Faith, Doubt, and Suchnot

March 4, 2002

Hello everyone,

The question of God’s existence has plagued people for centuries. Does God exist or is he a figment of wishful imagination? This question stood squarely in my way for many years: this question of faith. Prestigious persons like Sigmund Freud developed elaborate theories in their attempt to demonstrate that God is merely a figment of the imagination, in many ways a projection of one’s own earthly father. Perhaps there is some truth to this statement as we pointed out in the film analysis Cool Hand Luke Exposé. Shall we see what we can uncover?

I remember listening to “Dear God,” a song from Skylarking by XTC, a band that critics describe as having a mixture of intelligent lyrics and strong musical craftsmanship. (Their name derives from a type of illegal drug: essentially Ecstasy, popular amid the rave scene.) The lyrics lament that all the people God created in his own image are starving, waging wars, and fighting over what to believe about him; it then asks the cynical question: “Did you make mankind / after we made you? / and the devil too!”

For many years I arrogantly thought that I knew this answer; I felt I was uniquely enlightened with the knowledge that there was no personal God, that religion was merely a manmade institution and I looked down my nose at those naïve enough to believe otherwise. In fact, XTC played a role in helping me reject the religion of my youth, for this was one of my favorite songs expressing what I viewed to be sheer stupidity. To put it mildly, it is true that I do not see things exactly as I did then, but is there any validity to my line of reasoning?

C.S. Lewis suggests that there is an equal amount of evidence for and against God’s existence: that this is the way he intended it, so that people would truly have to come to him by faith. I have often found this statement compelling and true—and ironic at that. Those who seek him find; those who don’t, won’t: they can be willfully blind if they so choose. This way, it makes God possible to ignore, so that people do indeed have a choice; after all, if God were so readily obvious, there would no longer be any debate in the matter.

For many years, this lack of conclusive proof kept me from any kind of spiritual journey, for I knew that virtually every religion required faith in order to be activated. This made perfect sense to me, and I still often make the statement that life is largely a matter of perspective. I demonstrate one possible ramification of this fact in “Capitalistic Emotions,” (since removed from the Web) using an illustration drawn from my workplace:

[Speaking of differing emotional reactions:] This is beautifully illustrated by an example from Willow Brook Foods, the turkey factory where I work. The level of intellectual stimulation is virtually non-existent and you find yourself making the same three cuts on thousands of turkeys every day, day after day, over, and over, and over yet again. It can become extremely repetitious and boring. Some brave souls tough it out, stoic masks firmly in place. I sometimes do. However, I have a very playful side that can be very mischievous and devious, ranging from dry subtly to outright impishness. The plant will hire virtually everyone who walks through its door, and supervision is nil. Though it is clearly against the rules, I, along with several other deviants, occasionally find myself irresistibly drawn to pick up small pieces of meat or skin on the tip of my knife and sling them at my unsuspecting coworkers. I have become highly skilled at hitting my target. It does not take long to determine who to play this game with and who to exclude (and apologize profusely to when an occasional mishap transpires!). Why is this? I am throwing the same chunks of turkey in the same fashion. Some of my coworkers react with a smile and quite often a good-natured volley in return. Others, however, react with anger. The bottom line is that their thoughts largely determine their emotional reaction at finding a piece of wet and dripping turkey landing on their smock (or worse yet, upside their face!).

I also mentioned that my job often seems tedious and boring. But what makes it so? Isn’t that also a perception I attribute to my job—that is, a value judgment based on my thoughts? When I am thinking on other subjects—as I do a great deal—my day passes with scarcely a second thought. However, there are those days where my thoughts are focused on how understaffed the line is, how sore my fingers are, how long I’ve been standing there, or how such a job stacks up to my obvious potential to “make the cut” elsewhere. Given my ardent love of studying human behavior and the often rather motley assortment of coworkers, I enjoy observing my fellow turkey cutters and contrasting them to students and staff at OTC and people with whom I attend church. Out of the three places, the employees typically are not as well-educated with fewer opportunities for advancement outside menial labor. Overall, these people often show greater job related anxiety, presumably because in their thinking they associate their identifies much more with their job than do I, having a richer diversity with which to distract myself. They take their job much more seriously than I do and their emotional attachment is evidenced in their bitter complaining about many things that do not even personally concern them or their jobs. If they didn’t care about their job or derive esteem from their work, they wouldn’t complain about such things.

