More Questions Yesterday in our Lit class, our professor got off on a huge tangent about existentialism and how certain aspects of existentialism can be present in Christianity. This sparked a huge debate about the nature of knowing if God exists compared with not knowing and still decided to "take the leap" through faith. Several people were adamant that, through the Holy Spirit, a person can clearly know and believe, whereas several other people were very firmly stating that there was no way anyone could ever tangibly know about God's existence, and it's in this not knowing that makes our decision to trust God so purely one of faith. For all we know, we could be leaping off and no one will catch us, but we believe through faith that God will "catch us" so to speak. I'm not sure where I stand on this. I understand the premise put forth by those who don't think you can ever truly know, but at the same time, isn't it admitting that God might not exist? And in that, is one denying the existence of God, which clearly goes against any sort of Christian belief? People were quoting Dostoyevsky and Kirkingaarde, and it was getting beyond my understanding. But I did understand some of Chip's points, that everyone goes through a "crisis of belief," and comes to a point when they can't rationally explain God or his existence, and yet have to choose to continue believing. I've experienced moments like that. But at the same time, to me, this seems to go against the traditional Calvinist idea of Irresistable Grace- the idea that God calls us and we cannot resist Him. Maybe I think that I'm continuing to choose God despite the fact that I can never really know He's there, but really it's God not letting me go. I never took a leap; instead God reached over and grabbed me. I don't know.

This is only the latest in a string of questions I've been asking myself this semester. The early ones dealt with notions of right and wrong. So much in life is not clearly dictated as purely good or purely bad. And when I came to London, I was confronted with more freedom in the way I lived my life, and I didn't know if exercising that freedom and doing certain things was going against what glorified God. Looking back, that should have been the guiding question, but instead I focused more on the need to find validation or condemnation in scripture. I also wondered what a Christian life was supposed to look like. A lot of my friends here are Christians, but they don't necessarily live what I've always understood to be "good" Christian lives. Did that negate their claims to faith? Or were they "exercising their freedom?" What right do I have to try to determine their position with God? And how much of my Christianity is determined by what I've always grown up believing? Just because the people in my little circle of life live one way doesn't necessarily mean it's the right way. Do I believe things simply because I've been trained by my fundamentalist Christian sub-culture to believe them? Am I simply conforming to "social norms?"

This leads back to the discussion in class yesterday. We have been reading The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles (a very good book, by the way); Fowles is an existentialist. In the book, he directs his characters to stop acting in bad faith; that is, making decisions in life influenced by others or social norms, and then blaming your decision on them: you couldn't help it because that's what your friends or your family or your culture expect from you. Rather, one has to come to the realization that they are responsible for the decisions they make, and that they determine their own existence based on the decisions they make. This led to the discussion on having to choose Christ and believe that he is the only way to salvation. There are things in this world that aid in our understanding of this: the Bible, the Holy Spirit (?- I'm trying to work this out, so I could be misstating this here), other Christians, Nature. But none of these will ever lead us to full, inflexible, provable knowledge that God exists. I think this is what some of the people in my class would say. And I'm still trying to figure out if I agree with them or not. I'll probably spend my summer reading The Brothers Karamazov and some philosophy books, which is huge for me, because I've always hated philosophy. I am encouraged by the fact that at least I'm asking questions. There are so many people who just blindly accept what other people tell them, and they never truly look at what they believe, understand the ramifications and implications, and still believe. I don't want to be the kind of person who just follows blindly. I want to understand what I claim to believe, and if I find problems with what I've thought, work to find out what is right. And I think I also have to acknowledge that it will never be possible to fully understand or believe completely rightly. I'm broken, I'm sinful, and I can never attain that perfect ideology or philosophy or theology because it doesn't exist in this world. But I can continue to "work out" my salvation in "fear and trembling." That's really all I can do.