DEVOTION: The Foundation of Doubt

Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth. (2 Tim. 2:15)

“Because the Bible says so” is the least sufficient reason a Christian can give to a non-Christian. But it's the reason behind all things Christian in the end. For right or for wrong, someone at least thought the Bible said so. And yet, for right or wrong, I often doubt.

It's a frightening topic, somewhat taboo in some circles, functioning as a badge of coolness in others. Both perspectives can be a means of recognizing the value of trusting even when we don't know. If God is good and God is God, Christians should be able to trust Him whether we have it all figured out or not. On the other hand, our means of expressing blind faith should never shut down the exploration of doubt. Speaking in human terms, doubt is the engine of faith.

How can I say that?

My husband Dave is known for coming up with pithy gems of wisdom. We were talking once about how people decide when to doubt, and he said: “Yeah, doubt has to be based on something.”

Ah, I hear an adventure calling. What could be more fundamental than doubt? Surely doubt is the great reconciler of conflicting certainties, the bottom line. After all, who am I to say the other guy’s truth isn’t true, even if it contradicts ours? That’s so not humble. I could be wrong, you know.

But if I leave it there, then there it ends. All truth is relative. I may deduce nothing, even from a plain reading of the Scriptures, nor may it inform my inferences.

What is truth? (John 18:38)

A famous personage said that one, and shrugged and turned away; and I believe I stand in his shoes before the mob if I join him in his viewpoint, asking to be commanded by popular opinion according to the mood of the moment. There’s a corresponding cliche that the only true humility toward God, or life, or others, is a stance of doubt; yet it doesn’t reference genuine doubt, only a decision not to examine. This is the doubt rejected in Scripture as unbelief.

You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. (Jer. 29:13)

Genuine doubt is based on a fundamental, underlying truth: there are functional means of examining if and when a thing is true, how often that turns out to be the case, and whether the factors involved are consistently correspondent or variable, or somewhere in between. I may not know for sure about a lot of things, but to get through daily life, I constantly infer what's mostly true, true enough, or a pragmatic substitute for certain truth when none can be found.

Lord, I believe; help my unbelief. (Mark 9:24)

If doubts are founded on inference, there is room to doubt our doubts, to question whether they’re founded on correct presuppositions. We can question what we really know about that grey frontier where reliable inference fades from grasp. If we do not doubt our doubts, we are operating on a form of faith — one that stands in opposition to the truths which undergird doubt.

It was out in that grey space, in doubting my unbelieving doubts, that I unexpectedly encountered God.


Cathi-Lyn Dyck is a freelance writer and editor living on the Canadian prairies. She has been eclectically published in the realms of homeschooling, Christian speculative fiction and gardening humor. A former atheist and feminist who came to Christ in 1995, she runs a weekday blog on Christian thinking, life and culture at ScitaScienda.com.

DEVOTION: Every Walk Has Its Steps (C.L.Dyck)

     I didn't come from a religious home. Even in small-town Canada, out on the prairies, I managed to get myself into plenty enough hurt before I became a Christian. My culture is very secular, and the values I learned pretty much excluded any serious consideration of Christianity.
     As a gritty Christian, I’ve heard it said a few times–"Well, I don’t really have much to tell. I was saved as a kid, and nothing bad ever happened to me. I’m ‘just’ a Christian."
     Do you know what a huge accomplishment that is in today’s world? If nothing bad ever happened, that’s rare indeed, and not ‘just’ anything. Take a quick look around the globe, and the phenomenon of “I have no real complaints” becomes nothing short of miraculous. To be able to say that about one’s life is truly special.
We have a notion that in order to express Christ, we must have a gritty contrast to reveal the grace. Otherwise, we have nothing to talk about.
     But the reason this makes a testimony is not because Christ operates primarily in the depths of sin and sorrow, but at the end of self. And for most of us, we have to mess up big in order to get to the end of self.
Living sinfully is not necessary to the deep experience of Christ. It would not exactly make for a holy God, if life-damaging pain were the measure of experiencing Him. He is certainly there in the worst pain, and I can assure you, He's there more than anywhere. But what it takes to meet Him is the end of self. Anyone can do that, regardless of experience.
     Anyone can open their Bible and dance with God.
     I used to wonder, why insulate oneself from worldliness, if it’s of no value against fleshly indulgence? (Col. 2:20-23) And there’s a truth there on one side of the coin. I should go out and face the world for what it is. But there’s also a truth on the other, which says, “This is pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father … to keep oneself unstained by the world.” (James 1:27) I can go out and face the world for what I am -- a child of God.
     Even if I remove the world’s intrusions and conquer the devil’s temptations, there is still the flesh -- the me that I wrestle with daily. I could be a hermit on a hilltop and still need God. Because when all the external weight is removed, I must still deal with myself.
     And that’s when I truly begin to see God for who He is–in contrast to my incomplete, internally gritty self. Knowing that, I am learning to say what Paul said:

     I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need.

