So after cruising through 36 or so years of life, what was it that finally got me to question my lifelong faith? One simple question, really. I forget what site I was reading, but I think it was digg or reddit, and some Christians and atheists were having a debate in the comments of a post. By following a link or two, I ended up on a youtube video entitled 10 questions every atheist should ask (I can't seem to find the original link, and youtube seems to be flooded with videos of that title now). After watching it, I noticed a related video, 10 questions that every intelligent Christian must answer, which I watched as well. The very first question in the video challenged me in a way that I had no answer for. Why won't God heal amputees?
I thought about the number of times in my life I'd prayed for someone who was sick or injured. I've done my fair share of praying. I knew that my prayers didn't always get answered, but it felt like they mostly did. I'd been told by various folks, pastors, youth ministers, Sunday school teachers, and even just Christian friends, that God doesn't always answer every prayer in the way that you would expect. After all, He has a will, and sometimes you may ask for something that is at odds with His will, so you don't get exactly what you've asked for.
Having already accepted and come to terms with the fact that not every prayer gets answered, I could still honestly say that I thought it was worthwhile to pray, and felt like there was a pretty good chance, in each case, that I'd get the answer I was looking for.
The thing about the amputee question is that as soon as I heard it, I knew I wouldn't even bother to ask God to heal an amputee. Honestly, in my heart, I knew that I would not pray for that because I did not believe it would happen. After 36 years of believing in prayer, realizing that there was a limit to my faith hit me like a punch in the stomach. I thought about all of the faith healers I'd ever seen on TV. I don't recall ever seeing one of them restore an amputees limb. I have never heard even a story or rumor of that happening. I've heard some pretty crazy stories in my time. Stories that I doubted even at the height of my faith. I once heard about the survivors of some sort of plane crash (a friend of a friend of whoever was telling the story) who, once the pilot announced that they were going to crash, started praying for Jesus to rescue them as everyone else on the plane cursed and swore. They claimed that before the plane hit the ground, they saw the fuselage crack open, and they felt their bodies lifted up out of their seats, through a hole that had opened in the roof, and they were set down safely on the ground, outside of the plane. I really didn't quite believe that story when I heard it, nor do I now. All that said, I've never heard a story of an amputee being healed.
So as I realized that I didn't have the faith to think an amputee could be healed through my prayer, I pondered all of the possible meanings. Maybe I just don't have the faith? Maybe it's just a weakness in me? Maybe my faith is smaller than a mustard seed? But I know there are some people on this planet who have, or at least give the appearance of having very great faith. Certainly faith bigger than a mustard seed. Would they pray for an amputee to be healed? Would they expect their prayer to be answered? I thought about all of my Christian friends and wondered if any of them would pray for an amputee. I actually know one. My friend's dad cut his thumb off accidentally with a skill saw. Has anyone prayed for his thumb to be restored? Would my hardcore Christian friends pray for his thumb if I asked them to? What would they think of me if I asked them to? Would they take me seriously? Blow me off? Worse, would they start questioning me, and find out that maybe I was starting to have some serious doubts about prayer and about God?
I don't know for a fact, but here are my suspicions. I don't know they they would do it. I'm sure they would have reasons. I'm sure they could explain to me how it would be silly, or "putting God to the test", or something. Maybe one day I'll ask, but at the time (as well as right now), I don't have the guts. I'm not ready to let my Christian friends know that I have these doubts.
Like the video said, this is an uncomfortable question. I found that I could not put it out of my mind, though. I rolled it around in my mind for days and weeks. I was afraid to talk even to my wife about it. At some point in the process, I decided that I wanted to know what life was like for the atheists. If there was no God, what did you live for? What motivated you? How did you interpret the actions of your friends and the events of the world. I have plenty of Christian friends, and quite a few non believers as well, so I just sat back and watched everything from a completely new perspective. How different were my Christian friends from the rest? Were they smarter? More successful? More loving? More forgiving? Was it obvious to an outsider, which I was now starting to consider myself, that they had the one and only God on their side, guiding and helping them? As I sat back and looked, it started feeling more and more like my believing and non believing friends were only superficially different, sending me one step further down the road of doubt.
Not feeling comfortable at all with this new perspective, I did what any sane human would do. I allowed myself to become paralyzed with fear. We weren't attending church regularly, so I didn't have to fake that. Most of my hanging out with my Christian friends was for social events, so there wasn't much going on there to force me to be honest about what was going on inside of me. I spent the better part of a year just slowly rolling these doubts and questions around in my head. I mostly quit praying, but every once in a while I'd pop out a quick "God, if you're really there, and I'm just having doubts, throw me a rope. Give me something to help me know you're really there." Thus far, I haven't gotten anything definitive.
So this post pretty much brings you up to speed. A year ago I encountered the amputee question, it rocked my world, and I kinda just mulled it over passively for a year. In my next post I'll talk about how I became motivated to switch from passive to active, and what I've done since then. After that post we'll be up to current, and I can start blogging in the present tense.
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