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Ask Theophilus: Three Stumbling Blocks

IT FEELS ALL FAKE

Dear Professor Theophilus:

I became Christian when I was nine, but my parents got divorced shortly afterward, and I started having a lot of problems with my Dad. These events caused me to drift away from God. I haven't seen my Dad since I was 12, and over the years the pain from that has begun to heal. Since I've been in college, I've been trying to return to my faith — praying regularly, reading Scriptures, becoming active in church, being in community with other Christians, but I have to admit that it feels all fake. Every prayer I pray and every song I sing feels like I'm pretending to be someone else. I do believe in Christ and God's word, but I can't feel God's presence in my life.

The one person I've shared this feeling with suggested to me that I couldn't see God as a loving father, because my own father had been such a bad example. I have a feeling there is some truth to that, but I don't know how to fix it. I've spent a lot of time praying about this and thinking about the situation, without much luck. I'm basically at my rope's end and I'm worried that if I don't find some way to have a more intimate relationship with God, I won't be able to continue on this path.

Reply

I think you've hit the nail on the head. When people tell me about intellectual difficulties — lines of reasoning that make believing in God seem unreasonable — I talk theology with them. What you've told me about, though, is something different. It isn't an intellectual difficulty, but a spiritual emptiness. There is a hole in your heart where God ought to be. If you hadn't also mentioned a hole in your life where your earthly father ought to be, I would have had to ask about it. God intended our earthly fathers to give us our first warm image of His heavenly Fatherhood; trusting Dad's gentleness, love, and strength should be like a first lesson in trusting God. If Dad lets you down, something down inside you feels like God will do that too. I know, it feels like you're calling but God isn't answering. Actually He's right there in the room. He's calling you, but you're holding Him at arm's length to keep from being hurt again.

Can you talk yourself into trusting Him? No, because trust is an aspect of faith, and faith is a gift of grace. On the other hand, He is offering the gift to you already. For now, your job is just to open your hands to receive it. Little by little is OK. Try to relax those clenched, white-knuckled fingers. Their muscles have been cramped a long time, so ask Him to uncramp them. You don't have to pretend that it isn't difficult. He knows. Be patient with Him, as He is patient with you.

Of course, opening clenched hands is a metaphor, a word-picture, so by now you must be asking what you can actually do! Since the puncture wound in your heart probably comes from your own broken family, I suggest that you begin by meditating on the Holy Family. Here's what I mean. Open your Bible and find Matthew 1:18-2:23 and Luke 1:1-2:52. Bookmark them. Start with the Matthew passage. It's not long, but don't read it all at once. Starting at the beginning, each day a few verses of it — say, three to seven. Then think about these verses for just five minutes, focusing on the personalities and home life of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and their relatives. That may not seem like much, but take it easy; if you're new to this sort of thing, five minutes may seem a long time. Stay focused, and read carefully, slowly, prayerfully, as though you were handling fine silks. Don't worry about what you're learning or not learning, feeling or not feeling; let Christ take care of that. Just think quietly. Don't quit. When you finish the Matthew passage — that may take many days — begin on the Luke passage. When you finish that one write again to tell me how you're doing.

As you practice this daily routine, you may think to yourself "I don't know what's supposed to be happening." Don't worry; you don't have to. He knows what you're supposed to be doing, and He'll help you. Be still, and take that same stillness into your worship with others at your church. One more thing: Remember that trusting our Father and obeying Him go together; you can't have one without the other.

Peace be with you,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

IS THE WAY BACK BARRED?

Dear Professor Theophilus:

I read that you gave up your faith during college but later returned. I did something similar, but when I tried to return, I read Hebrews 6:4, which seems to say that returning to God after apostasy is impossible. Have I got it wrong?

Reply

Yes, thank God, you've got it wrong. Here is the passage you're thinking of:

For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they then commit apostasy, since they crucify the Son of God on their own account and hold him up to contempt.¹

Since some folk like to argue, let me begin by saying that I won't even touch the debate about whether "once saved" is "always saved." There is no need, because the passage doesn't ask about salvation. It's about two other questions. First, can a person who has been truly touched by the grace of God fall away? Answer: Yes. Second, is there a point of no return — can a person fall away so completely that his heart becomes petrified, that he is no longer capable of turning back? Answer: Yes again. Now let's ask your question. Does any of this mean that your case is hopeless? No, no, no.

