This is late enough that I don’t know if you’ll end up reading it, but this strikes something of a chord in me. Early in my Christian life, I had a struggle with Christianity and intellectualism. Not in the sense that my intellect was making me doubt, but more like how do you, as a Christian who is prone to intellectualism, exercise those gifts without being prone to the pride and vanity that often go along with it. I won’t go into the thought process involved, but the conclusion I came to is that God has engineered things so that my heart as an intellectual won’t be entirely satisfied unless I’m willing to listen to those I don’t consider intellectual. I’ve since found that the insights I value most (and the heart of an intellectual (at least the style of intellectual that I am) values insights) have often started from the comment of someone I might not consider “intellectual”.

I’ve since begun to suspect that something similar applies to anyone who has gifts that their hearts get bound up in. The musician who thinks he can ignore the unmusical, the artist who looks down on those who don’t “understand” his art, and, yes, perhaps the pastor who perceives the teaching can only go one way between himself and his flock, will find an empty, unfulfilled place in his heart as he exercises his gifts. “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’; or again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you’” applies not only on a church organization level, but on a very personal level, and it appears that God has engineered us and the gifts he has given us so that we will feel, deeply, the ramifications of ignoring it.

Re; your dog- I guess I have no business imagining what gifts are from God, but I truly believe domestic animals are His gift for our loneliness. How many widows do you know who decide they like cats and dogs after all? So, I think it might be encoded into their dna to bond with us. Maybe yours is actually a wolf, or a dingo? If it’s a Chihuahua, then something strange is happening there.

Your paragraph:

You see, I’ve been trained my whole life to think like a pietistic Calvinist. There had to be a REASON for all of this. There has to be a LESSON. I get to ask WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO LEARN? So picture me spending all kinds of mental energy trying to find what was the great lesson at the core of all of this that, when I learned it, would make it all go away.

really struck home with me- I’ve been driving myself crazy trying to figure out what I should be learning from three years of infertility, and two miscarriages, and there just doesn’t seem to be much to learn from that, you know? It’s been faith-deadening to keep struggling to learn whatever it is I’m supposed to learn so I can make it stop A

Anyway, I appreciate your honesty, and sharing your personal struggles here, because they are very helpful to me. Thank you.

“2The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. 3But the man who loves God is known by God.” (1 Cor 8:2-3).

Thank you, Michael, for your honesty. In the Christian environment it’s a breath of fresh air in a world full of pieties and platitudes.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

I love it! Thanks for this post. It is so encouraging.

P.S. I also listen to Greg Boyd. Like you, I don’t agree with everything, but I appreciate his approach to the problem of evil in the world.