Thus, perception has much to do with what we derive from something. Now let’s take it a level deeper: we’ll say I have been tripping on PCP. While on this drug-induced high I mistakenly believe that I can fly, and proceed to climb to the top of the tallest building nearby to “spread my wings.” What do you suppose is likely to happen? If the building is tall enough, I will undoubtedly plunge to my death; if not, upon sobriety, I will almost assuredly find that the presence of bruises and/or broken bones have mysteriously “sprung up.” The simple objective fact is that I am not physically equipped to fly, so if I say “I believe I can fly,” I had better either be using a poetic metaphor or else have an airplane ready and waiting to carry me away. Otherwise, it isn’t going to happen, no matter how convinced I remain of the contrary.

But still, you see, I believed I could fly; it took some serious faith on my part. In fact, in my drug-induced state I was totally certain that I could fly. And if I were to have plunged to my death, I can all but hear all the little old ladies watching the news, huddled around the television, clicking their tongues, knowingly shaking their heads, and discussing with one another, “Why did he do it? What is wrong with young people these days? They just don’t act like they used to.” Well, needless to say, the answer as to why I did what I did involves the unseen, invisible element inside my head that influences everything I do. This, of course, is my belief-system or paradigm. If it is so wired under the influence of drugs to render a solid conviction or certainty that I can fly, then based on my mind-frame, such actions are perfectly logical. I mean, would there be anything illogical about a person who really could fly preparing to soar off a rooftop? Perhaps it is odd he climbed up in the first place, but that is beside the point: perhaps he wanted the added benefit of working out his legs.

I lamented that every religion—every different path to God, gods, goddesses, Universal Consciousness, or whatever else—required faith. Intuitively I knew there had to be some kind of objective truth that transcended the often seemingly contradictory nature of the various religions, some kind of final answer. I knew they couldn’t all be right, at least on their surfaces. But if it were to be found in any of the religious systems of the world, I knew faith was the only key that could unlock the door, but I, unfortunately, did not possess this virtue. Even if there was a single religion that was completely true, I felt my entrance barred before I started: the ultimate irony and catch-22 of the universe. Take a look at Hebrews 11:6: “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”

Much later, I encountered the passage five verses above that one that puzzled me greatly. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). How on earth, I wondered, could someone possibly infer that faith was evidence? At the end of Strobel’s article Objection #8: I Still Have Doubts, So I Can’t be a Christian, I write:

I have also frequently struggled with my faith. I used to read the scripture in Hebrews 11:1: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (KJV) and ask myself how that could possibly be: how could faith (one’s belief) constitute evidence?

I have since realized that, just as this article bears out, when Jesus talks about the faith of a mustard seed, it means God will gradually reward your believing with knowing—quite literally the evidence of things unseen! How? When you take that leap of faith, however small, and invite God into your life, the Holy Spirit comes to live within you. Little by little his spirit living inside of you becomes known to you, just as your spirit is already known to you, because it is you. Because he is really living inside of you, you come to know him, for you know yourself, and he is now a part of you. Little by little believing becomes knowing until one day you find that you no longer doubt. You suddenly come to an amazing realization—you do not have to prove it, analyze it, describe it, or explain it. It does not matter what anyone thinks or says. You simply know, with the same sense and surety that you know yourself, and that is enough. Nothing else really matters.

You see, you would never be persuaded if I told you that you did not exist, if you could offer no proof of your own existence, and if all the institutions in the world claimed that you did not exist, because, if there is any one thing that is certain in this world to you, it is your own existence. You may not know how you got here and you may not know where you’ll end up, but you know that you are. So just as you know that you exist, if Christianity is really true and God’s spirit is awoken inside of you, should it surprise you to find an increasing evidence—an increasing knowledge—that he is real? You know you are real. If he lives inside of you, in the same sense you know you are real, you will know he is real, because the two of you are now joined together as one. But you cannot prove it to someone else, just as your existence (while much easier to demonstrate in a 3D world) will probably not hold as much significance to another person as does their own. What ultimately matters is what you know; forget what other’s opinions are concerning the matter. As Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians sing: “I know what I know, if you know what I mean.” The problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know—if you know what I mean. How could we?

