Interview with Jason Boyett (Repost)

One of my blog goals is to do a weekly Friday Reads post which features an author and/or book. I want to meet my goal, but I don’t have a new post ready today, so I’m reposting this interview with Jason Boyett that I did on my old blog last May. .

I read Jason’s latest book, Oh Me of Little Faith: True confessions of a spiritual weakling   during a time when my faith was in transition. It was comforting to know that I wasn’t the only one with questions and doubts about some of my former beliefs. Plus, I love the humility in his book title—I’ve read enough books from people that have ‘figured it out’ and who give 217 steps to spiritual success.

INTERVIEW WITH JASON BOYETT

Janet: Is there a particular thing/incident/reason that you decided now is the time to write a memoir, or did it just feel right?

 Jason: I delivered a sermon at my church in 2007 (filling in for our pastor), in which I decided to stop pretending I had it all figured out and openly confessed to having doubts. The response was really encouraging. So many people thanked me for expressing something they didn’t feel they could talk about safely in church. That’s when I began thinking that there might be something to the idea, because at that point, no one was really talking or writing about spiritual doubt. But clearly we needed to. So I put together a proposal and eventually it landed at Zondervan.

Janet: Was there a particular chapter in the book that was really fun and/or easy to write? Why? What about one that was difficult to write? Why?

“Turtles All the Way Down” (Ch. 2) was a lot of fun to write, just because I got to base the whole thing on a giant stack of turtles in space. I just kept smiling at that image, even though there would be times midway through when I’d think to myself, “I am writing about the existence of God and the whole thing seems to revolve around a turtle metaphor. I am so screwed.” But any time you can build a chapter around both a Stephen Hawking illustration AND a Dr. Seuss story, you are going to enjoy yourself.

The hardest chapter to write was “Reverse Bricklaying” (Ch. 5), the one about prayer and my brief foray into charismatic Christianity. Maybe three people on earth knew that Brazil story, and having to dig back into that muck was tough. It was hard going back to that mindset, and even harder to tell a story that makes me feel pretty vulnerable. Even today, I don’t feel good about that year in my life.

Janet: You wrote that you’ve experienced God’s presence “three and a half times” … is it difficult to hang on and continue to believe in those times over the years? 

Yes it is. I’ve held onto those times, but my inner skeptic can certainly find ways to start debunking the “God” aspects of those stories. Maybe not with the earliest one (the Philippians/couch experience), but definitely with the other two. There are a lot of elements in those situations — foreign country, physical exhaustion, emotional exhaustion, heartache, community — that can make a person especially receptive to spiritual things. The religious person would say that it makes us more receptive to God or the Holy Spirit. The atheist would say it makes us more receptive to emotions we’ve been conditioned to view as God, but which are really just chemical reactions in our temporal lobe. I admit: some days I lean more toward the second explanation than the first.

Janet: At this time, praying liturgical prayers is not something I do, but I found your thoughts about that interesting. But does praying someone else’s words every feel fake and/or like you are reading Hallmark cards to your wife rather than telling her in your own words how you feel about her?

That’s a common question, and one I definitely asked from time to time, prior to my shift toward liturgical prayer. But in response to that line of questioning, I always bring up another question: when you sing worship songs in church, do you sing words someone else wrote? Does that feel fake? Or is worship only meaningful when you make up your own personal lyrics, right there on the spot?  (Great move, Jason – answering a question with a question. I hadn’t thought of the comparison between songs and prayers, but now I get it and am saying duh to myself)

Granted, some of the lyrics to worship songs are even worse than Hallmark cards, but it’s the same situation. We are speaking to God using someone else’s words. The difference is that, with liturgical prayer, you’re using words that have been prayed by Christians for hundreds of years. When I pray the Lord’s Prayer, I’m praying in the same manner that Jesus told his disciples to pray. No, they aren’t my original words, but what kind of hubris does it take to think I can come up with something better than Jesus…right off the top of my head?

Janet: I’ve studied heaven and hell a little and you gave me a lot more stuff to ponder … any more information or thoughts since you wrote the book? 

No. Nothing new. I’m pretty much stuck in the same place as when I wrote the book. This is one of those issues where education/knowledge really seems to get in the way of faith. A logical, rational person will look at the evolution of afterlife beliefs among the Israelites and has to admit there are some real questions that come up. If heaven and hell are/were an eternal reality, then why did God allow the Israelites to go thousands of years without knowledge of these destinations? Because up until the Exile, all the biblical writers talked about Sheol instead of heavenly paradise or the punishments of hell. EVERYONE went to Sheol. So God gives them instructions on where to sew the tassels on their garments but doesn’t reveal to them the existence of heaven as an eternal resting place for believers, or hell as a destination for the damned? THOSE details he left out? Really? I have a lot of trouble making excuses for this. But heaven and hell are such an important part of the Christian tradition and doctrine — and clearly Jesus believed in them — that I don’t know what to do. I’m reluctant to bury my head in the sand and pretend I never learned this stuff. But I’m just as reluctant to just toss them out the door as human constructs influenced by the Persians and Zoroastrians, either. So I’m stuck in these questions. Not sure I’ll get any answers this side of death.

Janet: I like your thoughts about “ask, seek and knock” in the last chapter – what are you asking/seeking/knocking about these days? 

As always, I’m asking for grace and mercy. I pray the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” I ask for increased faith…but until it arrives, I ask for the strength to continue following even when the following has to get ahead of the belief.