{"id":41067,"date":"2017-06-30T06:08:58","date_gmt":"2017-06-30T10:08:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=41067"},"modified":"2017-06-28T10:36:40","modified_gmt":"2017-06-28T14:36:40","slug":"foggy-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2017\/06\/foggy-faith.html","title":{"rendered":"Foggy Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Foggy<\/p>\n

Emma Higgs writes<\/a> (in one post from a series<\/a> the entirety of which is worth reading):<\/p>\n

As it turns out, diving all the way in to my deepest doubts and fears hasn\u2019t led me away from Christianity, but instead has revealed a richness and beauty to the Christian faith I had never known. It now resonates on a much deeper level, and seems to speak more profound truth than it ever did before.<\/p>\n

This sort of faith can be difficult and frustratingly foggy at times, but it has an honesty and authenticity that allows it to exist comfortably alongside my skepticism. It allows me to fully engage my brain as well as my heart, and isn\u2019t so easily shaken when faced with the inevitable tough questions.<\/p>\n

Emma Higgs, \u201cFaith in the Fog: Making Peace with the Messiness of the Bible.\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Have you found this to be true? All human worldviews are imperfect approximations of reality, open to disturbance and disruption from data that doesn\u2019t fit with our attempt to\u00a0make reality manageable through oversimplification. There is a peace that comes with being honest about this characteristic of\u00a0all<\/em> human worldviews, and seeking to view disruptive information as something welcome that will allow us to\u00a0revise and improve our perspective. Ironically, it is the discomfort and lack of peace that contradictory information brings to the fundamentalist who needs to feel certain, which leads such individuals to reject this more honest approach to faith, and to prefer feeling certain while remaining inevitably both wrong and unteachable.<\/p>\n

Of related interest, see the post from last year on Unfundamentalist Christians<\/a>, about the need for Christians to be honest about biblical contradictions. And of related to that, there is a site dedicated to exploring contradictions within the Bible<\/a> \u2013 some of which are substantial and some of which are questionable. I\u2019ve added it to the list of Useful Sites<\/a> that I maintain here on this blog.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emma Higgs writes (in one post from a series the entirety of which is worth reading): As it turns out, diving all the way in to my deepest doubts and fears hasn\u2019t led me away from Christianity, but instead has revealed a richness and beauty to the Christian faith I had never known. It now […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":41094,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[163],"tags":[1140,14798,3329,3501,14801,11379,13092],"class_list":["post-41067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-progressive-christianity-religion","tag-bible","tag-emma-higgs","tag-faith","tag-fog","tag-messiness","tag-skepticism","tag-uncertainty"],"yoast_head":"\nFoggy Faith<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Emma Higgs writes (in one post from a series the entirety of which is worth reading): As it turns out, diving all the way in to my deepest doubts and\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2017\/06\/foggy-faith.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Foggy Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Emma Higgs writes (in one post from a series the entirety of which is worth reading): As it turns out, diving all the way in to my deepest doubts and\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2017\/06\/foggy-faith.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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