Now about this aspect of coming into enough faith to merely cross the threshold, much less make an informed determination about what, if any, religion is right and true in the most objective sense of these words: First off, in a world of infinite possibilities, nothing should be ruled out as impossible without a compelling reason. The late Mahatma Gandhi well capitalizes on the essence of this truth: “One needs to be slow to form convictions, but once formed they must be defended against the heaviest odds.” To arrogantly assume that you have the final answer without having this answer tested, tried, and transformed in the crucible of doubt is rather presumptuous. And where does faith come from? It comes from hearing the word of God. Just as the grief-stricken lover is taken aback to discover his broken heart painted so beautifully by the brushstrokes of the poet, so too is the scoundrel stunned to find himself captured, cornered and cowering, in the pages of his bible. In this golden moment of epiphany, the rays of truth have finally dawned with the sudden, breath-taking awareness of its certainty: one realizes it could not possibly be otherwise, for the things of the world have taken wings; he stands naked, alone before the creator of the universe.

The black clouds that so often encircle a believer’s life—the times of trial, affliction, hardship, unanswered questions—these are the elements that give a believer the credentials to say with increasing confidence “I know Whom I have believèd.” In fact, whenever I get ready to send these e-mails (and especially after they are sent), I often ask myself, “Could I be wrong? Am I misleading people? Do I really know the truth, or do I only think I do?” I often blaze into territory that is enigmatic and uncertain, and today’s e-mail offers little exception. You see, I know myself: how easily I am given over to deception and doubt. These questions help reinforce that my heart’s desire is focused on finding and speaking the truth; I would not ask myself these questions if I did not care. And the truth is not always so readily apparent. This is why I spend so much time cautioning against easy answers.

I’ll give you a perfect example of believing you are right, of trusting your “common sense,” but being wrong. What happens when you hold two strips of tissue paper in front of your lips and blow between them? The air rushing out of your mouth drives them further apart, does it not? No, indeed just the opposite effect happens. The two pieces of paper will actually move closer together because the greater the speed of the flowing air, the less the pressure. Seeing is believing. Try it. (Incidentally, this is also the same thing that keeps a beach ball bobbing over a fan in a store display and what causes an airplane to fly: the air-stream is rushing at a slightly higher speed over the top of the wing than the bottom, which, contrary to common sense, creates more air pressure on the bottom of the wing, causing the lift that makes the aircraft fly—as per Bernoulli’s principle: pressure plus one half density times volume squared equals a constant.)

Now in these examples, things are not as they would seem but can be easily enough proven with a bit of experimentation. However, there are many things in life that can never be proven, and the life of faith is certainly one of them. When a person “walks by faith and not by sight” they will encounter many paradoxes, many mysteries, and many things that are not at all as they seem. On the one hand, we survive through these many storms by clinging tightly to the faith we hold; on the other we doubt, we fret, and we worry. In the end, our faith emerges triumphant on the other side—purified, refined, and tried in the fire of affliction—much stronger, like tempered steel.

C.S. Lewis offers another compelling point:

The position of the question, then, is like this. We want to know whether the universe simply happens to be what it is for no reason or whether there is a power behind it that makes it what it is. Since that power, if it exists, would be not one of the observed facts but a reality which makes them, no mere observation of the facts can find it. There is only one case in which we can know whether there is anything more, namely our own case. And in that one case we find there is. Or put it the other way round. If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe—no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house. The only way in which we could expect it to show itself would be inside ourselves as an influence or a command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. And that is just what we do find inside ourselves. Surely this ought to arouse our suspicions? . . .

In many ways it would be easy to assume that God was merely a product of human invention. God is the God of the heart, not only in his intimate knowledge of each of us as individuals, but in the fact that this is where he seeks to live and how he chooses to communicate to this creature called man. We often cite our scriptures as proof of God, but how did these writings come into being if not through an inner revelation of humanity? (And how do we know they are true—not just words (albeit wise ones) in yet another book—if not by the inner revelation of the Holy Spirit working without and within?) In fact, how do we know anything at all, if not by processing it within ourselves?

Suppose you see an apple. Did you not have to internally process that fact first, the cones and rods in your eyes picking up different wavelengths of reflected light, your optical nerves sending this signal as electrochemical impulses to your brain, and your brain processing and assembling this sensory data into the realization you were looking at an apple? And didn’t you already have to know what an apple was in order to know what you were seeing? You do realize that you have already taken the apple for granted: as a given. But what if you didn’t know what an apple was? Your brain would still interpret the shape, though even this apparently has much to do with your early learning stages, as suggested by numerous studies in the fascinating field of gestalt psychology. In fact, so many things that you find familiar and take for granted as so much “common sense” were all brand new and strange to you when you were freshly born. You simply got used to being in a world that contained these things and they now seem normal and commonplace to you. But your interpretation and perception of these things is entirely relative to the “givenness” of these things; all your thoughts pivot from taking this world as a given, because this world is the only world you have ever known: imagine conceiving of a world you haven’t ever known. Again, we don’t know what we don’t know—if you know what I mean.