     I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. ~Phil. 4:12-13

     There is a lot to conquer in order to come face to face with Christ–to end the separation due to unlikeness of nature. It doesn’t matter where a person’s at, whatever the obstacles, there will be some. So tackle ‘em and never apologize. There is no such thing as ‘just’ a Christian.
     Do you feel like you can "dance with God"? 
     Do you ever wonder what your spiritual message is? 
     Do you wrestle with what it "should" be?

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Cathi-Lyn Dyck is a freelance writer and editor living on the Canadian prairies. She has been eclectically published in the realms of homeschooling, Christian speculative fiction and gardening humor. A former atheist and feminist who came to Christ in 1995, she runs a weekday blog on Christian thinking, life and culture at ScitaScienda.com.

IN THE FADING OF TIME

It is midweek. In the room at the end of the hall, upstairs in the small-town library, the sun beams through the bent slats of the blind which rambles across the window's oversized expanse. I sit and attempt to write. It's a good thing to have assignments to complete. At the same time, I am brain-weary at the moment.

I can't concentrate; I leave the cramped corner where I prefer to hide, and set out walking for the little grocery store. The town feels worn old today, dingy around the edges. In the rail yard to my left, a rusty caboose and car sit detached and silent. To my right, up a gently sloping street, I see the water tower, its steel untainted but dull, the town's name outlined in square black letters. At its foot and off to one side, a white statue commemorates the soldiers of the two wars, standing out crisp and sharp against a background of dormant tree branches scratched from the mundane background of commonplace dwellings.

I walk along the alley. There is no building on the side toward the tracks. It burned down several years ago and was never replaced. The alley takes a quick jaunt, adjusting for the increased depth of the store buildings along the next part of Main Street, and skirts behind them, tight against the side of the rink. The store is just beyond that hulking, half-cylinder-shaped venue. I buy a snack for my young dancers, whose classes straddle suppertime. Wednesdays are a weird sort of day for us this year.

Walking back, the north wind cuts right through my felt coat. I didn't feel it so much on my back, but now it seems determined to give me and the entire town a fine smack in the face for the way we've relished the warmth creeping in at winter's end.

There is a lone tree where the back alley jogs. Its top forms a rounded crown, and just beyond its reach, a half-moon sails amid wispy puffs of cloud. The late-day sky is pale, as if the cold air dilutes its colour. I smile upward, and do not attempt to record the moment's nuances in my internal notes. No inspiration comes of it. It simply is.

The library beckons, and I stride inside, escaping into its warmth. I retreat to the room upstairs, having fed the girls and sent them back to their computer games and books. It occurs to me what's wrong – I've written myself dry. I am sitting in a library, starved for reading.

I generally hide where the old books are, the ones too fragile for the downstairs shelves, and I'm thankful they've not been got rid of. On the shelf behind my chair is a volume of the plays of Oscar Wilde, with foreword by Edgar Saltus. Though he has fallen into obscurity, and apparently recognized that bent in himself even during his association with his more famous contemporary, his wit and turn of phrase are brilliant. Delightful. Like water on parched ground.

I read the introduction, reread portions of it; I've made a new friend in Edgar. From there, I turn to Ecclesiastes. Now, Saltus wrote with unabashed heathenism, but he and the Preacher shared a certain sense of irony, and I have never quite heard Solomon's voice – the human voice of this book – in this way before. Before, I have made study of the truths of God in it, for it's the book which speaks best to a former atheist's heart. God has always known about atheists.

I meet these men across ages and oceans, men just like other men, who plumbed the depths of life, frivolity and meaning. I realize that Solomon and Saltus speak alike on a number of things in the short time I spend with them.

