2009

Cliché as it is to post a list like this, there are some things I’m really thankful for in 2009:

1. My bride.  This was the year I married my best friend, and I can say I’ve never been happier in my life.  Growing closer to her has taught me more than I ever expected about myself, about friends, loyalty, how relationships work, respect, family, sex and love.  I am a walking definition of routine and control, and Libby’s way of destabilizing that with spontaneity has made my life far more fun than it could have ever been otherwise.  In so many ways, she is the total opposite of me, and you end up feeling like you share a soul with someone who excels in all the areas I suck at.  It’s worked out pretty well so far.  I’m also thankful for the new family I’ve gained, with a whole different set of traditions and culture than what I’m familiar with.  It’s a constant learning experience.

i lost my segway-virginity in 2009

2. my friends.  Lib and I have had a rough year of losing several friends, job disappointments, unmet expectations, drama, and so forth.  We’ve had a few very loyal friends stick with us through it all, and I can’t thank you guys enough.  Our situation of being in that awkward phase between college and moving away for grad school soon can make friendship difficult sometimes.  I don’t have a lot of friends by any stretch of the imagination, and I never have.  But having a few that I can tell anything too, from bragging about wins to exposing how much I suck, it makes all the difference

3. my faith community.  I’ve had lots of heartbreak over several situations with churches over the past year or two.  I was beginning to slip into that jaded area where I think I wouldn’t find a place in Little Rock to fit into because of my personality, theology, or what I want to see a church doing that I want to be a part of.  And while we are far from perfect, I’ve never been so excited and felt so understood, accepted, or sincerely challenged by the guys at Eikon.  I will be sad to leave them in the fall.

4.  learning.  This year has been an intense learning experience, largely for many of the items previously mentioned.  I’ve had to learn about dealing with people when they let you down, dealing with loosing a job, loosing mentors, how to be a decent husband.  I like to think I’ve learned a little something about putting some insecurities aside and leading without constant self-doubt.  I’ve learned a lot about being ok with people, even people I respect a lot, disagreeing with me while still learning from people different than me.  I’ve learned how passive-aggression and retaliation never make anything better in life (you would think this should be obvious, but then the whole of history shows just the opposite!).  I’ve learned a lot about how relationships work, about how lives can stagnate into routine and how to stop that from happening to us.  I’ve learned a lot about apologizing and reconciling.

5. expectations.  Libby and I are so excited about my acceptance into Fuller and the idea of moving to Los Angeles in the fall 2010.  I could not be more excited to be a student again, studying full time the subjects I really thrive with.  After I get my PhD, we plan to travel a lot, which brings its own set of expectations and excitement.  Really, I’m just excited to be moving towards my dreams, doing so in the context of an incredibly high-regarded school, and having a bride that is so supportive and constantly reshaping my plans to be more fun.

It’s been a pretty good year.

Universalism: A Summary Defense (by Richard Beck)

I came across this article at by Professor Richard Beck, an excellent introductory case for Universalism.  Followers of my blog probably pick up on my fixation on different ideas of afterlife that have developed within the Christian tradition, as well as my personal ambivalence with settling on one view.  As a Christian Universalist, Richard Beck does not share that ambivalence, and since I get a fair amount of traffic searching “hell” or “universalism,” it seemed a good chance to share:

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Universalism: A Summary Defense

by Richard Beck

Watch the Jesus Creed blog in the coming days and weeks as Scot McKnight will be starting a series on if evangelicals can be universalists. Early in the history of this blog I posted my reasons for subscribing to universalism. Lately I’ve wanted to pull those arguments into a summary post. Here, then, are the reasons I believe in universal reconciliation, the eventual redemption of all of humanity.

1. Talbott’s Propositions (along with a discussion of moral luck and human volition)
The philosopher Thomas Talbott has us consider the following three propositions:

1. God’s redemptive love extends to all human sinners equally in the sense that he sincerely wills or desires the redemption of each one of them.
2. Because no one can finally defeat God’s redemptive love or resist it forever, God will triumph in the end and successfully accomplish the redemption of everyone whose redemption he sincerely wills or desires.
3. Some human sinners will never be redeemed but will instead be separated from God forever.

