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June 29, 2005
Hello everyone,
Not only have I encountered many people seeking proof of God, there are plenty of times in which I still doubt and long for something more empirical to qualify or quantify my faith. The New Testament course that I am taking this semester raises further questions and has caused me to carefully reevaluate exactly what it is my faith rests upon. Ultimately, my faith has not been too badly shaken, but it has certainly been challenged, resulting in a greater level of clarification. This morning (6/28/05), for example, the class assignment led to a thought-provoking conversation. It included pairing into groups of two to answer a series of questions regarding Jesus and His teachings. Since I did not have a partner, I noticed a blonde girl sitting alone near the front and went up to join her. The student seated behind us did not have a partner either, and, given that there was an odd number of students in class, we became the single group of three, poring over passages from Luke and Mark in answer to some probing questions about Jesus’ attitudes, thoughts, teachings, and lifestyle. I soon learned that both of my partners were Jewish and both had wanted to take the introductory course on the Old Testament but had not registered in time before the class had reached maximum occupancy. During our assignment, the girl spent her time doodling in her notebook, her lack of interest quite apparent, for what we were working on was only extra credit and not mandatory. However, the other student and I dutifully tried to answer as many questions as we could, though we were at a disadvantage as we only had a printed copy of selected passages from Luke but otherwise did not have a Bible at our disposal.
Near the end of the class, he and I fell into conversation about our respective beliefs. I asked him if he was serious about his Jewish faith and if so, to what degree. He told me that when he was younger, he had been a dutiful student, diligently studying at the synagogue and earning high marks as he tried to get to the bottom of Orthodox Judaism. He reached a point, however, in which he decided that it was all rubbish and commented that while our technology has progressed exponentially, our faith remains stuck in the Dark Ages, much like the central thesis in Sam Harris’ The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. (I have personally read Harris’ book from cover to cover and would not recommended it for the faint of faith though otherwise it is a thought-provoking read; if you would like to look before you leap, Amazon.com offers a telling interview with Harris here.) I was not unsympathetic with what my classmate was saying, for I have frequently wrestled with questions of relevancy when it comes to issues of faith. In fact, his argument is beautifully illustrated by a class discussion from my “philosophical ideas in literature” class last semester. We had been reading the science fiction novel Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clark, which depicts a time in Earth’s future in which an alien race known as the Overlords come down from the skies and usher in a Golden Age of peace and prosperity. In particular, the conversation that day in philosophy class was sparked by a handful of paragraphs describing this so-called Golden Age of humanity:
Perhaps the old faiths would have lingered for generations yet, had it not been for human curiosity. It was known that the Overlords had access to the past, and more than once historians had appealed to Karellen [the central Overlord ambassador] to settle some ancient controversy. It may have been that he had grown tired of such questions, but it is more likely that he knew perfectly well what the outcome of his generosity would be. . . .
The instrument he handed over on permanent loan to the World History Foundation was nothing more than a television receiver with an elaborate set of controls for determining coordinates in time and space. It must have been linked somehow to a far more complex machine, operating on principles that no one could imagine, aboard Karellen’s ship. One had merely to adjust the controls, and a window into the past was opened up. Almost the whole of human history for the past five thousand years became accessible in an instant. Earlier than that the machine would not go, and there were baffling blanks all down the ages. They might have had some natural cause, or they might be due to deliberate censorship by the Overlords.
Though it had always been obvious to any rational mind that all the world’s religious writings could not be true, the shock was nevertheless profound. Here was a revelation which no one could doubt or deny: here, seen by some unknown magic of Overlord science, were the true beginnings of all the world’s great faiths. Most of them were noble and inspiring—but that was not enough. Within a few days, all mankind’s multitudinous messiahs had lost their divinity. Beneath the fierce and passionless light of truth, faiths that had sustained millions for twice a thousand years vanished like morning dew. All the good and all the evil they had wrought were swept suddenly into the past, and could touch the minds of men no more.
Humanity had lost its ancient gods: now it was old enough to have no need for new ones. (Childhood’s End 66–67)
Dr. Kaufman asked the class what would happen to Christianity in particular—since we live in the buckle of the Bible belt and we’ve all had far more experience with American Protestantism than any other brand of faith—if such a device was devised that conclusively demonstrated that Jesus never arose from the grave. The stipulation for our speculation was that it could be shown beyond any reasonable doubt that His “non-resurrection” was true such that no one who was at all honest with himself could deny or refute it. The responses were several and varied. Some said that Christians would nonetheless simply deny it anyway, dismissing it as an ingenious lie from Satan, and go on believing what they had always believed. Others were more generous in their assessment of the intellectual integrity of believers, suggesting that Christians would simply accommodate the fact and reinterpret Scripture in light of the new finding: “Jesus didn’t really mean that He would rise again bodily: He was only speaking metaphorically as an example of the spiritual life capable of arising within each of us.” The latter scenario seemed to be the most common consensus; absolutely no one believed that such an event would completely cripple Christianity (though perhaps it would cause a few individual believers to fall away here and there) and Dr. Kaufman agreed, pointing to his own Orthodox Judaism as a further example. He said he felt that Clark seriously underestimated the resilience of faith, particularly Orthodox faith (whether Christian, Jewish, or other), which he distinguished from fundamentalism, suggesting that the latter is wooden and inflexible (and thus brittle and susceptible to breakage) and that the former is like a palm tree in the wind (and thus flexible, standing strong even in the midst of assailing storms).