Stop and consider the sheer inventiveness of God for a moment. The Scriptures say he created the cosmos out of nothing. Forget, for a moment, about the idea of God making the universe out of the absence of matter and consider “nothing” in a new sense. Think non-existence. Think no thoughts. No feelings. No stars. No earth. No air. No sky. No sea. No people. No trees. No animals. Think of absolutely nothing. No existence. No awareness. No light. No dark. No sound. No sight. Not even space to call empty—nothing! Now consider that when God made everything, there was nothing. He created everything out of nothing, even if he did make it out of something (more on that in a moment).

When our artists and innovators use their creativity, it necessarily hinges off the things that are, not the things that are not. We take what is, and create what is not, in the image of what is, based on imaginations incapable of conceiving things that never could be. (I mean, even dreams—a common and unpredictable source of creativity—are, so such inspiration still reflects what is, not what is not.) We read stories about fire-breathing dragons and giants and half-gods, half-men. And yet, if the bible is any indication, all of these things and more are mentioned (see Job 41 and Genesis 6:4 respectively). There was plenty of room in God’s creation for all of them, and, if they really did exist as the bible would seem to indicate, that would suggest that even our tallest tales and longest legends are based on a memory of something that was, not something that was not. Certainly the stories of knights and kings and princesses and princes were largely based on Medieval England, a very real junction of time and space where feudalism was the prevalent social system of the day.

But let’s go back briefly to this idea of God creating everything out of nothing, and then I wish to speak on the aspect of the imagination. In a footnote of my article examining the idea of past lives, I write an idea that occurred to me while listening to a lecture in my biology class several semesters ago. I have since discovered it is far from new and novel; the Hindus developed a similar concept centuries before with Shiva, Lord of the Dance, and in recent times the idea has been reinforced by the realm of physics. I write:

The first law of thermodynamics is a law of energy conservation. It states that energy is neither created nor destroyed, merely converted from one form to another. Einstein later showed that there was an equivalency of matter (mass) and energy. If my understanding of this is correct, then matter can be transformed into energy and energy can be transformed into matter: in short, they are interchangeable—essentially one and the same. Therefore while fire (kinetic energy) leaves ashes, even the ashes have the potential for further energy release (potential energy) if one but knew how to go about it. So, in theory, there exists the possibility that matter could be one hundred percent converted into energy. If this is true, then the opposite must also be true, that pure energy could be converted into matter. Hence, God, the “First Cause,” an intelligent entity composed of pure energy, could convert the energy he radiates from Himself into manifest matter.

In this sense, it could properly be stated both that a) God is in everything (everything is a “little piece of God”) and b) yet is separate from everything (God made everything out of “nothing”—that is, no matter [material substance] that previously existed). . . . [This, of course, refers to the Christian concept of God being both transcendent—outside of his creation—as well as immanent—manifest throughout all creation, sustaining it moment by moment.]

I said I would mention imagination for a moment. What is the imagination? We often think of the imagination in terms of a person’s fantasy world of fanciful ideas. But if all things were created by God, what are we to make of the reality of the imagination? Is there a place for such a thing? What of Lewis’ admission that MacDonald “baptized” his imagination? Could there be more to this too than meets the eye? (Or should I say “than meets the visual cortex,” since the eye is rendered largely inoperative in the imaginative process?)

Let us take a look at what generations gone by referred to as “the sense organ of the soul”—literally the “mind’s eye,” if you will. (You might be interested in pausing for a moment and taking a quick second look at what eminent psychologist William James has to say on the subject, told through the pen of Evelyn Underhill.) One such figure was Synesius of Cyrene, a bishop and hymn writer who lived somewhere between 300–400 AD in the North African province of Cyrenaica. He offers a number of insights fascinating and rather peculiar to the ear of the modern reader in Excerpts from Synesius of Cyrene Concerning Dreams. Augustine Fitzgerald translated the text, presumably from Latin, and parts of it appear to be his own commentary. Most of his comments are more succinct than those of Synesius, so I will pull my quotations from these summarizations:

. . . It is the greatest good to look upon God by the imagination, for the imaginative spirit is the most widely shared organ of sensation, the first body of the soul. About it nature has constructed all of the functions of the brain. Sense-perception through the outer organs remains only animal in character, no perception at all, until it comes into contact with the imagination. This is the divine faculty which sees with its whole spirit and has power over all the remaining senses. . . .

