles, the whole nine yards... and he still doubted! And the Lord didn't hold it against him either - indeed, he praised him for believing (albeit he also said it's even more praiseworthy to believe without needing hard proof).

The way I see it is, if God didn't hold it against men like Thomas (and Moses, and other prophets, and various saints, etc) that they had moments of doubt, he isn't going to hold it against me. He knows that I'm human, and it just comes with this whole "human" thing.

I do have other things as well, but unfortunately they're kind of specific to my personal circumstances and I doubt they would help much. But if you want to hear anyways, I can share them in the hopes it will help.

The way I manage my faith and handle creeping doubt is two-fold. Some doubts require both solutions, some only require one.

  • "I could not have come to faith without God overriding my sin nature through grace and giving me a true free will choice to be saved. It would be perverse if He then would not extend the same grace to keep me in faith. God cannot lie, is not perverse and torturous, and it cost Him too much, too dearly, to buy me in the first place, therefore He will keep me in faith, sealed by the Holy Spirit, as He promised." Taking this as axiomatic helps me primarily with doubts which sneak up and try to tell me I've accidentally logically proven to myself God can't be real. (The section of HPMOR which shows Draco the genetic origin of magic is a cognitohazard for Christians. This is my antihazard, my Helmet Of Salvation, keeping me safe from such headshots.)
  • Taking each doubt one at a time, and ignoring atheist Gish gallops because I can assume they're lists the person found somewhere instead of generating themselves through logic and research. (Yes, I notice the irony.) For example, recognizing that a specific doubt/"disproof" came from reading someone else's solution to a theological cognitive dissonance I never knew existed until I saw their solution to it. Another one: looking for what is not said and what is assumed, such as assuming God is subject to time/sequence instead of its creator.

A lot of doubts were simply and cleanly handled by J.B. Phillips in his masterwork "Your God Is Too Small" (PDF link), and it's a book I return to less often than I'd like.

I was also recommended this series of classes on Faith And Reason, taught at a church in my city, and the teacher uploaded the worksheets for each class under Resources on each video. It's 68 addictive hours of practical theology and apologetics, and then he followed it up with another 30+ hours of Influencing and Engaging The Culture. A hundred hours of the most clean and incisive binge-worthy theology I've ever heard. (The class attendees are red-tribe in their responses, but the teacher is grey-tribe.)

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