All three propositions have ample biblical support. But, as Talbott points out, you cannot, logically, endorse all three. Talbott goes on to show how the various soteriological systems adopt two of the propositions and reject/marginalize the third. Summarizing how this happens:

1. Calvinism/Augustinianism: Adopt #2 and #3. God will accomplish his plans and some will be separated from God forever. This implies a rejection of #1, that God wills to save all humanity. This conclusion is captured in the doctrine of election and double predestination (i.e., God predestines some to be saved and some to be lost).
2. Arminianism: Adopt #1 and #3. God loves all people and some people will be separated from God forever. This implies that God’s desires–for example, to save everyone–can be thwarted and unfulfilled. This is usually explained by an appeal to human choice. Due to free will people can resist/reject God. Thus, where a Calvinist put the “blame” on God for someone going to hell (election) Arminians place the blame on people (free will).
3. Universalism: Adopt #1 and #2. God loves all people and will accomplish his purposes. This implies a rejection of #3. The implication is that God will continue his salvific work in some postmortem fashion. Note that this postmortem salvific work can, and often does, involve a strong vision of hell and be Christocentric.

I reject Calvinism because I find the doctrine of election to be loathsome. I don’t find God worthy of worship, praise or service if he created people with the intention of torturing most of them forever. True, such actions would demonstrate his sovereignty and “justice” but it is hard to see those actions as loving and praise-worthy. Also, I don’t see how Calvinism allows for a dynamic and interactive relationship between God and humanity. We end up being mere puppets and playthings.

To be fair, the reason Calvinism and Reformed theology leave me cold is largely biographical. I grew up in an Arminian tradition. Since college, however, I’ve also grown disillusioned with free will soteriological and theodicy systems. For three interrelated reasons:

1. Moral Luck: We begin life in very different places, morally and religiously. Some people get a head start on Christianity. Others are raised in different religious traditions. Further, our life journeys can be highly variable, religiously and morally. A child might be abused by a church leader. A missionary might never show up at your village.
2. The Timing of Death is Unpredictable: The death event is arbitrary in its timing. Some people live to a ripe old age and get to repent of past sins or find the time to explore Christianity (if they were born in another religion). Other people die young and never get the chance, through no fault of their own, to repent or explore Christianity.
3. Free Will is a Non-Starter: As a psychologist I’ve come to believe that human volition (will) is very circumscribed and anemic in its powers. Humans have the capacity for choice, and perhaps freedom within a certain range, but at the end of the day human choice is finite and limited. It can only do so much.

Given that our moral and religious journeys are qualitatively different (e.g., moral luck: some people get head starts), that death is random (which can arbitrarily lengthen or shorten your religious and moral journey) and a realistic view of human volitional powers (there is no radical form of free will) it was difficult for me to maintain the Arminian stance of my religious heritage.

So, having rejected both Reformed and Arminian thinking I’ve settled on universalism as the soteriological and eschatological system that best describes my views on salvation and redemption.

2. A Morally Coherent View of Justice
Most defenders of a classical view of hell eventually make appeals to God’s justice. However, for justice to be justice it has to meet a few, almost axiomatic, standards. Most importantly, all notions of justice involve proportionality. As they say, the punishment must fit the crime. Thus, a punishment of infinite duration and unspeakable torment fails to meet any moral standard of justice. More, if we want to link justice to love then there needs to be a rehabilitative facet to the punishment. Not all justice is rehabilitative. Capital punishment isn’t. But aloving justice will try to accomplish three things:

1. Vengeance for Victims (Justice)
2. Rehabilitation of the Perpetrators (Grace)
3. The Reconciliation of Perpetrators and Victims (Forgiveness and Repentance)

Of the major soteriological systems only universalism gets us all three of these things.

3. Missional Concerns Over the Soteriological/Eschatological Disjoint
Many people in the church see salvation as a binary, you are either saved or lost. Christians then fetishize this status, obsessing over who, at Judgment Day, will be saved or lost. This causes the Christian community to become otherworldly in its focus, ignoring the cosmic (e.g., social, political, ecological) and developmental (i.e., sanctification) aspects of salvation. This becomes a missional problem in the church, where people just look to “get saved,” eschatologically speaking. But it is hard to fault people for this fetish if they are seeing thing correctly, that there will be a non-reversible binary judgement at the end of all things. In short, as much as missional church leaders want to instill the notion that salvation is this-worldly as well as other-worldly they will fail, for clear psychological reasons, unless they undermine the classic doctrine of hell. Leave the classical teaching of hell intact (overtly or by trying to ignore it) and you’ll compromise your missional effort. Like it or not, hell and mission are intimately related. Worries over hell (which can’t be helped if you leave the doctrine intact) will import otherworldliness into the mission of the church.