A self-described agnostic sitting in the back perhaps best characterized what Dr. Kaufman meant by the inflexibility of fundamentalism when he spoke of his grandparents with whom he had apparently stayed in his formative years. They evidently believed very adamantly in a young earth and when they were confronted with the evidence of dinosaur bones (deemed crippling to their beliefs), they asserted that Satan had hidden them there in the earth in order to throw people off the right path. Another person who made no profession of faith whatsoever lamented the choices with which he was presented: on the one hand, he could choose Christianity with all of its legalism or on the other deal with “the bullsh-t hippie religions that charge you for the next level of enlightenment”—neither one, from his perspective, offered an authentic choice.
If we are honest, we have to admit that there is truth in what was said; I, for one, do not think it would be a virtue to go on believing in a faith if it were so obviously proven false as our thought-experiment stipulated. Blaming Satan for hiding dinosaur bones (or corrupting the camera equipment of the Overlords) is not a very tenable explanation for evidence that runs blatantly contrary to our faith. There has to be a balance that is interested in finding the truth: we cannot constantly doubt our faith every time someone raises an objection but it is surely no virtue to blindly follow something without carefully considering its truthfulness either. We would not think very highly of someone of another faith—to make our argument as strong as possible, let’s pick one we believe is misguided or patently false—if they went on believing in spite of what we consider to be overwhelming evidence to the contrary; the same standard should reflect back on us as well if we value truth and honesty at all. Further, some of the things we fight for may not really matter: if our entire faith system threatens to collapse on account of whether dinosaur bones exist or not, perhaps we should seriously reevaluate why we are Christians in the first place.
So then, like Harris and (implicitly) Clark, my classmate was suggesting that for all of our advances in science and technology, our faith is still pathetically stuck in antiquity. He was referring to all faiths just as much as he was referring to his former belief in Orthodox Judaism. He said that he had worked hard to disentangle himself from “organized religion” and had thrown off a lot of excess baggage in the process. I felt caught in the middle, for I could not agree more that there are a lot of issues deemed of dire consequence in various institutionalized forms of religion that are in actuality entirely irrelevant and out of touch with the real world: there are, for lack of a better term, many “sacred cows” that often end up causing people to reject what is genuinely good and true because issues of lesser importance (such as unproven conjectures, opinions, and personal preferences) are set on a par with the bare essentials of a given faith. Further, many has been the church service through which I have sat arguing in my mind with what was being taught, feeling that the everyday world in which I live throughout the rest of my week was light-years removed from what I was being asked to believe (if “asked” is really even the right word). It is one thing to be in the world and not of it; quite another not to be in the world at all—or even within the known universe. Such things can make me profoundly uncomfortable, for I genuinely seek truth and I know that sometimes the person who is in the wrong and needs to have his perspective changed is me; I try not to overlook that possibility even as the internal arguments rage inside my head. But so often, I simply fail to see the relevancy of a particular doctrine, particularly those that have little to do with the Gospel message and those that are hotly debated within Christendom, each side suggesting that the other is populated by complete ignoramuses who are prideful and arrogant and who set themselves up in the place of God, teaching heresy to fleece the sheep and keep them in humble submission. (It is one thing to respectfully disagree and bear with one another in love, quite another to call down hellfire and brimstone because theologian X, whom we follow, disagrees with theologian Y whom you follow.)
But even when things do not get polarized and ugly, I still could never assent to some of the doctrines of faith I am asked to believe, because, frankly, I do not know and further I do not see where my agreeing or disagreeing makes one ounce of difference. I think it is far better for me to say, “I don’t know,” than “Yes, I agree,” unless I have been persuaded of the importance of an issue and discover that I have more reasons to believe than not believe. For example, I do not know beyond all doubt that Jesus is the Son of God, but I do ultimately believe that He is; it is a central article of my faith. I would have a hard time calling myself a Christian in good conscience if I did not believe at least that much. But often, a given church desires that I assent to far more than that: they have their own conception of faith that may not even agree with the church next door and can quickly become put out with me when I remain reluctant to sign their dotted doctrinal line. I long for truth; I long for relevancy; I long for validity; I long for substance. I don’t want a contrived faith, an artificial faith, a faith that is constantly needing to be propped up with a thousand polarizing statements that divides “us” from “them” and a form of rhetoric that thinks that the louder the decibel level and the more passionate the proclamation, the truer something accordingly becomes. No, I want a faith that is true even when it is spoken in a tiny whisper or uttered with great timidity—a faith that stands even if (or perhaps especially when) nothing is said at all. In fact, I believe I prefer a faith that carries itself with a certain quiet poise and dignity: a quietly self-assured faith that feels no need to prove its validity to anybody but sometimes feels compelled to speak because speaking is the right thing to do. I’m looking for a faith that thrives very well out-of-doors.
