About the Blog

Fides quaerens intellectum

“Faith seeking understanding”

I’ve had faith since I was 4 years old. It’s wavered, wobbled and taken its share of lumps, many of them self-inflicted, but know that I believe what my namesake wrote in his first letter to the church he founded in the Greek city of Corinth nearly 2,000 years ago:

I passed on to you as most important what I also received: Christ died for our sins in line with the scriptures, he was buried, and he rose on the third day in line with the scriptures. … If Christ hasn’t been raised, then your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins, and what’s more, those who have died in Christ are gone forever. If we have a hope in Christ only in this life, then we deserve to be pitied more than anyone else.

The rest of it is up for grabs.

My name is Paul. I’m the husband of an amazingly attractive, patient and understanding woman who is far more than I deserve, and we are the parents of three daughters, who are reshaping my very soul every minute I spend with them. I’m slowly working through a Master of Arts in history and theology at the university where I work (which is why I won’t be mentioning it by name).

I grew up more conservative than Rush Limbaugh; I’m now more liberal than Barack Obama. How big a shift you think that is likely depends on your own journey in this life. Mine has led me to rethink in fundamental ways everything I once thought I knew. This blog is a chronicle as I continue that reshaping. The faith is there, but I need understanding.

At some point, I discovered I didn’t like God very much, and I was pretty sure he didn’t like me. That’s not a good place to be, and it’s taken several painful years of picking up the pieces of my life to discover that God wants to take my natural interest in learning and writing and train it on the study of him. So here I am, in grad school, writing a blog I figured no one would care to read, juggling school and work and parenting and husbanding with this little pastime.

I’m a journalist by trade and education – a recovering journalist, I should say. So this is a blog for questioners. I desperately seek answers, knowing that I may never find them, but I keep asking just the same. It’s hard-wired into me at this point. If you stick around for any length of time, you’re likely to notice I’m currently asking questions about:

• Theodicy
• Sexuality
• Parenting
• The virgin birth
• The omnipotence of God
• Universalism

One of my worst habits is forming an opinion and defending it with all I’ve got. I’m trying to break it and recognize that a little humility does us all a lot of good when discussing questions of theology. I’ve been disoriented. I’m slowly becoming reoriented. But that’s no guarantee I’ve got it right.

So join me on this journey, won’t you? We can strengthen our faith and seek understanding together, as we await the day when all of our questions will be answered by the One to whom we’ve been clinging this whole time.