O Me of Little Faith

You said you had a big announcement coming today. What is it?

The announcement is this: Right now you are reading the final post on this blog. Ever.

Ever?

Ever.

So you’re shutting this blog down?

Well, I’m going to stop writing any new posts for it. But the blog will still be here. There’s no deletion or anything. If, at some date in the future, you want to know some stuff about Harold Camping or what I think about the “Farewell, Rob Bell” carnival and/or Love Wins or why one of the most controversial things I did was when I blogged about taking back a snap judgment, you will always be able to find those posts. As long as Beliefnet stays around, I guess.

Well, that’s good news. Because I like to start each day by reading your “Family Portraits with Jesus” post.

That’s weird.

So are those photos.

You might also want to browse through the archived Conversions series and “Voices of Doubt” posts. People seemed to like those.

Why are you shutting down the blog?

Three reasons. The first is that I started this blog — in fact, I joined up here at Bnet — around the time O Me of Little Faith released. I wanted to support the release of the book by blogging about it. So I did. That was last May, and it’s been a year. No one wants to spend his or her entire life writing about doubt, so it seemed a good time to bring this season to a close.

What’s the second reason?

Being a religious blogger is tiresome. I love religion and theology and all those things, but it’s such a divisive topic. Regardless of what you say, people start yelling.

You don’t like when people yell?

I don’t mind the yelling in general — bloggers need to develop a thick skin for that kind of stuff — but there comes a point when I’ve begun to wonder if it’s doing any good. A friend of mine on Facebook compared religious chatter with a dog she used to know who barked non-stop at the wind. THE WIND. Sometimes religious blogging feels like a big pile of barking at the wind. All light and no heat. (To mix metaphors extravagantly.)

At any rate, I’m not just closing the door on doubt-blogging but blogging about religion in general. It’s probably not permanent, but I need a break from it. I’ll keep doing some stuff at FaithVillage and will likely contribute to On Faith on an infrequent basis, but not so much here at Beliefnet.

And…

And…now you can commence with the weeping?

No one’s weeping. You said there were three reasons. You’ve only listed two.

Oh. The third reason is that I’m starting a new blog.

Your personal blog at jasonboyett.com? That’s not news.

No, not that one. It’ll stay around, though. Actually, I’m starting a new blog about an entirely new subject.

Cats? Ferrets? Michael Bublé being stalked by a velociraptor?

No. It’s about fatherhood.

Gasp. A daddy blog?

Well, it’s about being a dad and a writer. My kids are almost too old to call me “daddy.” Instead, they call me “Captain.”

I’ve never read a Captain blog before. Is that a Star Trek reference?

I’m just kidding about the Captain thing. The new blog is called Dadequate: Ordinary Adventures of a Write-Brained Dad.

What’s it about?

Me. Being a dad. Thoughts on dad stuff. Things I try to do. Miscellaneous daddage. And maybe some writing-related stuff, based on the subtitle.

Why the fatherhood topic?

Because blogs are only good when you’re passionate about the subject. And you know what I’m passionate about at this stage in my life? It’s being a good dad.

And ferrets. Don’t forget ferrets.

True, but ferret blogs are a dime a dozen. Also, there are bajillions of mommy blogs in the world but a much smaller number of fatherhood blogs. Beliefnet and I thought it would be a good fit.

Ugh. You’re staying at Beliefnet? Everyone hates those ads, remember?

Yes, but the new leadership at Bnet are good people and they are working hard to make it a better destination online, including making the ads less intrusive. I am cautiously optimistic.

When does the new blog start?

Today. Here’s Dadequate.

Do you have any closing thoughts?

Just that I’m very grateful for so many readers who created a fun, fulfilling community here at OMOLF. I loved getting to know you and sharing your stories. The thing I’m proudest of is having created a safe place for people (including believers and non-theists alike) to ask hard questions, explore the topic of faith and religion, and be encouraged. I’ll miss that.

But I hope you’ll follow me to the new blog, even if you’re not a dad. If you do, you’ll probably get to know me a bit better.

Will the new blog have self-interviews?

Of course. Why would it not?

Watch it, buddy. I’m the one asking questions here.

Fine. See you at Dadequate.

 

On Monday, author Adam McHugh delivered a guest post about the “snarling 8-headed monster” of the writing process. Today I return the favor — sort of — via an interview at his blog, Introverted Church. We talk about how my introverted personality has impacted my faith and doubt, and how the extroverted nature of the evangelical church can be a challenge for people like me.

