{"id":33,"date":"2008-08-24T16:49:35","date_gmt":"2008-08-24T16:49:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flirtingwithfaith\/2008\/08\/god-is-real.html"},"modified":"2008-08-24T16:49:35","modified_gmt":"2008-08-24T16:49:35","slug":"god-is-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2008\/08\/god-is-real.html","title":{"rendered":"God is Real&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I started to write a follow-up to the &#8220;<a title=\"not religious type\" href=\"http:\/\/joanball.wordpress.com\/2008\/08\/15\/am-i-the-not-the-religious-type-type\/\">Am I the &#8216;Not the Religious Type&#8217; Type<\/a>&#8221; post in an attempt to share, as promised, my experience at the first (first annual?) <em>Center City Summit: Where Faith and Secular Culture Meet<\/em> in Cambridge, MA.  In high journalistic style, I sat at my laptop and laid out the details:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>More than 150 people from more than a dozen states<\/li>\n<li>Compelling speakers sharing a heart-felt desire to connect with and communicate with secular culture<\/li>\n<li>Interesting uses of models and psychological theories to help understand the variety of ways people approach (and retreat from) God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit<\/li>\n<li>Passionate times of prayer and conversation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This observe-and-comment format is easy for me.  I get to play the role of subject matter expert.  &#8220;Here&#8217;s what I saw.  This is what I liked.  This is what I didn&#8217;t like.  This is what they should keep doing. This is what they should do differently.  This is why.&#8221;<br \/>\nAnd, there <em>were<\/em> a number of things I liked. I enjoyed learning more about <a title=\"not rel\" href=\"http:\/\/www.notreligious.typepad.com\/\">Dave Schmelzer&#8217;s<\/a> centered-set verses bounded-set model of faith, <a title=\"carl med\" href=\"http:\/\/video.google.com\/videoplay?docid=-8840641224633551184c\">Carl Medearis&#8217;<\/a> stories about two-decades of communicating with Muslims in the Middle East, <a title=\"park\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rivernyc.org\/whoweare\/pastoral_staff.htm\">Charles Park<\/a>&#8216;s amazing story of making and losing $43 million and his wife <a title=\"caroling\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rivernyc.org\/whoweare\/pastoral_staff.htm\">Caroline&#8217;<\/a>s loving attention to prayer and obedience.<br \/>\nThere were also a couple of things that gave me pause.  Like how easy it might be for people to misuse M. Scott Peck&#8217;s stage theory to perceive themselves as spiritually superior to people at &#8216;lower stages&#8217; or what I perceive to be some potentially confusing uses of the word &#8216;mystic&#8217;.  But, when push came to shove, it was clear to me that even if I reread the books and reviewed my notes, I was no subject matter expert.  In fact, as I considered this post, I realized that I came away from the Center City Summit with more questions than I did answers.<br \/>\nAnd that&#8217;s a good thing.<br \/>\nThis conference made me think.  It made me wonder what questions my new, thoughtful friends at <a title=\"decon\" href=\"http:\/\/deconversion.com\">deconversion.com<\/a> would have asked if they had been there.  It made me wonder how other Christian &#8220;factions&#8221;, particularly those who are less familiar\/comfortable with the notion of having a direct &#8220;experience&#8221; with the Holy Spirit would react.  (This was my first time rolling with people who I would describe as mildly &#8216;charismatic&#8217; or &#8216;pentecostal&#8217;.)  It made me wonder about the notion of Christian &#8220;factions&#8221; in general, the wide variety of ways that people experience God and how that frequently leads to in-fighting among Christians and confusion for people who are on the outside looking in.<br \/>\nAnd that made me think about my friend.<br \/>\nThis is a real friend not one of those metaphors. She has a name and a home and a family that is crumbling under the heavy weight of untreated addiction. She and I spoke by phone several times while I was away.  She is hurting. She feels very alone. She says she has no hope.  She tells me that she has always needed &#8220;a rock&#8221; upon which to  anchor herself.  She has relied on her parents, her husband, and&#8211;more recently&#8211;friendship.  She says that friendship has been &#8220;a shining light&#8221; in her life, that it has provided the &#8220;strength, the truth and the love&#8221; that she has needed to see through deception and see her circumstances &#8220;as they really are.&#8221; Without that, she says, there is &#8220;only darkness.&#8221; This woman is one of those people out in &#8220;secular culture&#8221; that they were talking about in Cambridge. She grew up without God.  She had many successes in her life without God.  And now, in her darkest hour, she needs &#8220;something&#8221; that she describes by unknowingly and unintentionally speaking the language of faith&#8211;without God.