Transcript
Thank you for coming to our class. It's a five-week class on Christian faith and age of skepticism and uncertainty. And I share this class with Dr. John Medina. John, unfortunately tonight, he is the director of the Talaris Center for the Study of the Human Brain at the University of Washington. And he has a command meeting tonight with the president of the university and the board of that Talaris. So he had to be there,
but he's going to try to get away early and be here for the question-and-answer time. So if you see John Medina roaring in at the end, it's because he is going to be here for the question-and-answer time. Otherwise, I'll just do it all myself tonight. But he is our speaker next week. And here's the way we do these classes. This is now the seventh year, if you can believe it, that John and
I have... He's a scientist, a microbiologist at the University of Washington. And as I said, now he's got this very important responsibility. You may have been reading about it, but he's got this incredible center called Talaris that now owns the... It used to be called the Battelle Center. It belongs now to the Talaris. It's related to the University of Washington, but it's a study of the human brain. And scientists have already been gathered there from all
over the country to be in that great research. And John is the head of that research project and the head of that institute. So it's just... We're so proud of him. But this man is a wonderful Christian brother in Christ and a scholar and a scientist. And so we have a little different angle that we can each offer in the classes we've been doing. So for seven years, we've been offering five-week classes. I get to
do the first lecture, and then he does the second lecture. I do the third lecture. He does the fourth lecture. And then the last lecture, we kind of do together and wrap everything up. And we do have... We try to preserve time at the end of each of these sessions for give and take with questions that maybe are on your mind. And we kind of encourage you to write the questions on any kind of piece of...
There should be a little note pad or papers, little cards in the pew racks that you can borrow, take, and you can write your question if you would like it. And we usually gather them up, and sometimes we have a whole pile by the end of the time that we really have a lot to catch up with. And so there may not be many for tonight because you'll be thinking tonight and writing. But if you do
have any... I'll give you a little break at a certain point. And then during that little break, if you want to write a question or if you have a question, you know what you want to write a question on right now, you can do it and pass it to the aisle in one of these ushers that we've got. We'll pick it up and bring it up, and then that's how we do it. But those that we
don't get through tonight or if we may not have any tonight for that matter, then we'll, of course, you'll be writing them. And in fact, you'll be emailing them. A lot of people email questions in during the week. And then John and I keep track of them all and make a big pile of them. And he kind of sorts them or I sort them a little bit. And then we try and that's some people think is
one of the best parts of our times we've had. We've covered a lot of subjects. We've covered the whole question of Christianity and science. And of course, John being a scientist himself, we've covered the subject of the Christianity and the arts. Last year, we decided to focus on the on parenting, what we called healthy parenting. And that turned out to be a terrific five-week session. At least it was inspiring for me to see these young
parents and listen to John. And we did that for five weeks last year. And we have done the subject. We did one subject on the Millennium and tried to analyze where the culture had come up to that point and what was going to happen in the future. And so we've done all kinds of things. And now we're going to focus on Christian faith in an age of skepticism and uncertainty. I'm starting it off tonight, talking and
launching it tonight. John, next week we'll talk about a scientist's faith. And the next week I'm going to talk about the Bible because that's a huge question with regard to faith and doubt has to do with the Bible. And then the next week, John again. And then finally, the last week, we'll wrap everything up together. We do take two offerings during the class. We take an offering on the first Sunday, the first Sunday, the first Wednesday.
