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Speaking of Doubt
As long as we’re on the topic of faith and doubt, here’s an excellent piece by Richard Beck on The Gifts and Benefits of Doubt. Are you struggling with doubt and feeling like a spiritual loser for it? We think you’ll appreciate Beck’s insight on this.
From the article:
The assumption might be that doubters would make a church less biblical. However, in a certain key respect doubters often make the church more biblical. Many churches tend to be pretty selective in how they read the bible. These churches often “read around” the more difficult or embarrassing parts of the bible. You can see this vividly in the Lectionary itself. Doubters, by contrast, tend to be drawn to the more difficult parts of the bible and they insist that the church, as hard as this might be, pay attention to these passages. Doubters insist that the whole bible be read. Warts and all.
Related Reading

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The Suffering of God
NYC.andre via Compfight This seems like a good follow-up post from what Greg posted yesterday. Charisma posted this reflection on the problem of evil and the suffering of God. It’s a great summary of our thinking about what accounts for the kind of world we see where tragedies like Newtown occur. From the article: C.…

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Chloe was a smart, personable, and devoted Christian student from South America whom I had the pleasure of teaching in several theology classes. In one meeting, Chloe confessed that, despite the confident appearance that she projected, she actually lived with a sense of guilt and had never felt like a good Christian. In fact, Chloe…

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Why is faith so difficult? Why isn’t God more obvious? Why doesn’t God come out and provide irrefutable proof that he is God so that there is no more doubt? Greg’s father raised such questions and Greg’s responses are recorded in the book Letters from a Skeptic. _______________________ What would happen … if God individually…