Help My Unbelief, 20th Anniversary Edition

Table of Contents

Introduction: “Help My Unbelief” (Mark 9:24)

THE NATURE OF GOD
Haven’t we learned how to deal with the important questions without recourse to the God hypothesis?
1. Moses and Monotheism: A Response to Dr. Freud
Doesn’t everybody have his or her own idea of God?
2. Re-imagining and Revelation
How can I respond to an abstraction like the Trinity?
3. The Trinity in the Last Ditch

GUILT AND INNOCENCE: JUSTIFICATION BY GRACE THROUGH FAITH
Isn’t Christianity about being good?
4. Christ vs. Adam: Kosovo and Beyond
5. Death Sentence, Life Sentence
What makes us OK with God?
6. Flying First Class
Shouldn’t we get rid of the idea that God is judgmental?
7. Access to Peter
Didn’t St. Paul mess up the simple gospel of Jesus?
8. Hope Among the Weeds
Don’t we need to make Christianity more inclusive?
9. True Inclusiveness
10. Mrs. Hammer, Mrs. Durr, Brother Will, and the Word of Faith
Why all the theological apparatus? Isn’t it enough just to be loving?
11. The Faces of Love
12. Love and Power
13. Rewriting the Book of Love

THE GOSPEL AND RELIGION
What if I’m not very religious?
14. No Religion Here Today
15. The Once and Future Doctrine

SIN, EVIL, AND SUFFERING
We don’t still talk about sin, do we?
16. God-damned Christians
What does the cross mean?
17. Common Sense, or Christ-Crucified?
18. Steering Toward the Pain
19. King, and God, and Sacrifice

FAITH AND WORKS
If God is doing everything, what is there for us to do?
20. The Resurrection Reach-Out
If we focus on eschatology (God’s future), doesn’t that discourage human action in the present?
21. Money in Trust

CONTEMPORARY ATTITUDES TOWARD THE GOSPEL
Isn’t Christianity outmoded?
22. Can These Bones Live?
23. Nothing Virtual Tonight
How can I believe stories like that of the Transfiguration?
24. Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory
Can we today continue to believe in the Resurrection?
25. Death Shall Have No Dominion
26. A Way Out of No Way
27. Doubting and Believing
Hasn’t the notion of the Second Coming been discarded?
28. Jesus Will Show
29. Beyond the Valley of Ashes
Isn’t the Bible patriarchal?
30. Ruth’s Redeemer
31. Abigail’s Strategy
32. Lydia: The First Christian in Europe

CODA: TWO STORIES OF LITTLE FAITH GROWN GREAT
33. Gideon’s Three Hundred
34. Even Peter, Even Us