Why is it important to you to be a Christian specifically rather than an adherent of another faith, or of various faiths?
It wasn’t important to me until I reached a crisis in my life. I floated along like so many modern people, alert to a sense of otherness in some of my experiences but unwilling to give it a name. I’m a Christian because it’s the language I know. I’m a Christian because the doctrine of the incarnation expresses a truth that I intuit with every cell of my being. I’m a Christian because a god that does not suffer with us, a god that is not suffering with us right now, is either hopelessly remote or mercilessly cruel. I’m a Christian because, as my grandfather used to say, at some point you gotta fish or cut bait.
Pivoting off something Howe wrote, you say “there must be a shattering experience” in order to “build a vocabulary of faith.” You’ve had a shattering experience, with your health, but many haven’t. How should they build the same vocabulary, or can they?
Everyone has shattering experiences. It may be falling in love or having a child. It may be the death of someone you love or thwarted ambition. It may be just some tiny crack in consciousness that deepens so slowly over the years that, by the time you notice it, it only takes a spilled drink or missed flight to tear it — and you — wide open. One way to look at this is: no one is spared. Another way: everyone is gifted.
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