“Guy de Maupassant left over a thousand books each bearing that smirk, 'the compliments of the author,' and not one of which had he so much as cut the pages. In that respect Wilde resembled him. It is less fatiguing to invent stupidities than to read them.”

-Edgar Saltus

“The words of wise men are like goads, and masters of these collections are like well-driven nails; they are given by one Shepherd. But beyond this, my son, be warned: the writing of many books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body.”

-Solomon

I feel the warning of their words. Perhaps it's foolish to sit in a library for so long, to read and write so much while time spins past.

Like Alice, I'm a peruser of epitaphs. Out here on the prairie, the abandoned churches and their graveyards speak quietly to me. The dingy, aging buildings of dead and dying towns speak too. These are the monuments and the resting places of my neighbours and my ancestors.

The epitaph is long, spanning decades. It's the longer for the internet generation, who have both compressed the passage of time into the speed of light, and so neatly saved the word “scroll” from falling into permanent disuse. One hardly hopes to end up in some digital recreation of Maupassant's abandoned library, and at the same time, I'm sure it's very quiet there, with little criticism going on.

Perhaps it's the wind retracting spring's promise; perhaps it's the fading of the day. Perhaps I am weary of the invention of words. I can't seem to write a one which doesn't fall afoul of Solomon's criticism. What do we talk about, all our days? All is vanity and striving after wind – and the wind is cold, forbidding and insensate, driving earth and cloud before it to an unknown end.

Ah, but as Solomon found out, God has always known about atheists. The end is known – it need not be known by me. I am known by Him. So, T.S. Eliot's burnt out ends of smoky days may find their way to a final rest; and in the dingy fading of the world, I still may consider a leafless, lifeless tree which cannot reach the moon for all its trying, and smile.




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Cathi-Lyn Dyck is a freelance writer and editor living on the Canadian prairies. She has been eclectically published in the realms of homeschooling, Christian speculative fiction and gardening humor. She homeschools four wild (but not uncultivated) children and is married to a super-guy who goes by the unassuming alter-ego of Dave. A former atheist and feminist who came to Christ in 1995, she runs a weekday blog on Christian thinking, life and culture at ScitaScienda.com.

What is Literature?

By C.L. Dyck

Literature, like mathematics or philosophy, is simply another way of
looking at the universe. Perhaps one of the smartest statements I ever
ran across was from a home educator who said essentially that subject
areas are just different lenses through which we can examine our
world.

Likewise, different genres of writing are different lenses through
which to examine the world, the heart and the nature of God. The whole
idea of genre is based on major themes of human existence. Romance:
the heart. Crime: the sin nature. Fantasy: generally examines good and
evil within people. Sci-fi: good and evil between people, in the form
of great social questions.

Literature is a laboratory for running trials on the most cherished
ideas of our existence. For Christians, that's our faith, particularly
as it intersects with our God-given interests, circumstances and
abilities. At the same time, we may be testing out the practical
workings of our faith in various potential circumstances the world
proffers. This is a high calling, to write the theses of Christian
living. At the same time, it's an extra challenge, because in writing
the faith element, we're also automatically carrying the weight of two
genres: Christian plus romance, suspense, historical, etc.

Yet the whole world preaches one thing or another. Secular fiction is
a trial for other beliefs. Authors can't help it. People all have
cherished ideas, whether or not they formulate them into an
identifiable creed. We are all curious about the degree to which
people are essentially good or essentially bad, investigating the
blend of the two. We all operate on some idea of whether there's
anything transcendent out there or not.

It can be a difficult thing as a Christian writer to throw oneself
into a hypothetical situation, particularly if it's one that has been
done to death in pop culture, and really think about “what would I
do?” At the same time, we have the opportunity to comfort others with
the selfsame comfort with which God comforts us. International fiction
has a unique potential here, because from around the world, in many
different cultures, we're all examining that question in relation to
our faith. Here we have a proving ground for Jesus Christ's reality
above and beyond community and cultural assent. Among these pages,
from these varied windows on the world, we can see a door in heaven
standing open.

For those struggling in faith or questioning what it really is, these
authors offer many lenses through which to examine both our existence
and that of God. And, whether you're an author or simply a liver of
life, the tale is worth the telling; worth the hearing.

So. What's your story?

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C.L. Dyck is a published homeschooling writer with an interest in
speculative fiction. She blogs at http://ScitaScienda.com where she is
currently running a sci-fi serial story with international themes.