4. Regulating Passages
The biggest objection to universalism involve the passages regarding hell in the bible. However, there is no doctrinal teaching that doesn’t have contradictory tensions within the biblical witness. Witness the hermeneutical and exegetical diversity within the Christian tradition. In short, universalists are not in any unique position. This is the way it is with just about any doctrine.

The issue, then, ultimately boils down to which biblical texts will regulate doctrinal choices. For example, which of the two passages regulates your doctrine regarding female leadership in the church:

1. “I do not permit a woman to teach, nor have authority over a man.” (1 Timothy 2.12)
2. “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3.28)

If you are a Complementarian Passage #1 regulates your understanding of Passage #2. If you are an Egalitarian Passage #2 regulates how you understand Passage #1. An there is no way to resolve any debate between the two camps as these are meta-biblical choices.

A similar thing holds for the soteriological debates. Universalists have regulating passages that frame how they understand the texts about hell. Here are four regulating texts for universalists:

1. “God is love.” (1 John 4.8)
2. “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” (Colossians 1.19-20)
3. “When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.” (1 Corinthians 15.28)
4. “For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.” (Romans 11.32)

As with the gender texts one has to choose regulating texts about hell. And these are meta-biblical choices. People who believe in a classical vision of hell will read the four passages above through that lens. Universalists, by contrast, will read the texts on hell through the lens of these four passages. That is, they will teach that hell must:

1. Be a manifestation that “God is love.”
2. Be a means to “reconcile all things” to God
3. Allow God to be “all in all”
4. Provide a way for God to “have mercy upon all”

5. Hope
I think it was Karl Barth who said that he couldn’t be sure that universalism was true but that it was every Christian’s obligation to hope that it was true.

Paradigm shift // Kuhn’s “Structure of Scientific Revolutions”

My friend Derek convinced me to pick up Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and while it’s far beyond my meager hack-scientific geek level, I’ve greatly enjoyed it for its sociological implications.

Kuhn’s work describes the way in which a community, science in his case, adopts a new paradigm, and he goes to great lengths to detail the way in which a new paradigm is adopted.  Working purely from textbooks, most people have an assumption that any paradigm shift in science (or sociological/religious history) can be pointed to as occurring at one discovery, person, or year.  In reality, this is hardly ever the case.  There is a complex back and forth in the scientific community.  The paradigm shift is initiated by a finding that runs contrary to normal science.  Normal science is not nearly as exploratory as it is portrayed; it relies on foundational methods and expectations that under gird an experiment to dictate predictable/acceptable outcomes.  Normally, data yielded by an experiment that runs contrary to the established expectations are indicative of user error on the part of the scientist.  An unexpected finding, if it is publicized, merely plants a seed for the scientific community to continue to try to disprove.

Between normal science “business-as-usual” and a complete paradigm shift lies the intermediary state of a constantly adjusted theorem.  Kuhn cites Ptolemy vs. Copernicus.  Copernicus is remembered for forcing the scientific world into a helio-centric paradigm wherein the earth no longer had the sun and stars revolving around it.  Copernicus was not the first to discover this (the Greeks had known of this nearly a millennium before) and nor did his discovery happen at a pinpointed moment, but this is how we remember him.  Since the second century A.D., the scientific community had been constantly revamping Ptolemy’s geo-centric model to account for odd findings.  The problem with overthrowing the geo-centric model was that, for all its flaws and lack of parsimony, it was incredibly accurate in its capacity for predicting planetary location.  Even into the 20^th century, long after the helio-centric debate had been settle, astro-engineers employed Ptolemaic theory to make calculations for the Apollo program.  Copernican helio-centric theory was not much more accurate at predicting planet locations, nor was it much simpler, than Ptolemy; it was not momentarily obvious that Copernicus was right and Ptolemy was bunk.

As a general rule, the younger have a faster buy-in towards a new paradigm than the older.  The old regime has spent too much of their lives buying into a paradigm to release it as simply.

