Road to Indonesia--- Struggle with Resurrection

 Everyone needs to read this, but particularly MK's and others who struggle with doubts. It is writen by the son of one of the wonderful teachers we served with down through the years. I count this son as now one of our friends as well. It is not MY experience. I am one of the weak ones who needs more comfort in our lives, but God bless those who can walk this valley.

On How Actually Reading the Gospel Accounts for the Resurrection of Christ Almost Destroyed My Faith - And What Brought Me Through

I have a complicated relationship with Easter Sunday. On the one hand, it is the day that Christians worldwide commemorate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord. I enjoy the fellowship with other believers, people arriving at church in their Easter best, thinking deeply about the vindication of Christ that conquers death, congregationally exclaiming, "He is risen, indeed!", and then heading home for some ham, green bean casserole, and to hide the Easter eggs for my little girl to eagerly find.

But it's also a reminder for me of a day that I almost lost my faith. It would come as no surprise to many that my faith has changed significantly in the past few years, and this story is a big part of why that is. My father died just a little over three years ago, and this really rocked me. I had struggled with my faith before (mostly due to dealing with a life-changing chronic illness and the perceived absence of the God I was sincerely attempting to reach out to), but now I had to deal with feelings that God had abandoned my dad. I remember that during this time I was already having serious doubts about the Bible, about the Christian faith, about EVERYTHING.

By the time Easter rolled around, I finally decided to do what I had always been taught to do in the conservative evangelical and fundamentalist tradition I had always been a part of, which was to go to the scriptures for comfort, for certainty, for answers. I thought that this would help to resolve things, not make them worse. For the first time in my life, I sat down and read all four gospel accounts of the resurrection of Christ in succession. While I'd read each of these individually countless times, there had never before been a time when I'd read them one after another in one sitting.

It is no exaggeration to say that this was one of the most faith-shaking experiences of my entire life.

What I read were four very different accounts of the resurrection, and I found a complete inability to harmonize these accounts in a neat and tidy way (though some have tried). It wasn't only that some accounts provided details that were lacking in others, which one might expect, but that many of these details directly contradicted each other. There have even been attempts made to compile and harmonize the four accounts (plus additional details from Acts) into a single gospel, and it cannot truly be done, at least with any intellectual and textual integrity. Here I was reading about the most important event in human history, the pivotal event of the Christian faith, and the authors couldn't even get their stories straight! If there was one story in the entire narrative of scripture that the biblical authors should be able to "get right", it should be the resurrection of Christ. My confidence in the Bible as a reliable text was shattered, and my belief in the inerrancy of scripture, as defined by modern fundamentalism, was gone. (As an aside, I'm not asking anyone to attempt to resolve this for me. The familiar apologetic "answers" to this very real problem are unsatisfactory. I own Gleason Archer's Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, and frankly, I feel it creates more problems than it resolves.)

It's somewhat ironic that it was actually reading and studying the scriptures that led to a substantial shifting of my entire faith. There's a very legitimate reason why Penn Jillette once said, "I believe the fast track to atheism is reading the Bible" and why Mark Twain wrote, "The best cure for Christianity is reading the Bible." Some Christians are able to brush these things aside, and others will jump through hoops to attempt to make things "fit", but I'm not one of them. On one dark evening I spoke with my wife and told her with no small amount of sorrow, "I just don't know if I can trust and believe in any of this any more." It wasn't that I wanted to live a life of rebellion and debauchery, and it certainly wasn't that I simply desired to reject the God I had believed in and attempted to follow for most of my life (nothing could be further from the truth!). Almost everything in my life seemed to hinge on my keeping the faith I had always held, but I didn't want to live without being honest with myself and with God (if he even existed at all).

The framework of fundamentalism that I had always subscribed to had crumbled. I needed to find another way of understanding the Bible, the Christian faith, and Christ himself if there was going to be any hope of maintaining the faith I had sincerely held. I will admit that I've always cared about what other people think of me to some degree, and I was terrified that if I lost my faith, every Christian I had relationship with would look at me, sigh, and say, "Well, Aaron never truly believed the gospel at all. He never had real faith. He might have had head knowledge, but not heart knowledge" (and other clichés too numerous to mention, but well known by those of us who grew up in American evangelicalism). None of this would be true. I've believed and trusted in Jesus Christ with every fiber of my being, and I've felt compelled to share the good news of the kingdom of God with others on many occasions. But in spite of all of that, I just didn't know if any of the story of Jesus was real at all. And worse, I couldn't feel the love and presence of God in any tangible way in my life. I still can't, for that matter. I have never been able to figure out why He won't just provide answers and certainty to someone who is sincerely seeking Him more than anything else.

But what changed for me was discovering a whole world of biblical scholarship that allowed for doubts, uncertainties, and different ways of understanding the biblical texts. Almost none of it had ever been offered at any church I'd ever attended. Finding that even the early church fathers recognized that the author of the fourth gospel was not writing a chronological, historical record of events, but that he clearly had theological purposes for many of the things that he wrote, was mind-blowing to me. It may not have made things easier for me to accept in my 21st century framework for desiring certainty and for understanding what is "truth", but it at least gave me reason to trust that there is always more to discover, that none of us will ever have these things entirely figured out, and that this is okay. I could go much more in-depth into some of the biblical scholars and writings that have been influential to me, and if anyone asks what some of them are, I'd be happy to share.

The four gospel accounts for the resurrection agree that Jesus Christ was literally, physically raised from the dead. I'll probably never be happy with the fact that they disagree on many of the details, but there is no denying that on this one foundational point, they agree. Christianity is only compelling at all if we believe in the resurrection. It is also the only hope I have that my father would be raised to new life in Christ. But belief and disbelief can exist simultaneously. Do I believe in the physical resurrection of Christ? Yes, I really do. And also, I don't. I have to admit that I have a tremendous amount of difficulty imaging anyone (even the Son of God) being raised from the dead. I'm frequently encouraged by the words in Mark 9:24: "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!" Doubt is not the enemy, and I will always be honest about where I'm at and the fact that I don't "know" much of anything. I've never seen the risen Lord for myself. I find it interesting that apostles Thomas and Paul could not believe in the risen Christ until they saw him for themselves - Thomas in the flesh, and Paul in a mystical and personally revelatory experience on the road to Damascus.

Do I think that God would like it if I had complete assurance of the truth of the entire narrative of scripture? Perhaps. But that same narrative supports the idea that doubts and struggles with unbelief are acceptable elements of a real expression of faith. More than anything, I hope that these words are encouraging to those who find themselves in a similar place. I have regular conversations on the phone with my friend Chris (who has also been a faithful believer for almost his whole life), who almost always ends by telling me that I'm the only person in "the Church" that he can talk about some of these things with. Why should that be the case? It makes me very, very sad.

I'm thankful to be a part of a church (coming up on two years in a few months) where doubts can be acknowledged. Not everyone in the congregation knows the intricate details of my spiritual life, but I don't feel that I need to hide anything. Shortly after my family began attending this church, our minister asked if I would be willing to give the welcome at the beginning of the service or to lead us through prayers. I had been very honest with him about my doubts and struggles in my faith, and I told him very frankly that I was unsure of whether I should perform these visible church practices, for this reason. I will never forget his words. He told me, "Aaron, you are EXACTLY the type of person I want to lead these things, because I know you are always going to be real about where you're at." I'm honestly not sure whether I would have been able to maintain my faith to this point without being part of a community of believers where these things are cherished, and where even a doubter like me can participate fully in the life of the church. Every follower of Christ needs this.

So...here we are on another Easter Sunday. He is risen! I hope with everything inside of me that this is true.