I Want to Believe

Mel Lawrenz

Description

In I Want to Believe, Mel Lawrenz ignites a latent desire in all of us--the desire to believe in something bigger than ourselves. Lawrenz takes an honest dive into topics that are true areas of tension--doubt, rebirth, faith and action, and the essence of Christian faith. A fresh and engaging style draws readers into an unexpected conversation in which they receive concrete, concise descriptions of Christian faith in principle and in real life, and are shown contrasts with other faith alternatives. The chapters are skillful interweavings of narrative, illustration, and biblical reflection. Throughout the book, readers are assured that doubts are part of believing and that hardships in life do not contradict faith. For believers and seekers alike, I Want to Believe will fan the flame of faith and affirm the quest for believing.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Christian theology

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 02 janvier 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781441224019
• Langue: English

Extrait

2007 Mel Lawrenz
Published by Baker Books a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.bakerbooks.com
Baker Books edition published 2014
ISBN 978-1-4412-2401-9
Previously published by Regal Books
Ebook edition originally created 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-for example, electronic, photocopy, recording-without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
Other versions used are:
NASB -Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
NLT —Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
NRSV —The Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
TNIV —Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, Today's New International Version™ TNIV®. Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society®. Used by permission of International Bible Society®. All rights reserved worldwide.
Contents
Chapter 1
I Want to Believe, and I'm Not Ashamed of It
Chapter 2
Why God Wants Us to Believe
Chapter 3
Eternity in Our Hearts
Chapter 4
Whom Should I Believe?
Chapter 5
Knowing for Certain
Chapter 6
Doubt
Chapter 7
If You Meet the Buddha on the Road
Chapter 8
The Challenge of Atheism
Chapter 9
The New Face of Earth Religions
Chapter 10
Many Religions, One River?
Chapter 11
Jesus and Muhammad
Chapter 12
Credo: I Believe This About God
Chapter 13
Credo: I Believe This About Life
Chapter 14
No More Excuses
Chapter 15
Way, Truth, Life
C HAPTER 1
I Want to Believe, and I'm Not Ashamed of It
My daughter's voice on the phone was clipped and urgent. “Dad, I need you to come outside right now!”
“Eva? Where are you?”
“In the driveway. Please come outside right now!”
Her voice was on the edge of teenage emergency frequency, so I slammed the phone down and ran outside to see her standing next to her '95 Honda Civic hatchback, a look of panic on her face. Then I saw why. Smoke was billowing out of the front and side edges of the car's engine compartment.
“What happened?” I snapped, as I popped the hood and, standing back, flipped it open. Now the smoke rose out of the engine compartment like a column, and I was sure that from a block or two away it must have had a mushroom shape to it.
“Well, it started to act and smell funny as I was driving home.”
“What about the gauges inside?”
“Yeah, they were pretty high.”
By now the stench of burnt rubber had stung my nostrils, and I was already calculating in my head the cost of a new engine.
“Well, Eva, how far back did the car start to 'act funny?”
“Oh, I'd say, up on Capitol Drive.”
Now I knew that Capitol Drive was a good three miles from where the barbecued car now sat in our driveway.
“Well, what did it sound like? Did you get any clue that something was terribly wrong? Did the car sound funny?”
“Yes, it did.”
“Well, what did it sound like?”
She thought for a moment, not like an auto mechanic, but like a poet (which she is) looking for just the right expression.
“Like a thousand metal butterflies all flying at once.” I was speechless—it was a perfect expression. I could just imagine it. How would you describe a cacophony of ticking and clacking coming from an engine compartment? But my admiration for the metaphor quickly dissipated.
“A thousand metal butterflies? Well, Eva, what is the threshold where you would have pulled off the road? Ten thousand metal butterflies? A hundred thousand metal but-terflies?” I wanted her to hear the intense irritation in my voice, but I also really wanted to know. Would the engine have to blow up, sending the hood flying in the air, for her to pull over and realize there was a genuine auto emergency in the works?
She smiled in that way that teenage girls soften the hearts of their fathers—though I tried to maintain as firm a heart as possible before launching into my lecture on how not to fry your car, and kicking myself for not giving the lecture a long time ago.