<br \/>\nAnd that made me remember.<br \/>\nI recalled that God was working in my life long before I knew he was. Back in the early 1990s when I was the one whose family was falling apart.  Back when I was the one who was hurting and alone and needed a shining light and an anchor.  Back when I thought I had no hope.  Back when I found hope in a recovery program through a relationship with a &#8220;power greater than myself&#8221; that turned out (after 7 years of Christ-bashing agnosticism) to be the same God (with the Son and the Spirit) I pray to now.<br \/>\nAnd, ultimately, it reconfirms my belief that God is real.  That, while I believe that there is one way to the Father, there are millions upon millions of ways to the Son.  Unorthodox ways.  Irreverant ways.  Unpredictable ways.  Doubt-filled, messy, leave-it-to -the-last-breath ways that I don&#8217;t always understand or even agree with.  Ways that don&#8217;t fit into 45-minute Sunday school sessions, line-by-line intellectual assessments of Bible passages or high-tech &#8220;culturally relevant&#8221; A\/V productions.  Ways that paradoxically challenge my notion of love and mercy in the face of discipline and hardship.<br \/>\nAnd so, despite the uncertainty, I choose to continue to pursue this God.  This Jesus.  This unexplainable Holy Spirit of God.  I seek Him\/It\/Them in solitude and in the community that is created in church, online, and at wonderful conferences like the Center City Summit.  I try to understand him in the face of my friend&#8217;s pain&#8211;and in the memory of my own.<br \/>\nUnbelievable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I started to write a follow-up to the &#8220;Am I the &#8216;Not the Religious Type&#8217; Type&#8221; post in an attempt to share, as promised, my experience at the first (first annual?) Center City Summit: Where Faith and Secular Culture Meet in Cambridge, MA. In high journalistic style, I sat at my laptop and laid out&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>God is Real... - Flirting with Faith<\/title>\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.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2008\/08\/god-is-real.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"God is Real... - Flirting with Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I started to write a follow-up to the &#8220;Am I the &#8216;Not the Religious Type&#8217; Type&#8221; post in an attempt to share, as promised, my experience at the first (first annual?) Center City Summit: Where Faith and Secular Culture Meet in Cambridge, MA. In high journalistic style, I sat at my laptop and laid out&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2008\/08\/god-is-real.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Flirting with Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-08-24T16:49:35+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Joan Ball\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"God is Real... - Flirting with Faith","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2008\/08\/god-is-real.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"God is Real... - Flirting with Faith","og_description":"I started to write a follow-up to the &#8220;Am I the &#8216;Not the Religious Type&#8217; Type&#8221; post in an attempt to share, as promised, my experience at the first (first annual?) Center City Summit: Where Faith and Secular Culture Meet in Cambridge, MA. In high journalistic style, I sat at my laptop and laid out&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2008\/08\/god-is-real.html","og_site_name":"Flirting with Faith","article_published_time":"2008-08-24T16:49:35+00:00","author":"Joan Ball","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2008\/08\/god-is-real.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2008\/08\/god-is-real.html","name":"God is Real... - Flirting with Faith","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-08-24T16:49:35+00:00","dateModified":"2008-08-24T16:49:35+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/#\/schema\/person\/581859119d5895db46006b4beb0c1f27"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2008\/08\/god-is-real.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2008\/08\/god-is-real.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2008\/08\/god-is-real.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"God is Real&#8230;"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/","name":"Flirting with Faith","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Joan Ball","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/#\/schema\/person\/581859119d5895db46006b4beb0c1f27","name":"Joan Ball","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/6b5\/6b5b96362ce68b986f37a822881ca1f5x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/6b5\/6b5b96362ce68b986f37a822881ca1f5x96.jpg","caption":"Joan Ball"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/author\/jball"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}