New Love for First Love

I have a new love in my life: Peter Kreeft. I've been listening recently to some free audio on his website. Several are fascinating, but it all began with this one. It's not that his arguments for God's existence are new. Rather, they are takes on what Christian philosophers have long said in the debate. But as of late, in especial regard to all the heavy blows various scientists and thinkers have tried to land on God, I think the soundness of these old arguments on Kreeft's lips ring quite clear. It's about 75 mins long, which isn't exactly brief, but I'd say about half an hour in, things really start rolling, and he articulates a few of the arguments in ways I've never heard, and powerfully. And interestingly, the question and answer session at the end is the best I've ever heard, with intelligent, relevant, and difficult questions. I'll let you decide for yourself what you think of his answeres to the direct questions.

Faith has been taking a difficult route for me lately. It's really hard to articulate what's going on with me. I suspect, however, that my understanding of my life, hope, and goals are very much oriented around myself, what makes me happy, what stimulates me and challenges me, what I think I should be doing. It's been a difficult transistion coming home, and I still feel very much in limbo about where I'm supposed to be or what I'm supposed to be doing. Furthermore, my trust in God to handle these issues has wavered, and as I've pondered these things, I'm realizing that the lack of trust is as much the struggle's source as it is the result. As a Christian, one bound to Christ, how is it that my life of faith should be oriented around my own desires, bound by the limits of my intellect? Am I not to entrust my life to God, the one who created me and everything else out of nothing? Is he not the very purpose for which I and everything else was created? The natural equation of Creation? Therefore, whose life am I living really, and whose desires am I to be centered on?

Lots of questions, but perhaps the answer is more simple than I've thought it would be over these last several silent months. Interestinly, yesterday's sermon held a few poignant & challenging quotes that spoke to this very issue of trust, which I'll be wrestling with for a while, I think. 

"A real Christian is an odd number anyway. He feels supreme love for One whom he has never seen, talks familiarly everyday to someone he cannot see, expects to go to heaven on the virtue of another, empties himself in order to be full, admits he is wrong in order to be declared right, goes down in order to get up, is strongest when he is weakest, richest when he is poorest, and happiest when he feels worst. He dies so he can live, forsaken in order to have, gives away so he can keep, sees the invisible, hears the inaudible, and knows that which passes knowledge." -- A.W. Tozer, The Root of the Righteous

"Uncompromising trust in the love of God inspires us to thank God for the spiritual darkness that envelops us, for the loss of income, for the nagging arthritis that is so painful, and to pray from the heart, 'Abba, into your hands I entrust my body, mind, and spirit and this entire day -- morning, afternoon, evening, and night. Whatever you want of me, I want of me, falling into you and trusting in you in the midst of my life. Into your heart I entrust my heart, feeble, distracted, insecure, uncertain. Abba, unto you I abandon myself in Jesus our Lord, Amen.'" Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust