The Roberts’ transparency sends you reeling with emotion but pulls you back in with earthy hope. This documentary by Peter Craig is marvelous, if I can use that word to describe such a difficult yet beautiful story.
Think Tree of Life meets the Resurrection, wrapped in doubt, opening up into faith.
Join us for a screening at Alamo Draft House on April 19, 2014. Hurry, tickets are selling out!
To accompany the coming release of Raised? Finding Jesus by Doubting the Resurrection (Feb 25), we filmed a gripping journey of doubt to faith. Each of the four shorts reflect the four major themes in the book, but the story also stands on its own. The film Raised? is mixes art and story to trace genuine doubt, the human cycle of failure, the response of faith, and the hope of resurrection.
I’ve been moved to tears in each one of these, not only because I know the Roberts story personally, but also because I know there are many others who are in the midst of a similar story. Like Jessica says, “When we let go of the supernatural, we seep into the darkness.” Take a few minutes to soak in this narrative, pray for those with similar struggles, share it with others, and learn how to better relate to genuine doubters.
On Sunday I referred to the work of C.S Lewis and Jonathan Edwards in a sermon called Gospel Growth. Edwards helped us understand the nature of faith via the analogy of honey. Lewis helped us understand love. I talked about love in terms of its propensity to sacrifice and to give, cruciform and Gift love. Lewis is the one that developed Gift-love. Here are where those quotes came from:
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
Gift-love is that which motivates a man to spend his days labouring for an income that he may store away for his children, with great possibility of him never seeing the benefits thereof. Love can only be known in the actions it prompts, as seen in the gift of His Son. This was not an emotional love, but an efficacious love, that originated with Love itself an act of the will, deliberate and undeserved.
Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, IV
There is a distinction to be made between a mere notional understanding wherein the mind only beholds things in the exercise of a speculative faculty; and the sense of the heart, wherein the mind does not only speculate and behold, but relishes and feels. That sort of knowledge, by which a man has a sensible perception of amiableness and loathsomeness, or of sweetness and nauseousness, is not just the same sort of knowledge with that by which he knows what a triangle is, and what a square is. The one is mere speculative knowledge, the other sensible knowledge, in which more than the mere intellect is concerned; the heart is the proper subject of it, or the soul, as a being that not only beholds, but has inclination, and is pleased or displeased. And yet there is the nature of instruction in it; as he that has perceived the sweet taste of honey, knows much more about it, than he who has only looked upon, and felt of it.
We worship by faith. Worship is no more started up because we have pushed the faith button than our faith is started because we have pushed the worship button. Saving faith is not a different kind of faith than continuing faith. We do not step into or out of faith, nor do we step into or out of worship.
~ harold best, unceasing worship, 28
