Reading Programme: Book 1
Reaching for the Invisible God - Philip Yancey
I've been wanting to read this book for a long time, to see how others have coped with the doubts I struggle with.
I'm a guy who likes things black and white, and when I was young, I liked that about my faith. This is true, that is false, this is how the world works. I liked that about Physics too, which is why I'm studying Physics at NUS now. But as I grow older, the old certainty has been replaced by disconcerting thoughts about the way things are being done in some churches, and I have been struggling for the longest time to find out what exactly being a Christian means for me and the way I live my life. Physics has similarly betrayed me, as I have discovered that it's all very fuzzy at it's core. It's kinda funny, I guess, how my path in these two areas mirror each other.
As a science student, there was something I didn't like about the theology which I was learning, which was that it simply wasn't contradictable. If something good happens, you thank God. If something bad happens, you say that God is refining you. If you pray for something and it comes true, you thank God for answered prayer. If you pray for something and it doesn't happen, you say that perhaps it was not God's will. Under no circumstances can anything ever disprove God, because everything can be interpreted away accordingly. My logical mind was unhappy with that, because it sounded like a desperate delusion. Is God a testable hypothesis?
I am pleased that Yancey has included similar thoughts in his book. He tells the story of a man who steps off a curb and narrowly misses getting run down by a car. People praise God, saying that God was looking after him. The same man steps off the same curb a week later and gets run over, suffering serious injury. He spends months in hospital recovering, while people thank God for allowing him to live. A week after getting out of hospital, he steps off the same curb, gets run over, and dies. At his funeral, the pastor speaks on how God saw fit to call this man home.
