Revival Journal #2: Darkness Descends

The journal  entries are my thoughts as I read.   There are spoilers, because I'm talking about the book, and issues raised by the book.

Darkness descends quickly in Stephen King's latest novel, Revival.  We meet the preacher; he's awesome; his wife is pretty and everyone loves his little boy.  Then there is a terrible accident (was she drinking?) and the preacher, Charles Jacobs, is out of commission for a few weeks.  When he returns to the pulpit, he is bitter and has lost every bit of faith.

The sermon that follows the tragedy, the bad sermon, is really built up.  I was pretty hyped,  thinking something truly inspired was going to drip from the pulpit.  Unfortunately, the preacher didn't have anything really new to say.  I would have outlined his sermon with these points:

The bad sermon:
1. There is a lot of bad things that happen to good people.
2. There are a lot of bad things done in the name of God.
3. There are a lot of people claiming to follow God, but they send mixed messages.
4. There is no proof that there's an afterlife.

This would be interesting, if I sensed it was true to life.  Since I actually do deal with people often when they slam into life's worst storms, I feel it fair to say that I have  some understanding of the way people of faith respond to storms.

What is more likely if a person who once held a deeply rooted, even a trained faith, were to walk away is that they will do so in gradual stages.  They begin to question, struggle through terrible, dark nights, and the bitterness begins to grow.  It doesn't strike like lightening.  Tragedy does.  Tragedy hits and we are swept away in grief.  But for a genuine believer to drop into unbelief usually takes some time.

Here's the thing: There are people who hold one or all those views.  (The views presented in the bad sermon.)  But they don't stumble into them over a three week process.  World views don't usually change to the negative that quickly.  More likely, if a person with a relatively robust faith experiences a sudden tragedy, their initial response is not to say, "There's no proof of an afterlife."  At that moment, people reach for their core convictions.  This isn't the point where most walk away.

Reverend Jacobs never preached an Easter sermon?  Or he preached it with no application point?  These are pretty straightforward messages.  1. Jesus physically died.  He was put to death by trained executioners.  Dead people usually stay dead.  That's how the world works.  2. On the Sunday after his death, his tomb was found empty.  3. Over a forty day period his disciples encountered him in a variety of situations in which he proved to them he was still alive.  4. All of those he appeared to (of the Apostles) would go to their deaths, one by one, saying they had encountered the risen Jesus.  APPLICATION: If God could  raise Jesus from the dead, then the other things discussed in the Bible are not so far fetched.  As Gary Habermass says, "The resurrection is a rock that can bear the weight of Christianity."

Why does  this matter?  Well, if Jacobs is a farmer who just lost his wife, the four point "bad sermon" is pretty normal.  But if Jacobs is a preacher, he should have already dealt with some of these issues.

So here's what strange about the novel: All of the points of the "bad sermon" are things any person with a strong faith has thought seriously about.  What's more, they are things anyone who has been theologically trained at a seminary has been forced to wrestle with.

Pre-Doubt and the building blocks of faith:

A guy who's been to seminary doesn't say, "There's no proof."  A writer in Maine might.  But someone who has given their life to pastoral ministry doesn't do so without some pre-doubt.  That is: Before the storms in life smack us, we've already  had some restless  nights where we've asked these very questions.  How do I know this is true?  Why is there suffering?  And for those who continued on, there were answers they were able to accept at the core of their being.

This isn't void lofty talk for me this week.  I'll be doing the funeral of a three month old.  What do you think a mothers asks the preacher in that situation?  "Why did this happen to me?"  My core isn't rocked by this, because I've already had some storms before  this one where I asked those same questions.  The questions, the doubt, was healthy for my faith because it forced me to seek answers.   Am I an idiot to believe?  Is faith foolishness?

So, here's a simple problem: Has our dear minister never previously wrestled with these issues?  He never took Apologetics in seminary?  While preachers might be emotional, and some do walk away and leave the faith -- they don't do it three weeks after a crisis.  It takes more time to break down the emotional/spiritual fortress that's been built up.  One tsunami doesn't usually wipe it out.

Doubts force us to move either form a childish faith to a mature faith, or to walk away.  But Jacobs responds to tragedy like someone who has never ever experienced doubt at all.

It's hard to believe Jacobs loses his wife and son, and then suddenly goes, "Well if that's the way life works, I'm out!"  Give him a year, and he might end up there.  But he isn't going to start there.

Why would faith disappear in such a short period like that?  
1. Faith was shallow an immature.  That happens all the times!  Someone starts out great, but their faith is lost during a great crisis.  The truth is, their own faith never matured, so when the crisis comes they fall away.
2. Their faith relied on another person.  The removal of that other person causes personal faith to collapse.
3. They never really had personal faith.  The faith is full of fakes.   Crisis exposes fakery.

But I don't get the feeling King was building toward either of those caricatures with reverend Jacobs. Yet, when tragedy strikes, he drops  out pretty quickly.  His "bad sermon" isn't really that bad for anyone who's heard people in pain talk for very long.  He doesn't bring anything new to the table.  Nothing that makes others go, "oh my goodness!  There's suffering in this world!  And many denominations with different views?  I'm done with God."

What Jacobs does have is something of his own idol; electricity.  Perhaps it was electricity he really worshiped all along.  Tragedy struck, and he turned his back  on God and leaned into the lightening.