Jeremy's World

Fear, uncertainty and doubt.  Ever heard of it?  It tends to creep in with me during certain seasons of, well, fear, uncertainty or doubt.  Right now that FUD for me is my professional life.  My career is in flux right now and that can be pretty scary.  I thought I would have found the right position by now but I haven’t.  FUD.  “Did I really screw up leaving my last position in search of a good fit?”  “Will I find a better fit in this market?”  “What if there’s a gap…How will I pay the mortgage and feed my family?”  FUD.

But, that FUD seems to permeate other parts of my life with me.  If I’m facing it in one area, for some reason I begin questioning things even more.  God, faith, church, religion in general are usually the victims.

My latest doubt revolves around Biblical accuracy (again) and the nature of God (again).  I was watching a show on History International the other day covering historical Egypt.  They were finding and exhuming corpses that were reliably dated as being from around 3000 BC.  That’s certainly possible, even for Biblical literalists who scoff at the millions-of-years determinations by carbon dating.  So, these Egyptian people died in the middle of regular Old Testament times, right?  Here’s the rub…They mentioned one who died at “about 52 years of age, a relatively advanced age for that time.”  Contrast that with Biblical accounts of people living hundreds of years right around the corner from Egypt?  Smells funny to me.  And, the shorter lifespan version is more logical to me, and there is archeological proof.  Not so much with stories about Methuselah.  Why trust the Bible?

The nature of God…We’re beginning a new series this week at church called “Prayer (a quick-start guide).  In Christian circles (or other faiths, I imagine) I constantly hear, “I’ll pray for you about X” and “Prayer really is a powerful thing.”  I’m hearing that a lot with my job hunt and also with some potential family matters we are facing.  But does that matter?  I mean, is the nature of God such that he will make up his mind and act based on what people pray about?  Is he sitting there saying, “I know JD is looking for a job that’s the right fit…I’ll point him to it if enough people pray for it.”  Or, “I’d show JD the path to the right job but I have to hear the words from him.”  Does that sound like an all-knowing, all-powerful God to you?

I’m not buying it.  If God is an active participant in our lives (and I’m not convinced he is), is he really swayed by what we say?  Is thinking it the same as saying it?  Will he only act in our best interests if we ask him for it?  But I thought God always acts according to “his will.”  So…my prayers wouldn’t really impact anything if he’s going to act in his will anyway, right?  If that’s the case, then what’s the point of prayer?

I’ll let y’all know if they run me out of my church.