My Name is Earl - A Doubting Faith

“Bad Earl”

“After everything that happened, Karma had me pretty confused.” --Earl

Entering its third season, My Name is Earl spent much of the season following Earl’s misadventures in prison. A lot of his life prior to finding out about and following the ways of “Karma” were spent breaking the law and showing up on episodes of Cops. However, Earl was imprisoned for trying to do right by his ex-wife, Joy. This led to a string of largely mediocre episodes, but watching Joy and Darnell lead a church service (“Oh Jesus you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind, hey Jesus!”) was a series highlight. The episode “Bad Earl” follows Earl’s crisis of faith, what some call a “dark night of the soul.”

As a scientist, a writer, and a practical theologian, intellectually speaking, faith hasn’t come easy to me (the question of faith has always hiccupped my spiritual journey). Some days I find myself wondering if I’m even a Christian. You pour yourself into people, befriend them, only to have them turn on me and/or leave the faith. It can be disheartening and you wonder if maybe you’ve gotten everything somehow wrong.

Some people find the prospect of doubt in one’s faith akin to leaving the faith entirely. They stand firm on “knowing” and “certainty” and “assurance” which can be understandable because people hate the idea of not knowing. Truth shouldn’t fear critical examination, and while there may be a point where you end up questioning for its own sake, every now and then it can be a healthy thing to question and re-evaluate our worldview.

Faith can be a relatively simple math problem: History/evidence + personal experience + intuition = faith. The personal dimensions to our faith, however, can be outlined in three phases: discovery (the kingdom of God/way of life), acknowledgment (this is true), and then reckoning (wrestling with it). Sometimes it seems like we chase after God and He’s playing hard to get. Paradoxically, or at least somewhat counter-intuitively, we can still draw closer to God through times of doubt and questioning.

“I’m pretty sure this Karma thing doesn’t exist.” –Earl

The Christian story on its face can seem ridiculous: God, this completely Other—sometimes seen as an imaginary friend, sometimes as the Creator—becomes flesh and blood, born of a virgin. This story unfolds in the context of angels, miracles, and fulfilled prophecy, only for him to die as so many had before and after on a Roman cross and then rise from the dead.

The journey of knowledge begins with an assumption: atheists begin with human reason (“I know through my reason, I know because I’ve reasoned that”); people of faith with theirs (“The Bible is the word of God because it says it is”). Oversimplified, I know, but minds of inquiry and genuine intellectual curiosity can journey together.

Doubting proves thought. How you arrive at truth, the contemplation of your own existence, demonstrates our ability to think and reflect. In the Christian tradition we typically draw on four sources: Scripture (the Bible), the historic church tradition (we learn in community, with time merely being a dimension to community), reason (both intuitive and deductive), and personal experience.

“I’m sick of people expecting more from me. How come I always have to act better than everyone else?” –Earl

Earl had certain expectations of his faith, a sort of “prosperity Karma”. Faith was almost like an investment scheme: after two years of doing good, things were supposed to be better, not worse. Things didn’t seem fair and we find ourselves (intellectually/behaviorally) spiraling. We can get so hung up on the possibility of missing the mark that we miss the point of being here. We end up asking the wrong questions (“Am I saved and thus ‘in’” vs. “Am I living in the way of Jesus?”).

The whole world is blessed and God is at work in all of us, working out His kingdom plan. Ironically, it’s Randy, Earl’s dimmer-witted brother, who stumbles over the secret to getting back on track: “Maybe you should go ahead and do something on your list. That always makes you feel better.” His list was his “Scriptural” guide for missional living. Living out one’s faith, the parts you clearly understand and know to be true, doesn’t make the questions irrelevant, but it certainly puts them in perspective. I may not be able to exegete every passage in the Bible, but I can grasp the concept of “love others as yourself” or “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
“I had no idea where I was going to, but I knew where I was going from … but Karma came looking for me.” –Earl

In the silence, God is there, or, in Earl’s words, “I thought Karma was dead, but she was just laying low.” You can turn your back on Him, but He won’t turn His back on you. And sometimes we need the silence in order to learn, if only to learn to listen. Having a life of faith means accepting the difficulty of living between paradoxes; it means getting rid of the arrogance and judgmentalism because you don’t have all of the answers. Having a doubting faith isn’t an easy road to walk. It can be filled with many dark nights and the weight of unanswered questions can sometimes be unbearable. But if you let it, a doubting faith can leads you to having to recommit to the journey daily. In the end, that’s all we can ask from our faith. As T.S. Eliot said, "Doubt and uncertainty are merely a variety of belief."


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Betrayed by Faith?