Now here is what I learned: My dear teenage daughter, who had never had anything go wrong with a car before and did not know the special emergency nature of an overheated engine, knew that something was wrong. The sound of “a thousand metal butterflies all flying at once” told her that.
But she didn't know the meaning of the sound. And she didn't know the clicking, chattering, clapping sound coming from the engine was a sign that destruction was at hand.
Most people I talk to know that there is something wrong in life. Headlines about wars and famines and muggings spell that out. On a personal level, some people know there is something wrong in their lives, because they've been to the funeral home or their doctor has sent them to a specialist or they signed the final divorce papers. And people who haven't been to any of these places are at least hearing something strange and disturbing in the air—something like a thousand metal butterflies—but they don't know what is making the noise and they don't know what it means.
That is one reason why we keep looking for God. And it is one reason why we want to believe. I know it's one of the main reasons I want to believe.
Of all the things that drive us, the strongest is the drive to believe. We might think that hunger is our strongest impulse … or sex, or greed or war. And it certainly is true that an empty stomach or a member of the opposite sex or a gambling table or a nice case of bloodlust can easily become the obsession du jour. But there is something deep inside us that keeps churning and seeking and reaching and probing and crying out. Oftentimes it is the disturbing sense that something is terribly wrong, because from some hidden place (stuck in your head, twisting your stomach, shaking your soul) comes the sound of a thousand metal butterflies. Sometimes it feels like an emptiness, sometimes like an ache. That's the drive to believe. How else can we explain the surging interest of so many people today to find spiritual answers and spiritual anchoring when everything else in the world seems so uncertain?
Sometimes it's the funeral that prompts us to want to believe. What happens when we cross that line? Will I ever see my loved ones again? Am I supposed to be doing something now that will make a difference then?
Sometimes it's the desire to be forgiven that drives us toward God. What do we do with a load of guilt that feels like a tumor lodged beneath our rib cage? Is there a God who can silence the screaming of accusers? And is God willing to? Will I ever see justice—real justice—when everything is sorted out?
We are born believers. It's just simply how we're made.
That's why full-grown adults need to look at small children in order to learn what real faith looks like. It's why Jesus said that the central qualifier for someone who wants to live under the protection and provision of the kingdom of God is that he or she have “faith like a child” (see Matt. 18:3-4; Mark 10:15; Luke 18:17).
Children know things that we adults talk ourselves out of. They know they have to believe in a parent, in the certainty of blankets, in teachers who can be trusted to tell the truth—not just because it's convenient, but because it's the only thing that makes sense. Children believe in God even without formal instruction, and they assume there is a moral fabric to the universe. “That's not fair!” can mean “Bobby stole my toy,” but it also is an affirmation of faith: “There is moral structure in the universe!” There is a reason why a child asks where his or her cat or dog is when it dies.
This is why the human race has never been able to talk itself out of believing in God—as hard as it has tried. It just doesn't make sense not to believe in God. Usually, when a person does succeed in suppressing that deepest drive or in putting blinders on so as not to see this reality brighter than the sun straight above, it is usually achieved by latching onto some kind of God substitute. If we don't believe there is a God over heaven and Earth, we'll make someone or something in our lives the next-best kind of god. And we'll probably continue to keep on looking for the Real Thing anyway.
When I turned 27, I was ready for a booster shot of faith. It was a strange set of circumstances and quite unexpected. On my twenty-seventh birthday, I realized that I had reached an age that my father never had. He died of sudden pneumonia that overwhelmed him as he sat in an easy chair at home. He had been around the sun 26 times, but just didn't get around one more time. Had just started adult life, really.
As I approached my twenty-seventh birthday, I had this strange feeling that I was about to cross a definitive line— like when an explorer marks the place that is the farthest reach of the previous explorer and then takes one more step into new territory—off the map, over the edge and no turning back. There was nothing at all pleasant about this sensation: It was frightening and lonely and I was embarrassed by it, so I hardly told anybody.
To be more exact, I felt like I was livin