From the interview:

How do you think that introverts might process doubt differently from those who are more extroverted?

I think this goes back to your descriptions of introverts as possessing a thoughtful temperament and a slower, deeper interior life….Most of my doubt is intellectual–not the relational doubts of “Can I trust God?” or the experiential doubts of “Where was God when…?” but the even bigger questions of logic, anthropology, literary influences and science. That’s an analytical kind of doubt, and once it takes up residence in your brain, it’s tough to shake. I think extroverts may process doubt more on a relational level — “I don’t feel close to God” — and those are feelings that can resolve and seasons you can grow out of. You get better over time. But when you process God on an analytical level, feelings have nothing to do with it. You don’t grow out of or away from knowledge. Once you know something you can’t just ignore it or let it go, and so many of these intellectual doubts then become a constant challenge to your faith. And, being an introvert, you’re not always likely to want to talk through them, so it becomes a private burden, a daily argument in your intellect. It can lead to an even deeper level of isolation from the rest of the church.

Read the whole thing here.

And thanks, Adam, for turning the spotlight toward us introverts.

When the rapture didn’t occur as predicted on May 21, 2011, Harold Camping had a few options. Here is how he could have responded to the failed prediction, in descending levels of crazy:

1. He could announce that he was wrong. This is the most reasonable option and was therefore unexpected. I would have been shocked had this happened. Failed prophets rarely do this.

2. He could announce that God, in his great mercy, had intended to bring judgment on May 21 but decided against it as a result of the faithful efforts of Camping and his followers. This is the so-called Jonah scenario — based on God’s plan to destroy Ninevah but then backing down once Jonah gave warning. Disclosure: this is what I expected Camping to announce.

3. He could inform us that he got the math wrong, recalculate, and come out with a new date. Camping has done this before, when the rapture didn’t happen according to his first timetable, having predicted it for September of 1994. That was an option then, but let’s face it: It’s hard to get away with this too many times, as Edgar Whisenant found out in the late 80s and early 90s.

4. He could announce that his prediction was right, regardless of how it appeared. That’s right: it DID happen, we just didn’t see it. The predicted judgment day happened right on schedule, only it was invisible or spiritual. This is by far the weirdest option, taking a page out of the old Charles Taze Russell rapture playbook. (Russell gets credit for first coming up with the yes-in-fact-it-did-happen-only-it-was-invisible scheme back in 1874. This strategy went on to be appropriated a number of times by the Jehovah’s Witnesses for their failure doomsday predictions.) It’s insane but very very convenient, and this is exactly what Harold Camping did.

Last night, in an address on his Open Forum program on the Family Radio Network, Camping spoke about how he felt when the May 21 scenario seemed not to have occurred:

“I can tell you very candidly that when May 21 came and went it was a very difficult time for me, a very difficult time,” said Mr. Camping, 89, a former civil engineer. “I was truly wondering what is going on. In my mind, I went back through all of the promises God has made, all of the proofs, all of the signs and everything was fitting perfectly, so what in the world happened? I really was praying and praying and praying, oh Lord, what happened?”

Thankfully, he figured out what happened. In the same program, Camping announced that May 21 hadn’t been the expected visible judgment day but an invisible, “spiritual” one. God’s judgment really did begin on May 21, he says, but on the down-low. Which means the end of the world will still occur on October 21, 2011 — only our “merciful and compassionate God” will spare us the chaos and tribulation of the next few months. So maybe there’s a little of #2 in there after all.

“We had all our dates correct,” Camping insists. And though it was spiritual this time around, the cataclysm won’t be spiritual on October 21. “The world is going to be destroyed altogether, but it will be very quick.”

“The world,” he said, “has been warned.”

“Yes, we have,” the world answered back. “Multiple times, thanks to you.”

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Update: In honor of this weekend’s invisible judgment day and October’s end of the world, I’m having yet another last-days sale at jasonboyett.com — complete with an invisible book! Details here.

 

If you’ve ever felt out of place among all the exciting, expressive, emotional enthusiasm of a contemporary church service…or an evangelist’s demands that you need to constantly be sharing your faith boldly to strangers…if it simply wipes you out to be surrounded by people all the time,  then you need to read Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture, which released this year from Adam McHugh. It’s medicine for churchgoers like me who don’t necessarily feel at home in an evangelical culture that’s biased toward extroversion. So go read it.