A friend of mine shared a story about a critical phase in his faith journey. It occurred as he was transitioning away from a Pentecostal context to a Calvinist one. At the time, the church he was attending dropped names and quotes from the likes of Calvin, Spurgeon, and Wesley to prove their point about speaking in tongues as biblical and theologically sound. As he searched out the original source material for himself, he found the quotes that had been used, but he also discovered the parts that had been left out. It left him with a sense of feeling lied to.

One of his spiritual mentors at the time pointed out that their intent wasn’t to mislead you. They were doing what they thought was best. They were trying to help. There was no malice. My point isn’t to argue about the legitimacy of speaking in tongues. That’s a “you” issue. The “me” issue is the idea of feeling lied to during your spiritual development. Just because there was no malice, does that make it right? No. However, now what do you do with that?

Some folks simply walk away. I’m reminded of the passage in John 6 starting in verse 60, when many of the disciples deserted Jesus. “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” they grumbled. And after Jesus questioned some of them (“Does this offend you?”) many turned their back and no longer followed him. So he turned and asked the rest of his disciples “You do not want to leave me too, do you?”

Sometimes I feel like the remaining twelve disciples. “Lord, to whom shall we go?”

Jesus never claimed that his purpose was to come to have a personal relationship with us. He did, however, say that He came to build his church. The church is as flawed as the people who make it up, but, as Miroslav Volf said, “I am not a Christian because of the church, but because of the gospel. However, it was only through the broken church that I received the gospel. Because of the gospel, I participate in the church.”

Some people persevere, realizing that the spiritual journey is about questioning and investigation. There’s a difference between being lied to about your faith and the natural progression of your faith and I think it is the latter that we are essentially talking about. It wasn’t too long ago that I was at a place in my walk when I was a hardcore adherent to the “universe is only 5,000 years old” school of thought. Unlike some you who get to simply grow from this place, there tapes of me on the radio defending this position. My views back then were much more conservative (don’t make me re-live my positions on homosexuals or Catholics). However, back then I was also a teacher. I discipled people, I answered their questions, I shepherded their growth. Folks looked to me for answers and I gave them as best I knew.

I’m not in that place now and I have spent many a night wondering what happened to the folks who were under me and where they are now. How many faith journeys did I stunt back then? How many people feel betrayed by me right now? It’s why I am so hesitant to be put in the position of teaching others. Because I can only teach up to what I know, and I know just how little I know.

What should you do in the face of feeling betrayed? What do you do with your questions and doubts? How do you remedy that? We’re not called to ignorance. Each of us has been gifted with a will and intellect of our own. We need to check things out for ourselves. It’s not like teachers, pastors, or other instructors are counting on your ignorance. Discipleship, listening to sermons, reading verses--learning period--can’t stop at the listening step. You must learn to investigate for yourself. Investigation is the heart of the real spiritual journey.

I try to keep certain parameters in mind as I continue to search out answers for questions that I have: Does it match up with the historical faith? Does it match up with reason? Does it match up with our everyday life and reality? Does it match up with what I DO understand of what the Bible says? Because in the end, faith is our best guess as we search for truth in a spiritual way. Walking away doesn’t equal perseverance, however, as you grow and develop, the tenor of your faith may change.

Do I regret my time spent in that conservative setting? Absolutely not. To be mad at being there then because I’m no longer there now is like my adult me being mad at teen me (and there’s a lot about teen me to be mad about). If it wasn’t for being there, I wouldn’t be where I am now. Plus, there is the specter of arrogance in believing that where I am at now is “correct”. No, the key is to keep journeying, keep probing, to keep that dynamic edge to my faith. The only true betrayal of faith is to abandon thinking about it.


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Passing the Baton

My sons will probably be Colts fans. They will be raised Colts fans, probably a good chunk of it being to please me and spend time with me. We’ll cheer together and mourn their losses together. However, one day, they will have to figure out whether or not they like the Colts for themselves or even like football, period.

Or, my children will be sci-fi geeks. We watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Farscape together. They are taught from an early age that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is the best of the Star Trek franchises. In a few years they will be going to the sci-fi tent revivals known as conventions.

One of the hardest things for parents to do is train their children how to critically think, to think for yourselves. Without the “indoctrination” or what amounts to spiritual coercion. To allow them to think through their faith, their beliefs, and keep stretching themselves - in other words, to allow them to keep asking questions.

It’s the parents’ job to pass on family, cultural, and even spiritual values. To instill our values through our actions rather than our words, even though we ought to be explaining our values to them. Passing on the faith, raising kids with faith, is a tricky proposition. Here’s our dilemma: in order for children’s faith to become their own, they need to connect to it on their terms in their time. What we’ve seen happen entirely too often is well-intentioned coercion as we manipulate kids to make “decisions for Christ”. Our spiritual journey is not about brainwashing our children or otherwise make them go to church in order to ensure their spiritual growth. My experience is more to the contrary: few things turn folks off of church and religion like forcing them to do it. Thus explaining the college/on their own backlash against church and religion we so often see.

