Five years ago I received this question.  I still hear it!   And I would still answer it the same way.  A question that makes a lot of sense in one way actually doesn’t make a lot of sense looked at in another way.  I suppose a lot of our questions are like that….   Here is the question and response.

 

QUESTION:   The one thing that I do not understand about you is that you have stated you have lost your faith. That being said, how do you continue to work in your field? Have you ever wanted to redirect your academic career to study other subjects?

RESPONSE:  I get this question a lot.  On one level I understand it: if I don’t believe in the Bible, why would I dedicate my life to studying it, researching about it, writing about it, and teaching about it?   From the perspective of someone who has strong feelings about the Bible – for example, as a believer who holds that the Bible is the word of God or as an atheist who thinks the Bible is the root of all kinds of evil – it may seem like a mystery that someone in my boat would be interested in spending such an enormous amount of time and effort in studying it.   Or from the perspective of someone who is completely apathetic about the Bible: why would you bother?

But from another perspective the question always puzzles me.

That’s because …

To see the rest of what I have to say, simply join the blog.   I costs about five dimes a week, and for that you get five substantial posts, almost all of them dealing with intriguing issues in the study of the New Testament and Early Christianity.  Every one of those dimes goes to charity helping those in need.  So why not join?