Every once in a while, EZ will ask a question that just cannot be answered. I feel the same way when trying to “explain” my faith. I cannot. Anything I offer as explanation seems to reduce, or dilute it. I can offer a history of those who have also found this faith, I can point to explanations that others have written, but I can not offer any more than my experience, which words still seem to dim.
All the objections to Christianity — what are they, after all, to the person who in truth is conscious of being a sinner and who has experienced belief in the forgiveness of sins and in this faith is saved form his sin? One conceivable objection might be: Yes, but is it not still possible for you to be saved in some other way? But how can one reply to this? One cannot. It is just like a person in love. If someone were to say: Yes, but you could perhaps have fallen in love with another — then he must answer: To this I cannot reply, for I know only one thing, that this is my beloved. As soon as the person who is in love tries to reply to this objection, he is by that very fact not a believer.
I have felt this way on several occasions. I generally feel like I am trying to paint a sunset with nothing but green paint and thumbtacks. How does one explain it without destroying it in the explanation?
I have no ability for apologetics.
Well said. My journey led me to investigate world religions. I befriended a Wiccan High Priestess. I studied the Chi flow and energy theologies ot Taoism. I read the Qu’ran (translation of course). I studied the teachings of Buddhism. I read the Book of Mormon (whoa, Nelly!). I held long discussions with spiritual travelers seasoned the Hare Krishna faith, the Celtic pantheons, and Greek Orthodoxy. I am a Christian because I love our God. I want to serve the God who sent a son to die for me. I want to be saved by grace, not works. I believe the cross and the resurrection are true, and given the alternatives, I pick Yahweh over them all.
Last month I read/listened to Alan Jacob’s recent biography on C.S. Lewis, The Narnian and there was one particularly interesting chapter on Lewis’ endeavors in apologetics. He quotes Lewis saying that the greater his reputation as an apologeticist (?!), and the more extensive his defense of the faith, the more he felt his soul in danger and the more worthless he felt the whole endeavor. Lewis used his novel Till We Have Faces as a sort of commentary on the worth of reason, and seems to find it wanting in the deepest place.
When I try to talk about my faith, I really just end up talking about Love, and how disruptive and radical it really is. And about Hope, and how so few even know how much there is to be hoped for.