Ours is a household of faith and our children will be “raised as Christians”. We, as parents, believe, we pray, we share our faith and our traditions. At our parents’ dedication, where we affirm in front of our church community our intentions on how we plan on raising our children, this was said:

By dedicating Reese/Malcolm, we are publicly affirming our desire as parents to submit (our son) to God’s protection and guidance. We are saying that we want God’s perfect will to be established in the raising of (our son). As parents, we are an instrument that God has chosen to be His tool to express to God and the congregation that our desire is to raise (our son) as God would desire. All we possess belongs to the Lord, this includes our children.

Also we received a baton symbolizing our faith that contains a letter, from our respective pastors at the time, which talked about our faith. On their 18th birthdays, they get to open the batons. Whether or not they have made our faith their own by then, who knows, that is up to them. I can only do what I know I am responsible for. Our children are going to grow to be who they are; we’re not in charge of what they’re going to be like. We create the ethos, the values, and the support structure for our children, guiding them while at the same time discovering them.


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Rage Against Thor*

Yes, I know that I don’t believe in you, yet that won’t stop me from occasionally ranting about you. I can still blame you for everything that’s gone wrong in my life, for not being real to me like you are to other people. I can rage against my wanting to believe and my frustration at not being able to, and the futility (and facile nature) of faith. I have a problem with some of your followers, the institutions built up around you and some of the things done in your name. So despite my non-belief in you in the first place, I’m going to dedicate a good chunk of my thought life to you.

You have to realize some folks have to dedicate themselves to pointing out the faults of whatever it is we disagree with passionately. That’s what makes partisan politics such a special delight. Where would we be without the Rush Limbaughs, Ann Coulters, Michael Moores, and Al Frankens of the world?

Now some might say:

To love others means to characterize them; to caricaturize them (except when appropriate) is not to love our neighbor as ourselves. One of the first levels of critical thinking schools — and here I trade in being a teacher who has been asked to do far too much investigation of educational outcomes — is to learn to describe another person’s thoughts and beliefs (1) in their terms and (2) without evaluation. In other words, until a person can “characterize” properly, that person is not yet a critical thinker. If our attempts at characterizing end up in caricaturizing, we need to back off until our head cools.

I say, in grand retort, whatever.

It’s much easier to caricaturize a person, institution, or group rather than engage them. We all know that no person is much more than a collection of their faults, Thor, and someone has to keep reporting the weaknesses of the ideas people have built up about you and the litany of faults of the people who follow you. Otherwise, they might forget.

Thank Thor for people like us.


*Apologies to my friends who do worship Thor. This ain’t about you.


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Wagers

Lately I’ve been contemplating what it means to have a truly theocentric worldview. I guess my worldview starts with the premise that life is either meaningless or it’s not; that I either matter or I am insignificant, random, or an accident. Of course most of the "questions" boil down to faith. Faith that there may not be any (satisfactory) answers. Faith that there may not be answers we would understand. And faith to trust God in the not knowing while we muddle our way through things.

Faith gives meaning to existence, which isn’t to say that I/we as Christians hold the patent on true faith. There are many different kinds of faith: faith in God, faith in man, faith in (your)self, and so on. Correct me if I’m wrong (and I know you will), but I assume that nihilists would say that we flee to the idea of God as a cop out because we can’t handle imagining a life without Him. He is our existential crutch in a meaningless life.

Just like I think that each of those faiths still have the problem of evil, I’m left with some other questions if life is meaningless. If I have nothing but this life, why should I be selfless? Why should I be sacrificial? Why should I be concerned about other people? We only have a momentary chance to “go for ours” and there is little benefit (evolutionarily speaking) to living for others (tribe, species, or what have you).

A recurring comment since my discussions fleshing out what the Bible may or may not be saying on premarital sex has been why? Going with that question, why stop there? Why restrict yourself in any area of your life? Eat what you want. Drink what you want. Both are valid, necessary, and vital drives, why not do as much of either as you want? As I study what it means to be a Christian, I am struck by this pattern of a (holistic) lifestyle of restraint. Christian living seems to be one of denying oneself in all areas of your life, learning discipline.

I believe that we, as Christians, lead lives of delayed gratifications with the ultimate belief that the supreme gratification comes with eternal fellowship and communion with God. However, again, that’s a matter of faith.


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If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say hi, feel free to do so on my message board. I apologize in advance for some of my regulars.