Another scientific revolution Kuhn alludes to constantly is the debate on the nature of light.  Descartes posited that light was composed of corpuscles, small particles similar to any other atom.  This theory dominated until the advent of wave theory, the observation that light behaves more like a sound wave than a particle.  This is a case in which the scientific community has not settled to this day.  The problem of light is that after centuries of debate, we still observe light as acting like both particle and wave.  The two categories are mutually exclusive.  We will eventually settle the debate of what light is, but it will most likely require a massive restructuring of our paradigm that will reach beyond science into philosophy.  In other words, so far as we can paradoxically tell, light cannot be both particle and wave, but nevertheless, it is both.

The fascinating implication may be that the Law of Noncontradition, that A does not equal non-A, does not work at the subatomic level.  And if that is in fact the case, it is only a matter of time before the this axiom’s destruction works its way into our philosophy, religion, and culture.

I’m particularly interested to keep plowing through Kuhn’s work with the question of what this means for philosophy and religion.  Paradigm shifts rarely completely eradicate the old regime; it is the marginalization of the old perspective which is inherent.  The process of paradigm shift always takes time, even as each person is living testimony to the way in which maturation is an ever-present, ever-shifting phenomenon.  I can pinpoint one time at which I was a child and another at which I was an adult, but I cannot pinpoint a moment at which that transition happened.  I can point to a time I was a fundamentalist in my religiosity, but I cannot point to an exact moment or even exact year at which the light bulb came on.

What is also certain is that the paradigm shift is never a movement to a final stage.  Einstein, General Relativity, and quantum mechanics may have demolished Newtonian physics, but Einstein will similarly be matured-beyond in the coming days.  We are always maturing as a race, but never matured.

Eikon AltView: John Hardin // Christen Byrd

this is part of a series called altView. these are stories of faith from the people of our community. no filters. no agendas. no prompts. just people telling their stories. hope you enjoy!

John Hardin

I grew up in a little church where everyone is called “brother” or “sister” and the Second Coming or the penalties of sin were preached about at least 6 times a month. Bro. Haney was a wise man in the church, covered with leather skin and grace, and he used his deep voice to sing bass in our choir and to gently tease or soothe those around him. He was universally loved and when he spoke people truly listened.

When I was around twelve we had a testimonial service, which is sorta like an open mic night at a bar. Anyone can stand up and share their story about the greatness of a god who saved a wretch like them. Unfortunately, like an open mic night, what you mostly get are uninspiring and quasi-forced renditions of stories that are amazingly similar in content.

On that night, Bro. Haney stood up to speak. Due to my respect for him, I stopped whatever time-killing activity I was involved in and listened. What he said prompted me to think seriously about god for the first time. Unfortunately, it also led to a warped sense of who god is and what is going to happen next in his narrative.

With the certainty of a bad prosecutor Bro. Haney launched into an apocalyptic colloquy, stating that within his lifetime Jesus Christ would be coming back to rapture the church. All I could think was, “Damn! This guy is old; that doesn’t leave us much time!” My focus then turned to fearing god and the goal of leaving this irredeemable earth and going to heaven. However, like any religion based on fear and fatalism, it didn’t stick over the long haul.

Over the next 15 years I experienced a lot of life. I left my homogenous hometown the first chance I got and made a lot of decisions that most would argue were bad. I didn’t worry too much about god because, as was explained to me during my season of post-Haney fear, this world was irredeemable anyway and I already had my ticket to heaven.

During that time my eyes were opened to the world around me. I was exposed to diversity of race and sexual orientation for the first time. I realized that the stereotypes I learned growing up were not only incorrect, but were unjust, ignorant and hateful. I learned that while I lived in relative abundance, others die from abject poverty. I learned about exploitative labor practices often used to make our food and goods, and the environmental damage often caused by both. I learned about injustices within our legal system. My eyes were opened to the plights of the “least among us”.

I don’t know what prompted it, but I also began to have a deep sense that god was indeed concerned about affecting change in this world for those suffering. The life, compassion and empathies of Jesus became real to me. I became convinced that the earth isn’t simply some stopping point on the way to distant places called heaven and hell, but a place for us to try like hell to turn back into what god originally created. I am now certain that is the essence of Christianity. Bro. Haney was not only wrong about his prediction, but he was wrong about the very purpose of following in the way of Jesus.

John Hardin is one of our community leaders. He bleeds social justice and community activism (we also believe he bleeds actual blood, but we haven’t done anything to him to confirm it). More specifically, John helps to connect the church as a whole and individuals to local justice/activism causes and, in general, brings awareness to local and global justice issues. When John isn’t fearing the day that we try to make him bleed, he spends time with his incredible wife, Shannon, and beautiful little boy, Cash.