We take two sets tonight. And then we take an offering on the last Wednesday. And the reason we take the offering is that we try to fund the childcare that we offer and the coffee and things of that sort. We try to do it so it doesn't come out of the church budget but comes so the class in effect supports that. And then anything that's left over, and there usually is, goes into a fund that
I've established called the Encouragement Fund. And a lot of you have been contributors to the Encouragement Fund. And if you give to this offering tonight, you'll be giving to the Encouragement Fund. And with that fund, we've been able to make encouragement grants to people and to causes and mission causes all over the country that we feel that we want to give an encouragement grant to. And so that's been really exciting to have that fund. So now
one other announcement, and that is that we have coffee and we have a Tape Ministry table. And we also, I believe, have a book table tonight. There is a book table tonight, and there will be every single time. We have a marvelous book table here at this church that sells books that are on very important topics. And that table will be open. And then the Tape Ministry is always open to sell tapes. And then of course,
as you know, in the library, you can take tapes out free of charge. But if you want to buy a whole set of tapes or buy them, and a lot of people like to do that, that's the Tape Ministry. And then the coffee is just for anybody. The only thing is you can't bring the coffee into the sanctuary. So we don't want you to get a big cup of coffee before you come in and walk in
with the coffee in the sanctuary. But out in the narthex afterward, stand around and visit and have some coffee. Wow. I still see people standing and they haven't found a seat yet. Look at this. There's a lot of seats here in the front and over here in the side. And just come on in. We're just one big family. Man, don't worry. Find a seat. I don't want you to stand. I had that problem on Sunday
morning, people standing in the narthex. I found out this last Sunday that a lot of people like to be in the narthex. And I tried to get them to come in at 11:30. The sanctuary wasn't even completely full, and I couldn't get them to come in from the narthex. But I found out that some people actually like to be out there. They can make a fast getaway. No, no. They like to drink coffee
during the sermon. I think that's the real truth. And then some have little babies and all. They want to be out there where they can. But I still see people that are standing back there. And there are some seats over here in this side, over on this side, on the front row. And in the balcony has a whole lot of seats still available, too. Let's open with prayer, shall we? Heavenly Father, thank you for the chance
we have to be together for these weeks. And just for the fellowship of this church and all the different people that are here tonight, from so many different walks of life and different churches, too. And Lord, we're grateful that we can be here. And maybe some people are on a journey, in the whole journey of faith and doubt. And Lord, meet us wherever we are at. And help us to make some discoveries tonight that would be
good for our lives. And most of all, may we discover your faithfulness and your love. And may we experience what that would mean for our own lives. In Christ's name we pray, Amen. All right, I have ushers. And I see those guys are right there now. You can come on back down. And we'll consider that prayer we just led in as a prayer for the offering, too. And we will take an offering tonight. And we will
take an offering on the last evening, but not any of the other evenings. So just as you feel led, don't feel under any pressure. You don't have to put anything in the offering at all if you don't want to. But if you'd like to, it'll help us with the childcare and also the encouragement fund. Just make sure I haven't forgotten anything that I need to announce. As we start. Oh, the pipe organ. It is not ordinarily
here. And that's a little ad. It's kind of an ad to have the pipe organ here. Because on Friday night is this great concert with Dr. Stephen Hamilton from the Trinity Church of New York City, which is three blocks from ground zero. And that incredibly famous church goes way back to the Revolutionary War era. It's the street, the famous church at Wall Street. And the organist is a famous organist, actually. And he was here for the
AGO convention of the American Guild of Organists. He played our organ and was so taken by this organ, he said to Joanne, oh, I would love to do a concert on that organ. And so he's coming Friday night. And the concert, and there are still tickets available, I believe. I know you can get a reserved seat. We have reserved seats for concerts. And you can do that in the kiosk or phone the church to get one
and we'll call and they'll have it for you. And then they're going to have a chance for people to, if they want to, have a retiring offering afterward for people that want to give a contribution to the Deacon's Fund of that church, Trinity Church in New York City, because they lost a number of families were lost in the World Trade Center tragedy. And so he is, evidently he's changed a lot of his repertoire of what he's
going to play because he himself has been so touched by the whole event. So it's going to be quite, I think, Joanne said it's going to be quite a stirring organ concert on Friday night. And that's why the organ is here. That's the way it will be on Friday night. See? Can you imagine me sitting at the great console? It'll be Stephen Hamilton. All right. I want to talk to you about faith. And tonight try to
