We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Tips on what NOT to say to someone struggling with their faith
Neal Fowler via Compfight
Here’s a post from a year ago from Elizabeth Esther on What NOT to say to someone struggling with their faith. Historically, the church has been a very unsafe place for people expressing doubts or struggles. Let’s be safer than this.
From the blog post:
- “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater!” This nice little cliche manages to be both offensive and dismissive all at once. It assumes the listener has abandoned important aspects of their faith and belittles the honest struggle of re-examining once dearly held beliefs.
- “When’s the last time you read your Bible?” This question is used as a litmus test; ie. if you haven’t been reading your Bible daily, well, OF COURSE, that’s why you’re having problems. This question exposes a dualistic mindset that seeks easy answers to complex problems.Not only is this question hurtful, it presumes every spiritual struggle can be simply diagnosed and resolved with a few predictable, formulaic steps.
Check out the blog post to read the other eight points.
Related Reading
Happy Birthday to Us
A♥ via Compfight It’s hard to believe, but it was on this day (June 30) one year ago that we launched the ReKnew website. Happy Birthday ReKnew!! As reflected in the ReKnew Manifesto, our goal is to stimulate Christians to rethink foundational aspects of the faith they embrace and to motivate skeptics to take a…
The God Who Embraces Our Doubt
Lawrence OP via Compfight Zack Hunt over at The American Jesus posted some of his thoughts on doubt, and it seemed fitting on this week before the Doubt, Faith & the Idol of Certainty conference to share what he had to say. We’re thinking he must have stumbled on Greg’s book or maybe God is…
Why Bart Ehrman Doesn’t Have to Ruin Your Christmas (Or Your Faith) Part 7
This is the seventh of several videos Greg put together to refute Bart Ehrman’s claims published in the article What Do We Really Know About Jesus? In this segment, Greg argues against Ehrman’s claim that the Roman census in the birth narrative was fabricated. If you missed the first six installments you can find them here, here, here, here, here and here.
The Lord of Legend and Love
However secularized a person may be, if they have any sense at all that life has a meaning, they know it must have something to do with love. Indeed, one could argue that all of our intuitions about morality and the meaning of life are at root an intuition about the supremacy of love. At…
Quotes to Chew On: Doubt
Gisela Giardino via Compfight Marcus Goodyear wrote an article back in 2011 reflecting on Mother Teresa’s experience of doubt. Many now know that although Mother Teresa worked tirelessly in the slums of Calcutta, she struggled with doubt and spiritual isolation most of her life. Marcus finds this comforting in some way, and he relates to…
Is Suffering Part of God’s Secret Plan?
In the Christian tradition since Augustine, the most common explanation for the apparent arbitrariness of life and God’s interaction with humanity has been God’s mysterious will—his “secret plan,” as Calvin says. Whether or not a child is born healthy or a wife is killed by an intruder is ultimately decided by God. If we ask…