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Christen Byrd

all in all, i think i have been on a journey for quite some time, and still am right now. my lifetime movie would be called “forced to trust god.” over the past 6 years i feel that i have had no other choice but to have some sort of faith. no matter how little faith or how much at the time. ryan and i started our marriage pretty great. everyone says the first year was the hardest…it was our easiest. married to my best friend, good jobs, all the time in the world to think about our wonderful future. little did we know where we would be now.

we moved to lexington, kentucky after a year for ryan to attend seminary. that was probably the worst year of my life…and the best. i had a horrible job in which i traveled about 4-5 days at a time. i had no friends, except ryan. i was definitely depressed, we were so broke we couldn’t even afford to get our heat turned on. i was so lonely and broken…yet ryan and i grew closer than we ever had…because we were forced to. all we had was each other and god…literally. even though i look back on those days and can honestly feel the loneliness and sadness i felt then, i am so thankful for them. i was forced to rely on god, completely. from being able to buy groceries to just getting to wherever the heck i was supposed to be while traveling across several states for my horrible job (did i mention i hated my job). even trusting god that ryan wouldn’t freeze to death while i was gone when we didn’t have heat…

thankfully, we moved after a year to paducah, ky to serve in a church plant there. it was also a major move in our lives that required just faith. basically because in april i said “we are moving in may…get on it.” when ryan tried to tell me to be patient, i refused, i found a job, an apartment…and we moved the last week in may. (i was right) this was a difficult/wonderful/exciting/frustrating experience for us altogether. we have so many great memories from our life in paducah…mainly lucy being born, of course (don’t get me started, i may start crying).

and now…we’re here. what else is there to say. no seriously, this has been nothing less of another chapter in my journey of my faith. i mean, we started this Eikon journey over 2 years ago. we were not handed the keys to a church building, a big budget, a congregation (i don’t even like that word). in fact, ryan’s kind of been told in more ways than one…”you have all the qualities of a great church planter, but you don’t want to do it our way, nevermind then.” it’s at that point you say “ah crap, what do we do now.” and you begin to second guess what you’re doing with your life, and what you’re dragging your family into, and is it going to work, are we going to fail? these are not fun things to think about or ask yourself.

however, i’ve found to not put my faith in my husband…but to put my faith in god. i trust that ryan will do what god has given him the ability to do. and it will happen if it’s supposed to. i hate the saying “it’s a god thing.” it drives me nuts! i mean, everything is dependent on god. so why are such wonderful things “god things.” (if you die…it’s still a “god thing,” but nobody says it so excitedly then. maybe i’ll try that at the next funeral i attend.) i’ve found that in the past i’ve put way too much faith in the wrong people and things and i end up being so disappointed.

I am definitely reminded of how much i am forced to trust god, each and every day. as a mom to lucy and olive, and another one in june (talk about faith)…i rely on him to help me be a better mom. seriously, this may sound silly…but you try being at home everyday with a 1 year old, 2 year old, pregnant mom…and being married to ryan. and i rely on god to help me be a better wife, every day. it has definitely been a long 2 years of planning and meeting and everything else that ryan spends most nights working on. and i’m not always that supportive (i know, you all think i’m perfect, sorry to burst your bubble).

i trust god that someday this will all be worth it. not because i plan on having some big mega church (although i definitely think ryan would look cool with a curly mullet)…but because i feel that i am finally in a place where i’m doing what i’m supposed to be doing with the people we’re supposed to be with. it has been such a long journey, but i can see all the pieces slowly coming together. i finally feel comfortable with a group of believers. i feel like god has a million other things for me to do…but now i’m in a place that i can actually do them someday.

Christen Byrd is a wife, mother of 2 (soon to be 3), photographer, graphic designer and keeper of all things awesome. Few people know that her spiritual gift is being cool and when she’s not doing that, you can find her working to build her fledgling online store, baby byrds, at etsy.

Eikon AltView: Derek Blaylock // Cara Beth Buie

this is part of a series called altView. these are stories of faith from the people of our community. no filters. no agendas. no prompts. just people telling their stories. hope you enjoy!

Derek Blaylock

When Ryan told me I could write an uncensored blog my first thought was to preach why everybody should seek to repeal the tobacco tax, or why the Kansas Jayhawks are awesome, or why Arkansas needs much colder weather, but most of you have heard those discourses from me many times over. Instead I decided to write a parable on the relationship of Christ’s redemptive work on the cross and our limited tolerance of theological diversity. Hopefully it will make sense.