sketch in and do some defining of what faith believing is. Believing can be a simple and uncomplicated journey with a peaceful gradualness about it. In fact, last Sunday, Ralph Gwin in the first two services shared his own story. And Ralph Gwin is this great man in our church and been a missionary for many years in Lebanon and a professor for many years in Christian colleges said that's the kind of journey he had. He said, I can't
remember when I wasn't a Christian. He grew up in a Christian home and he grew up actually in this church as a little boy. And he said, I can't remember when I wasn't a Christian. So that's the way it can often be for a lot of people. Believing can be a simple and uncomplicated journey with a peaceful gradualness about it. And it results in faith. And we'll talk about faith. Or it can be a turbulent and
a stormy journey. And it is that for a number of people. It can be a journey with many ups and downs where there are plunges into doubt and then streaks upward into strong faith and then often followed by Titanic gloom as Francis Thompson puts it in his Hound of Heaven poem. Up this side hopes and a down Titanic glooms. And some people have that kind of turbulent faith journey. But what is faith then? Christian faith is
our response. It is, you'll see, it's a freedom word. I'm going to say a lot about that in a few moments. It's our response to evidence. It's a response to evidence. So that I want to, it has my will involved in it, and therefore I decide to, it has my will that not only wants but decides, I want to and I decide to put my weight down upon the grace and the trustworthiness of Jesus Christ. And
that's faith. It was that way with me. Let me give you a little bit of my own pilgrimage. I was raised in a wonderful home, but we were not a particularly religious home. My mother was Episcopalian and she was really the only Christian in our family. My dad was a Christian scientist in those days, but he didn't know what he believed. He later became a really strong Christian. But so we didn't have any really strong, we
went to the little Episcopal church, but it didn't stick with me. And I went to high school. We had a little community church, but nothing really stuck. And I went to college and for two years I didn't even go to church at all. It just wasn't a part of my life. And then in a dorm where I lived, a guy invited me, Arba Hudgens, who later became one of my very best friends, was one of my
best friends then, but he invited me to a small Bible study group in Barrington Hall where I lived, at University of California. And it was an all-male hall and they had a little Bible study group. That's one of the reasons I love little Bible study groups. I went to that group. I saw young adults my own age. They were looking at the New Testament through adult eyes. I had never done that before. I didn't even
know it was in the New Testament. I had to buy a Bible for the Bible study group. Our family had a Bible, but I didn't have one at college. Why would you bring a Bible to college? And so I bought a Bible, I got into the Bible study group, and I was very impressed to see thoughtful young intellectuals that I respected looking at this text. And that summer, then I started going to that church. I later
became the senior pastor of that church, First Presbyterian Church, and was pastor for 21 years of that church. That's kind of an irony because I walked by it for two years and was never tempted to walk indoors inside that church. And then lo and behold, I started going. And then that summer at a camp, so another reason I love camps, at a camp up at Lake Tahoe, Dr. Edward John Carnell from Fuller Seminary was a theologian,
and he spoke, and he was very impressive. But the person that made the most impact was Dr. Robert Boyd Munger, the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church. He spoke. And at one point he said, and all these pieces, it's like a puzzle was coming together. That's why I guess I've loved C.S. Lewis so much, because my pilgrimage was so much like his. Puzzle pieces just came together. And Dr. Munger said, if on the basis of what
you know about Jesus Christ, you're willing to trust in his trustworthiness, then you're ready to become a believer, a Christian. And I can still remember lying on the dock at Lake Tahoe, looking down at the water and deciding to put my weight down on the trustworthiness of Jesus Christ, to trust in his love and grace, his grace and his faithfulness. And I became a Christian. And then I began to grow as a Christian, and I had
ups and downs, and I had doubts and I had all the rest. But I grew in my Christian life in that college group at Berkeley. Finally, the rest is history. I decided, hey, I want to be a minister. That's about as deep as my call went, too, by that time. In my senior year, I was having so much fun in the Bible study group, I said, you know, I'd kind of like to do this. And so
I went to seminary, a raw recruit. And I went to Princeton Seminary, and there I had a renaissance experience where the whole world of theology and everything was opened up to me, and I learned so much. And then, would you believe it, when I graduated from Princeton, a raw recruit, wet behind the ears, guess where my first job was? This church as youth pastor. And I owe so much to University of the Presbyterian Church that helped
to tutor me as a brand new, young, wet behind the ears pastor in the Presbyterian Church. And I came here, and then that's where I met my wife. We had our first little child here, then after eight years as youth pastor, then we went off to Manila, six years in Manila, two more kids there. Then to Berkeley, 21 years in Berkeley, back to where I became a Christian, and then 10 years ago to this church again.
