At core, are you more (a) open-hearted or (b) skeptical?

Perhaps, God help us, one more take on our "men and women and faith" conversation.

Here's something I've noticed in my marriage.  Grace is often very eager to go hear an interesting speaker on faith or to go to some kind of spiritual meeting--prayer, healing and so on.  I'm, mostly, eager to let her go while I put the kids down.  So what do you know?  I've become one of those men who stay at home while their wives go to church!  How do you like them apples?

Here's something else I've noticed (that the astute among you will note ties into a certain framework for understanding faith we often employ here, but that I--as a spiritual discipline--won't refer to for the remainder of this post).  I've run across churches and people (and have been included in their number) whom I'd label, say, "faith-filled and (over?)confident."  They've figured out how faith REALLY works unlike the rest of the lunkheads out there.  Often these are very spiritual churches.  (Many churches in my own movement might fit this paradigm.)  But sometimes they're very Bible-focused churches.  (Many growing churches in the South might fit this paradigm.  Certain booming seeker churches might as well.) 

But then you'd find a whole swath of people--maybe churches as a whole as well, but certainly individuals--who trend more towards being, say, "skeptical and reactive."  They flinch when they hear the faith-filled confidence of the folks in the preceding paragraph and they, in their thoughts at least, denigrate the oversimplification they feel from the faith-filled and confident crowd.

I wonder if each of us gravitates more easily towards one of these postures or the other.  And, as a massive overgeneralization, I wonder if--as we age--women (in the aggregate, certainly not individual by individual) trend towards the former and men towards the latter. (If it puts you at ease,  I'm about to argue that both, first, need the other and that both, in the end, need to transcend either of these categories.)

But I will say that, as a church worker, I meet more women in the first category and more men in the second.  So awhile back I had a lengthy conversation with a middle-aged woman whose Christian husband was treating her abominably.  He'd treat her all right, but then say vicious things to her and then try to move on from them without comment.  Her diagnosis?  He needed deliverance.  So she had tracked down teachers along this line who agreed with her and she was trying to learn from them what to do.  My response?  Or...maybe her husband had been mad about some things in their relationship, hadn't dealt with them, and his unprocessed resentment was slipping out.  He didn't want to be delivered (he wouldn't let these folks pray for him), so he probably needs some consequences to his behavior to let him understand the stakes of his choices.  Her response: no, it's demons.

(Another note.  I'm not saying she's wrong.  Demons may be involved.  Hang with me.)

And I talk with the occasional man whose wife goes to church while he reads the Sunday paper.  It's not that the man is angry that his wife wants to go to church.  If it helps her, great.  It's just not something he feels a need for.  He more lives in the world of "real-world solutions" to problems.

I'm wondering if lasting faith needs both open-heartedness and skepticism... and then something more.  But that, if we want to get this "something more," we also have to embrace that we tend towards one of the first two.

So Grace grew up with faith and it's served her well.  She's also, God bless her, open-hearted at a deep level.  She''ll comment on people she meets whom she could be friends with.  She gets in touch with her emotions immediately right at the start of the average worship set.  I, by contrast, grew up in secularism and am far more guarded.

The cost of open-hearted faith?  It can indeed be simplistic and its confidence is, to my mind, always misplaced.  It's not possible to "crack the code" of faith.  God is bigger than our one-stop solution.  One of the most faith-filled churches I've run across (of the spiritual variety) struck me both as delightful and as naive and vaguely scary when I crossed their path.  When someone in their leadership came down with a horrible disease, they were confident they'd "kick the devil's butt."  When he died, the church, to my mind, never recovered.

The cost of skepticism seems to be at least two-fold.  (1) It's a dead end.  (The Sunday paper only has so much to offer one's life.)  (2) It's flat wrong.  Many of those oversimplified things the skeptic rejects are, in fact, right.  The key phrase, though, that rankles both sides, is: "insofar as they go."

In my experience, just about every overconfident faith system is, in fact, right insofar as it goes.  To name names that we've bandied about recently, John Eldredge with his take on men and women.  His overconfident take on the question "every" man asks: Do I have what it takes?  His overconfident take on the question "every" woman asks: Am I desirable?  I can't tell you the number of people, myself included, who have told me they deeply resonate with him on these observations.  The most helpful response to Eldredge, to my mind, is along the lines of, "Wow!  I've got to learn from this guy!  And then I've got to file whatever I learn as a tool to use in the very complex thing that is the life of faith."  The unhelpful response?  To become an Eldredge junkie, which requires becoming "open-hearted/ overconfident."  There's more to life and more to faith than getting in touch with one's maleness or femaleness.  There may not be less to faith than that, but there is more.

Deliverance?  Crucial to learn about and to have as a tool at one's employ.  Inner healing?  Absolutely!  Catholic spiritual direction?  Key!  Church growth theory?  If you're a pastor, you'd be a fool not to take that stuff seriously.  Intercession?  I want more and better intercession from me and around me!  Social justice?  If we don't make a difference in the world around us, what good are we?!