I work as a sales representative for a nebulizer company and I call on pediatricians in clinics and hospitals. My role is to convince doctors why they need to use my company as their supplier of nebulizers. First of all, a Nebulizer is a device used to deliver medication in the form of a mist which is inhaled into the lungs in order to improve breathing. The bottom line for a nebulizer is to get the patient breathing better so they can live a healthier life.

In the medical industry there are many companies who manufacture nebulizers, so how do we know which one is “right”? Well, essentially all nebulizers are the same, but there is one major non-negotiable in regards to nebulizers. The patient probably will not fully understand the pharmacological efficacy of the device so the non-negotiable aspect is the patient needs to appreciate that the treatment itself is going to make their life better; not perfect, but better. Our society sometimes places too high a value on trying to figure everything out, but there are some aspects of the nebulizer and the treatment that are beyond most people’s comprehension. The beauty of the matter is not in knowing how the treatment works but the fact that the treatment does work.

Essentially, all nebulizers are the same and have the same desired outcome: breathing better because of the treatment. But there are some minor differences. Some have a better treatment time, some a higher respirable fraction, and some are more portable, but in choosing a nebulizer sometimes the deciding factor needs to be what allows the treatment to have a deeper deposition with the patient.

In finishing, a sales representative with my company told me about a conversation she had with a doctor about how our company started. She told the doctor how several years ago our owners broke off from the original company to start their own nebulizer company because of differing interpretations of the business contract. The original company sued our owners and then our owners countersued; all the while both companies are still to this day trying to gain market-share over each other. The doctor’s comment, “That’s a lot of drama over nebulizers.”

I agree with the doctor. I want him to use my nebulizers but I realize I am biased about what nebulizer delivers a better treatment. But all the doctors and companies agree that the main thing needed for making breathing and living better…is the treatment.

nebulizer = denomination/religion
doctor = pastor
treatment = God’s redemptive work in a person’s life
patient = a person
breathing better = following Christ
healthier life = bringing God’s kingdom to earth

Derek Blaylock can often be found rambling about politics and theology. When he’s not doing that, you can find him enjoying a good cigar and a hoppy pale ale or obsessing over some tiny school in the Midwest called Kansas.

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Cara Beth Buie

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad. 
–C. S. Lewis

My whole life Christianity has been spoon fed to me literally since I was born. From the time I was old enough to lift my head, I was dedicated as an infant to God in front of my family and our entire church. From then on, it was Vacation Bible School, Mission Friends, Girls in Action, Acteens, Youth Group, (and the list goes on). I went on to attend a private Baptist college and am now working for a religious organization. I have been surrounded by church my entire being. I literally know nothing else. I don’t know how to function without Christianity.

But in the same way, I don’t know how to function WITH Christianity. I have been “programmed”, so to speak, that I am comfortable just lying in my own Christian filth. It disgusts me how contented I have become in my own faith. In keeping with the egg analogy mentioned in the quote above, I am, figuratively speaking, an egg that has been marinating in its own shell for 26 years. Pretty gross huh?

In college I went through the normal, “who am I REALLY?” crisis that every young adult goes through. I questioned everything: my parents, my friends, my boyfriend, my degree choice, (which interestingly enough was Christian Ministries) but most of all, I questioned Christianity as a whole. What makes Christianity the RIGHT religion? Just because I was doused in it my whole life doesn’t make it the RIGHT way of living, does it? Just because my parents believe and their parents believe and their parents before them, what makes Christianity the “right” way? There I was sitting in Christian Ministry classes wondering if I even believed any of it. I rapidly turned away from everything I had been taught to believe. But it wasn’t enough. I had to know for sure WHY I believed it and KNOW that it was truth.

After years of stubbornness and questioning everything I had ever been taught, I gave in, and admitted that God was God. (C. S. Lewis) Even through my selfish denial, my faith was challenged, I questioned God and yes, even ignored that He even existed and He never failed me, not even one.

I know now that I cannot remain as is or I might, in fact, go insane. I must be hatched or go bad.

Cara Beth Buie can be found playing with one of her four animals. When she’s not doing that, she’s probably trying to convince herself that she doesnt need yet another one. Besides fostering and adopting animals, she enjoys photography, shopping at Target, all things vintage and a white chocolate mocha from Starbucks.