So you see, there's my whole story of my whole life. And except I've got six grandchildren now too, so I have that to tell too. One of them was born last week, so I've got six grandkids, all under five, and so does my wife. She has six grandchildren too. But that's our story. But faith was a part of that pilgrimage. And Christian faith, it was my response to evidence, so that I wanted to, and therefore I
decided to put my weight down, and I love that image of putting your weight down, upon the grace and the trustworthiness of Jesus Christ. Christian faith is a whole experience of the whole self, mind, heart, and will. It starts with discovery. It grows with evidence, both content evidence, objective evidence about who Jesus Christ is, because Christian faith is in the person of Jesus Christ, a historical person. And then a certain resonance begins to develop that you
feel in favor of Jesus Christ. And then the journey takes me through a valley of self-discovery, that faith journey always goes through self-discovery too, in which I realize that I cannot confer meaning on myself. It is this sort of, what the theologians call the conviction of the Holy Spirit that convicts me, shows me myself. Remember the great line our Lord put in the parable of the prodigal son, he came to himself. And there is
a part of the pilgrimage in which faith comes to myself, and I realize that I, to use Bonhoeffer's phrase, I realize that I cannot confer meaning on myself and I cannot confer grace upon myself. That's what Bonhoeffer calls cheap grace, and I can't confer it on myself. I cannot confer forgiveness upon myself for the real harm that I begin to discover is my crisis and no one else's crisis. I can't blame anybody else. You know, as
long as you can blame others, then you don't have to go through that part of the valley. You can say, you know, everybody else is guilty. That's a little bit of low-grade paranoia gets you through very well for a while. But, because you can blame everybody else. But when that, when you come to yourself and you get that sense of self-discovery where you can't blame anybody else for the things that have gone wrong in
your life, what I would call my own crisis that's mine and no one else's, and then I discover that I cannot confer forgiveness on myself. I can't resolve myself. I cannot confer meaning on myself. And then the best part of the journey happens. When I discover grace, the grace of God in Jesus Christ, and I discover that that grace in Jesus Christ is, and I'll use a Karl Barth phrase now, is also for me. Not just
a general truth, but it's also for me. That's the way Karl Barth defines the confirmation of the Holy Spirit. That moment that occurs, or maybe several moments, and I think sometimes it's a journey itself has a series of moments when it finally dawns on me and I make that most important of all discoveries, the discovery of grace, that this grace, this experience that John Newton had on that slave ship when he wrote, that was amazing grace,
how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. And notice how he describes that coming to himself part, 'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears resolved." And that sense of resolution, that grace of God is for me, not just a general truth for all those terrible sinners out there that need it, but it's for me, or not just for my parents who are so wonderful they deserve it, or my grandfather
who's so great that he deserves it, but it's for me. That experience of grace, that it's also for me, when that moment or sets of moments encourage me, those sets of moments encourage me to decide to then wager, and that's Pascal's phrase, I decide to wager upon that man, the man of that grace, the man of that trustworthiness. And that whole event is what I call faith. Now there I've just given you the definition of faith.