ALL of these often-totalizing systems are absolutely right.  But what is it that gets us past being open-hearted/ overconfident and skeptical/ reactive?  I think the next step is to become...it sounds dull...faith-filled/ BALANCED.  Full of faith.  Eager to learn everything anyone has to teach that people find helpful.  And yet not even hoping to find a silver bullet, to find the "key" of faith. 

So I trend towards skeptical/ reactive.  Poor Grace who's not here to represent herself I'm saying trends towards open-hearted (though in her case BY NO MEANS overconfident...).  How about you?  What does that tell you about a path of growth for your life of faith?

Comments

[Cheryl Warren]

I'm an open-hearted skeptic that often struggles with the tension you've described, not unlike the angel/devil on the shoulder cartoons. I was raised in the South, in a "spirit-filled" church by "grounded" skeptic parents who were deeply involved in serving this group of "over-confident open-hearters"...talk about spiritual identity crisis.

I so appreciate this take on faith AND (not versus) skepticism...it's like internal iron-sharpening-iron and that action forces me to seek God for the balance. In my limited experience...seeking God turns out to be the best thing anyway :-)

Cheers ~ C from the South

[Jon]

First, let me start off saying this is a great post. I definitely enjoyed reading it. I come from the more skeptical side of this topic. I tend to not believe much of anything you hear about famous preachers, profits, healers, etc. as a matter of instinct. I'm willing to give them a fair hearing but I find myself just generally thinking "There's probably a scam here." or "This is probably a lot of very nice but excited people."

This spills over into just about everything though. I tend to be skeptical of the latest scientific studies I sometimes hear about. I don't believe the common wisdom about basically anything you can name. I realize that maybe this isn't the best thing for things of faith but in every other area of my life it's paid off very well. So I take issue with your claim that skepticism is a dead-end. It's not a question of being skeptical or not for me but rather what we're skeptical of and why are we skeptical of it. I don't have much sympathy for the arguments of the "new" atheists (that strike as rather old fashioned) who are skeptical of the claims of the Bible but believe scientific consensus without question.

That being said I do believe in some things like what the Bible says about God and Jesus for example. I just don't believe things without what I'd consider sufficient cause and in the case of God I've had a lot of evidence that what the Bible says is true so I'm happy to believe that.

Having attended a few Vineyard churches the one common thing I've enjoyed is the theme of balance-that everything has its place in life. I just assume as a matter of course that I probably don't have things figured out yet so the idea of jumping on just one aspect of faith seems strange to me.

[PB]

I'm with Jon - great post. Got my wheels turning in a good way, and I'm stewing on your questions at the end.

I do have one question... I noticed that every single year since the Boston Vineyard has been recording sermons there's at least one sermon (or series) per year titled something like, "The Secret to God/Life/Relationship" etc.

So I guess my question is, Dave, do you really believe the stuff about the silver bullet?

[Peter Eavis]

Interesting how this same dichotomy -- and need for balance -- plays out in that other American passion: playing the stockmarket.

The believers roll their eyes at the skeptics for being Negative Nellies who miss the bull markets that rise on the back of American economic dynamism, while the skeptics sneer at the believers for buying into a deceptive corporate sector and broken financial infrastructure shored up by the taxpayer.

It seems that this way of approaching things even creeps into how we see our personal relationships.

As C says, we are left seeking God for the balance (esp when it comes to stock picks).

[christy sessions]

Picking up on the relationship thread from Peter's post, I wonder if there is a parallel to be found in the story of the Garden of Eden. Was Eve the more open hearted and overly confidant one handing over the fruit for a skeptic but passively willing Adam? I could see how the plan to tempt Adam and Eve would not have been as successful if the serpent had went straight to Adam. ( i know of course even stating this could lead to type casting which i want to avoid but i couldn't help noticing some possible parallels )

[Vinceation]

My wife and I definitely break down the way you and Grace do, Dave. And for much of the same reasons... Q: I don't know if it's just that picture, but does John Eldredge seriously look like that? It's kinda 16th century-ey

[Jon]

Have you seen the "Peter Schiff Was Right" video on YouTube? I think that video just sums up what you're talking about. It's pretty painful to watch now though.

[Evan]

I think about this continuum quite a bit, but more in terms of the balance that faith can bring to the polarized non-faith community. Here's what I mean...

Outside of our Jesus-centric idea, people might tend toward a purely rational worldview (ie. science, philosophy) or toward a more spiritual worldview (new age, syncretism of many religious ideas and experiences). Dave S, for example, came from a more rational worldview, in the sense where embracing faith in Jesus was a radical heart-opening experience. Hopefully that's a fair characterization. Trish Ryan, frequent notreligious contributor and author, detailed in her book "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not" how she journeyed through a very different spiritual path to Jesus. She seemed to open-heartedly embrace spiritual wisdom from self-help books and new age gurus. Again, hopefully that's a fair synopsis. So her arrival at faith in Jesus was actually more of a limiting and focusing on what seemed ultimately true.