Why not? Because only God knows for sure who has passed the point of no return. If someone returns, then plainly he hasn't passed it. Considering my condition in the bad old days, I must have been close, yet even I couldn't have passed it, for by His grace here I am. In short, the passage isn't a call to despair, but a warning bell. It doesn't say "Don't bother turning back, because you can't." It says "Turn back now, before it's too late."

If you want to know how Christ seeks you, read Matthew 18:12-13 (RSV):

What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray.

If you want to know how know how the Lord would greet you if you did come back to Him, read Luke 15:21-24a (RSV):

And the son said to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son." But the father said to his servants, "Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found."

My dear, the Lord addresses the same appeal to you that He addressed to me, the same one that He addresses to all prodigal sons and daughters. Come home.

Peace be with you,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

TRINITY — SO WHAT?

Dear Professor Theophilus:

I just read the Office Hours column Commencement, which ended with the short benediction "In the name of the Triune God. Amen." I grew up in the church, and I'm certainly comfortable with the idea of the Trinity, but I feel like there is more to it that I don't understand. I also have a friend who is hung up on the divinity of Jesus — both how God could die, and how Jesus could be both God and God's son. So I guess my question is, what is the significance of the Trinity, and do you have any advice for helping people for whom it's a stumbling block?

Reply

I like to start with how it might seem if we didn't know about the Trinity. Long ago, the pagan philosopher Aristotle asked whether there could be friendship between men and the gods. He concluded that there couldn't be. Here's why. For two persons to be friends, they both have to be getting some good from the relationship. They may not be getting the same good from it, but benefit of some sort has to flow in both directions. If this is true, then it follows that if you didn't need anything — if you were perfect — then you'd have no motive for friendship. But the gods are perfect. They don't need anything from us; therefore they wouldn't take an interest in us. Do you see Aristotle's tacit assumption? Need-love is the only kind of love there is, so "no needs" implies "no love."

We Christians too believe that God is perfect. If Aristotle is right, then He should be completely indifferent to us, because there is nothing He needs that we can give Him. Yet the first letter of John breaks into this despairing bit of philosophy with the lightning bolt of revelation that "God is love."² Apparently need-love isn't the only kind of love. There must be gift-love too, because God, who needs nothing, loves anyway. How could this be?

Here's a clue. John didn't just say that God loves. He said that God is love. That means that His very nature, His very being, is love, that love is what God is: Not love in the abstract, but Love Himself, in person. The Trinity completes this revelation; it is the thunder that follows the lightning bolt. We could never have guessed it ourselves; we could never have figured it out. The God who is love is not a Solitary Self-Sufficient Something, as Aristotle thought, but a blazing eternal union of One in Three. His very reality is the personal love among the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Notice too the light that this revelation sheds on the astonishing claim in Genesis that God made us in His image. I'm not a What with three Whos, as He is; I'm only a what with a who. But I reflect Him most perfectly when I imitate Him by loving other whos besides myself. That's the real significance of all the forms of created love: Friend and friend, brother and sister, parents and children, and supremely, husband and wife. Of course all these things begin as need-love, but the more fully we are "conformed" to Christ,³ the more fully they take on the quality of His gift-love.

This is merely a first step. Does it help? Yes? Then let's think about your friend. Why is he getting stuck? There may be several reasons.

Perhaps he just doesn't understand what "Trinity" means. Not being trinities ourselves, none of us understand very well, but we do understand a little. We may not have inside knowledge of how God is Triune, but that doesn't stop us from grasping that He is Triune. We can also see that being one in Being and three in Person isn't a contradiction — as being both one and three in Being would have been. Faith asks us to believe things beyond human reason, but it doesn't ask us to believe things that are unreasonable.

Or perhaps your friend wants the facts about God to be easy. It's an old story: Man doesn't even understand woman, yet he expects to understand God. True, there are a lot of odd twists in Christian doctrine, just as there are a lot of odd curves in a key. Why keep such a weirdly shaped thing at all? The answer — as G.K. Chesterton explained⁴— is that it fits the lock. It opens the door.

Or perhaps you and your friend are getting mixed up about which questions the Trinity answers. When he asks how Christ could die, what you're telling him about is the Trinity, but what he really needs to hear about is the Incarnation. To put it another way, the answer to his question isn't that God is one Being in three Persons, but that Christ is one Person with two natures — both fully God, and fully man. In His divine nature, He couldn't die, and He didn't. In His human nature, He could die, and He did.

Finally, your friend might be hung up the very same hook that caught you. Perhaps he just doesn't see why the Trinity matters, what difference it makes. But now you can tell him — a little!

Peace be with you,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

C O F F E E  S H O P

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Can you return to the faith after apostasy?

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