It's a rather long definition, but there it is. I gave it to you as a journey, because faith is a journey, it's not a definition. It really can't be redefined as a definition, it's defined as a journey. It is that way, and I'm going to be able to prove that to you, I think, even just with a couple of little New Testament examples. Take the Gospel of John, for instance, the way John decides to first introduce
us to the disciples. He introduces us to the disciples in that sort of journeying way. John wants us to know something that we would not have known from Luke, Matthew, or Mark. In Mark, Matthew, and Luke, we have a scene where our Lord goes to the Lake of Galilee and comes up to these three fishermen, John and his brother James, and then Peter, and four, and then Andrew, Peter's brother, and he comes up to these fishermen
and he says, follow me, and the text says they dropped their nets and they followed him. And if you read only the synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you'd think, wow, what a powerful thing Jesus did. He just walked up stone cold to four guys and said, follow me, and they followed him. And you know, John wrote his Gospel after the other Gospels, and I think, in fact, if you read my commentary on John, you know that
I like to show that John does some correcting of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and the correcting he does here is very important. He wants you to know something. He wants you to know that's not the way it happened. They did not just sit there at Galilee as fishermen, and Jesus of Nazareth suddenly shows up from Nazareth or from having been down with John the Baptist down on the River Jordan, and then comes up there and goes
to these four men and says, follow me, and then they dropped everything and followed him. That's not the way it happened. What happened was they had earlier met him at Jordan because they were all disciples of John the Baptist. Notice, John preserves that for us because he wants us to know that it was a journey that happened. And listen to the way he puts it. Remember, in the opening of John's Gospel, we have the great prologue,
and then the next day after the prologue, you know, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word is with God, this beautiful prologue that John writes, and then we have John the Baptist introduced to us. He saw Jesus coming to him, and he said, Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. And then John bears witness to him and tells about how the baptism of our Lord. And then listen to
this. The next day, John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus walking, and he said, Behold the Lamb of God. And the two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following him and said to them, What do you want? And they said to him, Rabbi, which means teacher, where are you going or where are you staying? And he said to them, Come and see. And
they came and saw where he was staying. It was about the... And they stayed with him that day for it was about the tenth hour. And one of the two who heard John speak and followed him was, Hold your breath now, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. And then Andrew goes and gets Simon Peter, and then John and James are there. And they stay with Jesus. We don't even know how long. And then Jesus has his temptation in
the wilderness for 40 days by himself. And then he comes up to Galilee, and then he goes to these guys and says, Okay, guys, are you ready now? Follow me. So you see, John wants us to know that a pilgrimage took place. They gathered evidence. They were with him. They saw him. It didn't happen cold. And by the way, I don't think many of us will have an experience of faith that's just sudden like that. It's
a set of moments, a set of experiences. And that's the way it happened for the disciples. And it happened that way with me. And probably if you all tell the story of your life, and what a fun thing it is if you're in a small group. We do this at our session retreat. Oh, I love it. At our session retreat, which is going to be just in another week, we have every elder there, 36 elders and
all the staff. And everybody is in a small family. We call it session families. And everybody gets to share their story. Because everybody's got a story. And the story is a pilgrimage. Every one of us. And so the disciples in the New Testament, the Gospels are sharing their story. And John wants to be sure that we don't misunderstand that story. All right. This can be very peaceful, gentle experience. But there can be major or minor disruptive
roadblocks that come across the journey. And that's what John and I want to spend most of the rest of our five weeks on. We know it can be a peaceful experience to come to faith. But unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, it is also a highly energized and a highly turbulent journey, too, for many, many people. Maybe many of you in this room, maybe that's why you're here. It can be because there are major or minor disruptive roadblocks
that often come across the journey. I want to try to analyze a few of those roadblocks now. And John will do it next week as a scientist, too. First, there can be the skepticism of important and influential people around me that surround John and James and Andrew and Peter. Sometimes it may be just nothing much more than the certain climate, like political correctness, being in a fraternity or being in a sorority or being in an army
barracks or being in an office or being in a family, where, you know, it's just not the thing to be religious or we're just sort of we have a kind of a built-in skepticism, a built-in kind of doubt that's just built in. And if you live in that and that's what you live and breathe, these are important people in your life. If you have a grandfather in your life or a father or mother who