The imagination comprehends our spiritual nature, because it moves on the border between reason and unreason, between matter and that which has no body, between the divine and the demonic. It borrows from each extreme, thus imaging in one nature things that dwell far apart. This is difficult for philosophy to comprehend. . . . Thus, man’s imaginative spirit obtains true impressions of the life of the soul. It also influences that life, and can even draw the soul towards God; or, if the imagination is empty and inactive, it leaves a vacuum into which an evil spirit enters. . . . The imagination does not act like matter, putting together images one body after another out of elements which one logically expects to find associated together. Instead the imaginative spirit associates the most dissimilar things.

In essence, Synesius saw the imagination as the bridge that joins the two seemingly disparate natures in mankind: the gateway between the physical and the spiritual world. This could explain the mysterious nature of the creative impulse so well known to poets, artists, mystics and other intuits. We say they have vivid imaginations, but perhaps we say more than we know when we express such sentiments.

Let’s take another look at the imagination—the sense organ of the soul—through the eyes of Saint Augustine (?–604), one of the most influential early Church fathers of all time. He wrote a letter to his dear friend Evodius, the Bishop of Uzala, in reply to his friend’s question about the certainty of life after death. Gennadius, a physician well known in Rome for his compassion and faith doubted the idea of life after death when he was a young man. One night he had a dream in which “a youth of remarkable appearance and commanding presence” appeared to him and revealed heavenly sights of such beauty and music of such exquisite delight it made his soul well nigh burst forth within him. Though deeply affected, he thought it was only a pleasant dream until the following evening:

On a second night, however, the same youth appeared to Gennadius, and asked whether he recognised him, to which he replied that he knew him well, without the slightest uncertainty. Thereupon he asked Gennadius where he had become acquainted with him. There also his memory failed him not as to the proper reply: he narrated the whole vision, and the hymns of the saints which, under his guidance, he had been taken to hear, with all the readiness natural to recollection of some very recent experience. On this the youth inquired whether it was in sleep or when awake that he had seen what he had just narrated. Gennadius answered: “In sleep.” The youth then said: “You remember it well; it is true that you saw these things in sleep, but I would have you know that even now you are seeing in sleep.” Hearing this, Gennadius was persuaded of its truth, and in his reply declared that he believed it. Then his teacher went on to say: “Where is your body now?” He answered: “In my bed.” “Do you know,” said the youth, “that the eyes in this body of yours are now bound and closed, and at rest, and that with these eyes you are seeing nothing?” He answered: “I know it.” “What, then,” said the youth, “are the eyes with which you see me?” He, unable to discover what to answer to this, was silent. While he hesitated, the youth unfolded to him what he was endeavoring to teach him by these questions, and forthwith said: “As while you are asleep and lying on your bed these eyes of your body are now unemployed and doing nothing, and yet you have eyes with which you behold me, and enjoy this vision, so, after your death, while your bodily eyes shall be wholly inactive, there shall be in you a life by which you shall still live, and a faculty of perception by which you shall still perceive. Beware, therefore, after this of harbouring doubts as to whether the life of man shall continue after death.” This believer says that by this means all doubts as to this matter were removed from him. By whom was he taught this but by the merciful, providential care of God?

If the latter interests you, I would encourage you to check out my latest addition: St. Augustine: Between Two Worlds, some truly captivating material I loaded on the web just moments before sending this newsletter.

We have certainly covered a lot of ground today in a sort of rambling, frolicking way. In a world where nothing is as it seems, I think it is safe to conclude that those of us who believe have some pretty compelling reasons why we do. At the least, in a world of possibilities, we should never rule out the impossible, even if the idea of God is beyond the scope of our apprehension. In such a world, the life of faith is both frightening and freeing and the only hope we have of finding answers is to seek first the fountainhead from whence sprang all that there is. The answer to this question will in turn inform all others; indeed, it is the most important answer in the whole of eternity to seek. Will you stubbornly cling to the “answer” that there is no answer, or will you abandon all, knowing you do not yet have the answer but seeking after it with all your heart, mind, and soul? Do you really want to know the truth? Then seek the Fountainhead. You will most assuredly find if you seek; the door will be opened unto you, the key of faith delivered into your trembling fingers. Yes, life is all a matter of perspective—of finding the right perspective.

God bless,
Eric

“And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye
shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (Luke 11:9).

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