Anyway, Adam is a Presbyterian minister and chaplain in Claremont, California, and I’ve enjoyed getting to know him over the past several weeks. He was kind enough to help us turn the page, after this rapture nonsense, with something not at all related to Harold Camping. Which is exactly what I needed. Adam is currently working on a second book and kindly gives us a glimpse into his writing process with today’s guest post. Enjoy.

——————

A writer friend once told me that her writing process involved letting her ideas drip down from her mind through her arms and into her fingers. What a beautiful image, I thought to myself, and what a total load of crap. Writing a book is like giving birth to a snarling 8-headed monster. It’s a war, and your mind, arms, and fingers all hate each other.

Elsewhere I’ve said that writing is a spiritual discipline, one of those practices that consciously places us in the presence of God, that opens our souls to being transformed. And if that summons a picture of a monk reading his Bible serenely in a corner, think for a moment about your own process of praying and reading the Bible. If you make it 5 minutes without distraction (squirrel!), boredom, or drowsiness, then it’s been a big spiritual day for you. We must keep fighting to turn and return our attention to the Lord, to muffle the other voices that tell us we don’t measure up, that we’re not being productive enough, that we’re lost, that God doesn’t hear our prayers. The discipline of writing is no different.

Allow me for a few moments, O aspiring writer, to give you a window into the emotional life of a writer, or at least this writer. I’ve written one book and I’m at work on a second, and I’ve identified some patterns in this gnarly, self-revealing process, some phases that I invariably go through.

1. The “Aha” phase. This is the phase of researching, thinking, and interviewing. This is the phase of discovery, as I begin to see things I had not seen before. I have great synergistic moments as I talk with others and we find that we share thoughts, experiences, and hopes. I’ll be reading a book and a sentence or a concept will practically shout out to me. I’ll begin to believe that I have valuable things to say and that others will be interested.

2. The “Pulitzer Prize” phase. This is the phase of conceptualizing, organizing, and outlining. Inevitably I get here and my ego tries to leap out of my body and make itself known. Here I become convinced that my ideas are brilliant and my writing is profound. No one has ever written a book this sublime. Stephen Hawking will read my book and say, “Why didn’t I think of that?!”

3. The “Total Incompetence” phase. This one follows about 92 seconds on the heels of the Pulitzer Prize phase. I’ll encounter the first obstacle in writing my chapter, and my ego will not only find its way back into my body but shrink to 1/8th its normal size. This is where I will question everything I’ve ever known about the world and myself, including why in the world I thought I could write a book. This is where the dark scenarios creep in and I’ll imagine my manuscript sitting in my editor’s trash can, the smoke still floating off the singed pages. Or someone going to review my book and being unable to do so because the astonished tears of laughter keep her from being able to see straight.

4. The “Complete Disorientation” phase. Once I power through stage 3 and finish a draft of my chapter, I go to read it over and immediately move into this phase. My first draft tends to be rough and practically stream-of-consciousness writing. If I don’t know where something should go, I’ll just write it anyway. So it feels like a bunch of random paragraphs that have no organic relationship to anything that comes before them or after. It’s a salad bar of paragraphs, without the hygienic window that keeps me from sneezing all over it. My head will be spinning as I try to read it over. This is the phase where I find myself cleaning my apartment a lot — my manuscript may be a mess, but dammit, my writing space will be clean!

5. The “It doesn’t totally suck” phase. After rewriting several times, I get to a point where I think that maybe there are a few nuggets of insight in here and maybe a few people will actually want to read it. There is a small measure of contentment and sense of accomplishment here. Then, it’s back to step one.

On that note, I’m entertaining this title for my second book:

It Doesn’t Totally Suck
by Adam S. McHugh

So, if that is the bloody portrait of the writing life, why do we writers keep fighting? It’s certainly not because of the money. There are sidewalk lemonade stands that make more money than I do. I keep fighting the good writing fight not because one day I will triumph and what has been hard will suddenly become easy. I can’t say it any more simply than this: I write because I can’t not write. Writing is an irresistible grace in my life. It is a summons, a burden, that has been given to me, and I carry it trusting that God has put it there for a reason.

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Read more from Adam McHugh at his Introverted Church blog, on twitter, or in this excellent interview at Psychology Today. It doesn’t totally suck.