just feels the whole thing is nonsense, it's going to have a tremendous influence on you. Because your parents have such an influence in your life. Or if you have an older brother who has this this influence of a lack of faith and doubt, it's going to be a tremendous influence in your life. One of the one of the great novelists who really worked with this probably better than anybody else is the great novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky in
The Brothers Karamazov. Because in The Brothers Karamazov, young Alyosha is a Christian, but his brother Ivan, his older brother, who's gone to Paris and been liberated. And, you know, the Russian novelists are fascinated with Paris, just like they're fascinated with Napoleon. And so this is for Dostoevsky. So off goes the older brother. He goes off to Paris, gets liberated and becomes an atheist. And if you want to see fascinating dialogue, look at the dialogue between the
older brother and the younger brother as the older brother tries to take the faith away from the younger brother. He is so totally skeptical. He has so many doubts and he has no use at all for Jesus Christ. And so he makes fun of Jesus Christ. And if you know the novel The Brothers Karamazov, the most famous place where the older brother makes fun of Jesus Christ is when he decides to take his younger brother to
lunch, the famous lunchroom scene. And this is the greatest novel ever written. Well, except for Crime and Punishment. That's the greatest. This is the second greatest. And he takes his younger brother to the lunchroom scene, the most famous scene of any novel. And the older brother says, I'm going to show you how ridiculous Jesus Christ is. And then he tells a parable. And it's the parable of the Grand Inquisitor. And when he's finished with that parable,
the young brother says, you have sought to defame Christ, but you have honored him. And so sometimes, sometimes the skeptics in your family, it backfires. And sometimes it turns out to be not so bad to have that kind of background in your life. But at any rate, it can be a roadblock. And it certainly was meant to be a roadblock for young Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov. Then there can be my own disappointments. It had nothing
to do with the family at all, but just the ones I can come up with myself. There are disappointments during the journey, the journey of faith, that wonderful, peaceful journey I just told you about a few moments ago, where you gather evidence and you get resonance and all the rest happens. Well, here, throw these in. Well, first disappointment in God or what seems to be God's acts or his failure to act when I thought he should
act. I mean, that can be a tremendous roadblock to faith. Many people have probably gone through the horror of September 11, wondering where is God? How could he allow this to happen? Or they look at a thing like the Holocaust and say, how could a thing like that happen? Where's God? And they are, you have a person who is profoundly disappointed, and I do not want in any way to make light of that disappointment, profoundly disappointed in
God or the God that I'm supposed to be discovering now in the New Testament, the Old Testament. And I'm discovering God and I see these texts about faithfulness and grace. I see these texts about Jesus Christ, and I am disappointed in what God is doing or is failing to do. And that failure to act in a way that I thought he should act gives me what I call one of the worst kinds of doubt there is,
that is a roadblock to faith and that's moral doubt, a moral failure on God's part. By the way, John the Baptist was this kind of man. John the Baptist was such a heroic man, and he was so brave and he withstood Herod Antipas. And then when he dared as a lowly prophet to challenge Herod for the way Herod was rated, and Herod was a horrible man, Herod then imprisons him. And then of all things, in a
little saloon dance, a girl Salome dances, wins the pleasure of Herod, and Herod says, I'll give you anything you want. And her mother, who is the one that's chafing under what John the Baptist is saying, says, ask for the head of John the Baptist on a silver tray. And then Herod does it. He has that kind of power. So that's John the Baptist. But before that happened to John the Baptist, before he was, and imagine what
a way to die because some girl did a dance and the king was tricked into doing that. But before he did, John the Baptist was so disappointed in Jesus. He pointed out Jesus. He said, there's the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And then Jesus goes up to Galilee and continues his ministry and he doesn't see what he's doing. He doesn't see him tackling the Roman Empire or anything at all. And
finally, John the Baptist in Luke 7, one of the most poignant scenes in the New Testament, sends his disciples, he's in prison now, and he sends his disciples to Jesus with this question, are you the Messiah or shall we look for somebody else? What do you call, how do you call that? I call that doubt. That's profound doubt. Though it's funny, Helmut Thielicke, the great theologian, says, oh no, that's faith. Because he didn't say, why doesn't
he do something? He says, why don't you do something? And the minute you say you, that's faith, even though you have a profound question. And John says, are you the Messiah or shall I look for somebody else? And Helmut Thielicke says, that's faith. But it's faith that's salty and sad. But he doesn't say, why doesn't he do something? Why don't you do something? Well, but still, it's a roadblock to John the Baptist's faith. And I think
it's so tender that our Lord in sending his answer to John the Baptist says, did you go out to see a reed blowing in the wind? You didn't see a reed. You saw the greatest of all prophets, John the Baptist. And then he says, now tell John this. And he gives him a text from Isaiah to tell him. Well, that's disappointment. There's another kind of disappointment, and that's a disappointment in people who claim friendship with God.
