pursuing truth

Ever since I can remember, I have desired to know the truth. My desire hasn't always translated into action, and I have often reacted to potential truth with fear, but I would consider myself a truth-seeker. This desire has only been sharpened by my pursuit of a masters in history. I am trained to question motives, presuppositions. I spend all of my time studying societies and cultures trying to understand decisions and ideologies.

Fear has paralyzed me, though. Fear was part of what caused my spiral into spiritual doubt sophomore and junior year of college. And fear continually threatens to hold me back from questioning the ways that American civic religion and culture hides the truth from me.

No more. Last night I ordered Rob Bell's book Love Wins from the inter-library loan system at my school. I am going to read it, and I'm going to do my very best to not only read it to criticize it. I want to engage its arguments - to follow them where they lead me. I want to live without fear. To believe that the God that I serve is big enough to trust fully. I want to trust that He will not abandon me, and that He will guide me through this pursuit of the truth. At the end of my Love Wins journey, I hope to come to a conclusion, supported by evidence (biblical and otherwise).

It's very important to me to not be wishy-washy. My pursuit of truth will not include me becoming overly post-modern-esque in my outlook, unless my pursuit of truth itself leads me to a void of truth.

I believe the Bible to be the inspired word of God. For this journey, I hope to question that very presupposition (from what I've read, Rob Bell will very likely help me out in this regard). I want to know why Christians believe this about the Bible, and I want to be able to defend the Bible as wholly inspired if this does prove to be the case (which I believe it will). I want to put to death the fear that has kept me from digging deeply into such things.

There was a time when I questioned the existence of God, the validity of my faith, and everything I had been taught. That time has passed, and I believe that now is the time to dig into these things out of motivations not of fear, but of love for the God who has redeemed me. My fervent hope and desire is that He would reveal Himself even more to me, and that all of the glory will go to Him.

I don't have a set in stone plan for this pursuit of truth. If I did, I'd get discouraged and fail. Beyond reading Love Wins I have no concrete plans. I hope to blog on things that I have been thinking about. Mostly, this represents a change in attitude - I want to engage opposing arguments instead of immediately refuting them based on the things I have always believed to be true. I want to understand the opposition - to consider the opposition, and then to decide firmly where I stand.