I'm not sure how Trish might respond to your post. Does she still feel more open-hearted than skeptical?

Me? For every skeptical tendency I can think of an open-hearted tendency. Not sure I can easily label myself on this, but I want to grow in understanding of friends coming from both the rationalist and spiritualist worldviews.

And we might add to Eldredge's caption "Come, D'Artagnan, we are going to save the king!"

[brian]

Love that eagle and cat poster!

[Ty Denney]

Being open hearted requires a certain level of innocence. When Jesus talks about "faith like a child" it requires a certain "untainted-ness." Not a whacky pious wierd-o holiness, but a simple innocence derived from a living encounter with God that is very frequent. There are certain older people who have done a good job with this. Frankly, I haven't seen people, say, under 40, that have this quality. Mature, weathered faith that is anchored in innocence and encounter.
BTW - my money is on the eagle.

[Denise]

I lean toward skepticism, but not cynicism. The rational and emotional/experiential aspects of my faith are tightly connected. A breakthrough idea about God, life, faith, anything important; can inspire me to worship and affect me emotionally. I like the notion of looking at these as different tendencies or starting points, but I am not sure that we're stuck with either tendency.

I have thought about what it means to be a skeptical believer especially for my relationships with people who don't seem bothered by things that bother me, and who seem very certain of things I don't think can be known with certainty. Can I appreciate the passion and strength and simplicity of someone's faith that is very different from mine, at least in its expression? How do I avoid being judgmental of "those people who are so rigid and judgmental and who oversimplify everything"? Whether we're talking about Fowler's stages of faith or Peck's or some other system of describing spiritual development, I find myself wondering whether my way of believing is really superior or more advanced or more sophisticated, or if it happens to be what appeals to me. Can a skeptical believer have a strong gift of faith?

As usual while I find the distinction between skeptical and open-hearted a useful one, I object to its being used as a way of describing either men or women. I have not resonated with what I have read or heard of what John Eldredge says about what I am supposed to be like or wish for. I can understand how someone who finds his categories descriptive and helpful might be inclined to continue categorizing in the same vein. However, I think we could have this discussion without attributing either of these two categories to men or women. Why not talk about skeptical persons and open-hearted persons? I agree that those categories need not be mutually exclusive.

Sorry this is long. My computer is down and so I am using an Iphone. That makes editing difficult.

[Chip Decker]

I am more skeptical in nature also. I'm wondering also if this distinction has to do with the mind/rational versus the heart/emotional concept. For example, some of the more charismatic elements, freedom in worship, etc, require me to stop analyzing and start participating (open-heartedly?). I used to shy away, and still naturally do by reflex, from some of those elements but study of the scripture and the benefits I experienced from giving it a try have caused me to stretch some and I want to stretch even more. So I try to engage my heart without losing my mind. (I think I heard that in Ecclesiates before.)

On the idea of grabbing hold of one teaching or idea and running with it, the idea of balance, I'm all for that. I'm HUGE into that. Thanks Dave for being a voice for a balanced approach. Personally I'm a big fan of John Eldgredge and have benefitted a lot from his message. I think he is offering way more than just messages about men and women and I'm not sure how he has "left the church". (How can anyone leave the church?) My take on him is that he is kind of like a prophetic voice calling out to the church to pay attention to some key things we have missed, lost or had stolen from us. (Of course with any prophetic message it won't apply to all churches, there are exceptions, and thank God for that!)

But I'm not on here to defend Eldredge. In fact, I think it was Watchmen Nee who said something like "Never swallow one man whole." Meaning, no matter how much you benefit from one man's teaching (besides Christ of course) remember that he is just a man. He is not Christ and does not represennt the fullness of all meaningful teaching or understanding. So for all of my love and appreciation of Eldredge, Wimber, Peck, Schmeltzer, etc, I must keep Christ at the forefront and thank God for what I learn from those men without holding too tightly or undiscerningly to them. (Yeah, undiscerningly is probably not a real word.)

[Vinceation]

ha! When you take a closer look, it's clearly a zip-up fleece. But a quick look reveals the cape every man longs to wear =)

[Denise]

Undiscerningly sounds like a useful word

[Dave Schmelzer]

PB, touche. Talking about "Secrets" to anything is definitionally modernist and reductionist. So, absolutely, this is shorthand for, "Wise Sayings from the Bible accompanied by a few personal stories that seem to validate the general approach that you might find value in giving a shot at." "Secret" just seemed like a zippy, if perhaps misleading, shorthand.

[PB]

Fair enough - thanks for the reply!