And now it's a disappointment in what they say or what they do or what they don't do. This could be called institutional doubt, the doubt of or interpersonal doubt. The doubt that's horizontal. But it's in people who are supposed to be believers. And now they're keeping me from having faith. They're roadblocking my journey of faith. I'm gathering evidence, and now I have these profound disappointments in the people around me. I once had a man tell me
this right here in Seattle, that his father was supposed to be this outstanding Christian, but he was a very bad man. He was actually a philanderer and everything. And he also beat his children, if you can believe it. And he was a terrible man, yet he was supposed to be this great Christian leader. And he always had devotions at family, and the kids all sit around while he did devotions. And this man told me, he said,
isn't it funny? Though he didn't think it was funny. But he said, isn't it something? As much as I respect Billy Graham, every time Billy Graham holds his Bible up, I begin to shake, because my father used to hold his Bible up. And my father beat us, and I hated my father. And when Billy Graham holds the Bible up, I get the... he said, I actually get a chill in my back. Isn't that sad? He could
hardly hear this great man Billy Graham, who does not beat his children. But because Billy held the Bible up, that means if I were to hold the Bible up for that man, he would get a chill in his back, because his father used to do that, before he would beat the kids. Now that is a tragedy, isn't it? It's a tragedy for his faith journey. Because in the faith journey, a series of roadblocks have been put
by the very people that call themselves friends of God. And that's another roadblock. Wow. Third, there's the disappointments in myself, so that I feel unworthy or unable to trust in God, because I feel that I'm inadequate. And you might say there's always the temptation to pride, so that I feel I don't need it. But the worst temptation is the temptation to despair, that I'm not worthy of it all. And I really believe that was Peter's doubt
after the resurrection of Christ. He had no questions about the resurrection of Christ, and yet Peter is in a deep depression and a doubt, because he distrusts himself, and our Lord has to come and meet him in that doubt. But that can be a terrible roadblock. And I think as a pastor, and I've been a pastor now for a long time, I can say this as an expert, I've talked to a lot of people about their
faith journey, and I honestly think there are more people that are suffering from one variation on interior doubt than almost any of the other kinds. When it boils down to it, they just don't feel they've got it. I'm not the religious type. I just can't do it. And that's because they don't feel somehow they're able to do it, and that's interior doubt. And then there is intellectual doubt, for sure, and that is a disappointment in the
intellectual evidence. There's just not enough evidence yet that really convinced me. And so I can't find enough evidence, and so therefore I have genuine intellectual doubt. That's Thomas, for sure, in that he wasn't there when our Lord appeared after his resurrection, and so he says to the disciples, unless I can put my hand in the nail scar of his side and my hand in the nail scar in his hands, I can't believe. He's not doubting the
disciples. He's not doubting the Lord. He's doubting the disciples, the evidence that they've given him. And he says, it's not quite enough evidence for me. Thomas doesn't want to take a chance that they've hallucinated or something like that. He wants to be sure of the truth of it all. And that's another kind of doubt, and it can be a roadblock that holds a lot of earnest and honest people away from faith for a long time. Well,
then there's also just low-grade, what I would call, untitled, unclassified uncertainty about things in general. And there's a lot of people that have that kind of malaise, a kind of an untitled, unclassified, low-grade, generalized uncertainty. You see it in people who are bored. You see it in people who are apathetic. Apathetic people can't really make a decision at all about anything, let alone Christian faith. And you see it in people who are
profoundly fatigued. Fatigue will do that to you. If you're too tired, you find that you just don't have the energy it takes to gather the evidence. Don't have the energy to gather the evidence about even interpersonal things, let alone anything to do with God. So then, and then there's the, here's one last category, and after I get finished with these, you're going to say, how in the world can we navigate all those? And how can Christian
faith even happen? Here you started out so peaceful and joyous, and now we're in a valley with so many roadblocks, you just wonder how you're going to possibly get through it. Well, we've got four sessions ahead to get through all these. There is a large and complicated category of the clash of will between what I want and what I'm afraid God will ask of me. And I'll tell you, that just holds a lot of people back,
and it creates a lot of roadblocks. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was probably as good as anybody on grappling with that in The Cost of Discipleship. There is just the clash of will, that if I were to trust God, if I were to really put my weight down upon the faithfulness and love of Christ, I'm sure he has something up his sleeve for me to do. It's what C.S. Lewis calls the God grudge. I'm just sure he's going
