A few months ago I was having lunch with some friends, (friends you might find on twitter as @jameslaws and @jeremymoore) when one of them mentioned having an old roommate who liked to “poke holes” in Christianity. We didn’t really discuss what he meant by the term “holes”; whether he meant something akin to “pot holes”, which can be filled in and smoothed over, or something more life-threatening like “bullet holes”, I don’t know. As I sat and pondered all the different types of “holes”, please, insert punchline here, I wondered what kind of inconsistencies would really cause me to re-think my faith. What piece of doctrinal, historical, or biblical contradiction would cause me to reject God? If I was looking for a reason to reject God, how would I not find one?

That’s when I thought of the title of this series: Perforated Christianity. How do you live with a faith that is full of holes? In this series of posts, we’ll discuss some of the aforementioned “holes” that are poked in Christianity and how deadly, or not, they are to the body of Christ. We’ll also talk about the ways in which our responses to these assertions effect non-Christian’s perception of us and the God we are trying to represent.

I confess that I don’t have all the answers. The areas in which I am the most knowledgable, particurlaly those relating to the earliest Christian texts and contexts, will obviously be the focus of this examination. There are other areas of what I will refer to as a “holey faith”, in which there are experts far greater than I. Of course, I also welcome your comments, and would like to end this intro with an invitation to post some of the holes that you or someone you know sees within Christianity.