to spoil every party that I want to get into and everything I want to do. I actually had, I had a guy come to me one day, it's true, and he said, he was so close to becoming a Christian, and he was just, everything was just, he was resonating about everything. But then he just finally, the truth finally came out, and he said, I just can't do it, I'm afraid he'll send me to Africa. And I
don't like snakes, and I just can't stand the thought, of course I told him there are parts of Africa where there are not snakes, but that didn't comfort him. I mean, he can go to Kilimanjaro and you get up above 8,000 feet, you have nothing to worry about snakes. But he said, I just, I'm just sure if I were to trust in Christ, he'd want me to give all my money to the poor, and he
would want me to go to Africa. And he actually brought up Africa. And you know, I comforted him completely with one simple sentence. I said, no, I can promise you that won't happen, because God is very economical. And he's not about to have a missionary represent him in Kenya who doesn't want to be in Kenya. Because the people in Kenya would sense that immediately, and you would be not only of no value, you'd be a hindrance,
and God is not about to send you out as a hindrance. It was a great relief. I said to him, in fact, I promised him the only people who will go to Africa as a missionary are those who want to go. They're the only ones, because it's the only ones God will let go, the only ones he wants out there. And the people who go to the jungles of Latin America where there are really snakes, they're
going to be there because they want to be there. And I'll tell you, when you start meeting some people, you just go to Kenya and meet some of the people that are in Kenya, and you go to some of the people and see some of the people that are in these places, in amazing places, working with the poor in the United States, working here, working there, in ministry, in this, in that, as a Christian, and you
realize how true that is. But still, that was holding this person back. In some cases, this clash of will, where I'm just afraid that if I were to give in and were to believe God would certainly hurt what I have in mind for my life, it causes me to create doubts as really kind of fronts, because then I can kind of justify my unwillingness to act. And I do sometimes suspect that, that some intellectual doubts, some
moral doubts, some of these doubts I just indicated have really been conjured up to protect my will. Okay, the question then is, in these five weeks, how can faith happen with integrity and with wholeness in such a time and such a place, and how can it happen through such odds, as we have just sketched in? How can it get through such barriers? And these are real barriers, and I don't take them lightly at all. And I
know we've been through this tragic experience in our culture, and I mentioned it in our sermons, and we all have, and you may have questions you want to write to John and I, and I wouldn't be, I'm not going to be a bit surprised if a lot of the questions are going to be flavored and profoundly influenced by what we experienced on September 11th. And all these days since, we felt, has jolted, it's a funny thing
about what's happened on September 11th, it's jolted a lot of people, and maybe has caused many people to have profound doubts. But you know what else has done, and I've seen it since these, you should see the emails I've gotten, you should have seen what people have said to me after church and during the, I've been just swamp talking to people, and so have all the other pastors in our staff. Here's a strange thing, many people
have had profound doubts, and the agony of profound doubts and fears, there's the whole area of doubt that comes from fear, that's part of interior doubt. And yet what we're seeing are those, also this great group of people that are reaching out for substantive people, reaching out for people who have substance, and who believe something. I know of one story of a young man that flew all the way across the United States, it was a young
man that he had met here, he didn't even know them that well, but he found out this man was a Christian, and then he went back and lived in back east, I heard this story from a friend of mine, he was in the east, and he was supposed to be on that American Airlines flight that crashed into the World Trade Center, and for some strange reason he didn't get on that plane. And afterward his whole life
was just shaken by that experience, and he flew all the way to Seattle to see this young man who was a friend of my friend, who was a Christian young man, and came into his office and sat there in the office and said to him, I don't even know why I'm here, but I just have these profound questions, and I just know that you believe something. And this young man led that other brother to Christ, he
already knew him, but this man was reaching for substance, and I see in America today so many people reaching for substance, reaching for something that has substance and stability, and that's giving us in the Christian fellowship a tremendous moment of opportunity at this very critical time, and it's giving us, so with these roadblocks, and the roadblocks we don't take lightly, but they're there, if now we can understand faith in the light of them, we're going to
have a substantive faith. Alright, now it's about time that I do a little more of defining a faith. Let me give you a Karl Barth definition of faith. As you know, he's a hero of mine, and in his Dogmatics in Outline, which is his commentary in the Apostles Creed, he defines...