Just recently, I was sharing with a friend that I have discovered the strangest thing about my doubts: while they often exist on an intellectual level that gives me little rest in my waking moments, underneath that level is an almost subconscious strata that nonetheless believes and believes strongly. I believe this is why I can be sincerely praying and doubting at the same time: at some point, the presence of God entered my life and transformed me: a very real, literal transformation on the spiritual level that has made me aware of many things that my conscious mind sometimes obscures. Thus, I tried to explain this very phenomenon to my classmate and his response was to recommend the book The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz. He spoke in glowing terms of the book and said that he highly, highly recommended it, asking me if I was familiar with an alternative spiritual bookstore here in town where the book is sold. I was, and said so.
Now I have not read the book and am therefore not disposed to say anything whatsoever about it one way or another, though I will speak about his conversation surrounding it. He suggested, presumably from his reading of this book, that this level of deeper faith I just described was a faith that I had inherited: that I “couldn’t help it,” if you will. In other words, despite my earlier rebellion and disbelief—and despite his own rebellion and disbelief—we were basically fated to believe what we believe on a very deep level because it is the belief-system into which we were born and it has essentially become hard-wired into our brains. I certainly would not deny that there is some validity to that suggestion. In fact, I made a similar argument in Anger Management and the Koran a few months ago, though I did not take it to the level of being hard-wired. But I did not feel that his explanation gave enough benefit of the doubt to the possibility that the reason I have this deeper faith is that God literally reached into my life and touched me. In other words, my own experience repeatedly bears out, at least to my own mind, that the Holy Spirit is not only real, but has often been at work in my own life, silently, invisibly, changing me from the inside and giving me a rare level of wisdom and insight that is lost on many of my peers.
On a related note, in the Sunday school class I’ve recently been attending on the role of the Holy Spirit, a visiting missionary brought out what to me was a compelling point. He spoke about how the twelve disciples always seemed to be getting everything wrong, totally misunderstanding who Jesus was and what He was trying to teach them. He was right there in their midst and they still weren’t getting it. However, in speaking about the passage in John 14 in which Jesus promises to send the Holy Spirit, the man spoke about the amazing transformation that happened in the lives of the disciples once the Holy Spirit came to live inside of them. Now we could and probably should bring up the Christian conviction that part of the greater understanding of the disciples after the Holy Spirit was sent resulted from their having personally lived through and experienced Jesus’ death and resurrection, and thus understood things much more clearly, as we all do in retrospect. Yet with that concession clearly noted, it still seems as though having the Holy Spirit living within them enabled them to understand things much more clearly than they did when face to face with their Lord (who nonetheless obviously remained exterior to them). The missionary finished his comments by stating that we often think that it would be far easier to walk by sight and not faith, but in truth we have been given the far greater gift: God’s Spirit lives within us and guides our very thoughts and minds in ways that could never be accomplished by witnessing someone exterior to us, even if that someone were Jesus.
In any case, I felt that my classmate was failing to fully understand what I was attempting to communicate about this deeper level of faith that existed under the surface of my doubts. Not only that—and I mean no disrespect to him in pointing these issues out—I began to pick up on small things about him I hadn’t noticed before. At a distance, he always seemed like he was quite conscientious and possessed many admirable characteristics, though I guess upon further reflection I would have to admit that there were times his charisma did seem a bit self-serving. And, lest anyone think that I am setting myself or anyone else on the high pedestal of impeccable virtue, I know that we all—and this includes Christians along with everybody else—are still fallible creatures who still sometimes do carnal, self-serving things and are far from being perpetual models of charity and grace. Yet with these admissions out of the way, I will at the least suggest that I was a little disappointed by some of the things I witnessed; for example, how quickly he resorted to profanity and vulgarity and how there seemed to be a subtle pride that wasn’t particularly attractive: nothing to condemn him or suggest that he didn’t have some very valid points, but enough to bring to mind Jesus’ statement about “You shall know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16–18) and Paul’s talk about the natural man’s inability to understand the things of God, for they are spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:11–16). (And of course, now would be an excellent time to note that there is an empirical test offered to determine if someone is walking closely with God: do you know what it is? The fruit that such a one bears will be the fruit of the Spirit: the fruit of the Vine.)
But there was something else I’d said earlier in our conversation about my faith in Jesus as well, which seemed especially relevant since our class assignment was essentially sending us through the Gospels with a microscope: I said that one reason why I believe in Jesus is because I have taken Him up on the challenge He presents in John 7:16; specifically, John 7:16–18 reads:
So Jesus answered them and said, “My teaching is not Mine, but His who sent Me. If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself. He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but He who is seeking the glory of the One who sent Him, He is true, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.”
Jesus says in effect, “Put it to the test: try it and see.” And it strikes me, as I have said before, that the only way we can ever fully assess whether a given faith is true is to test it experientially, from the inside. We may be able to assess its internal consistency from the outside, but we can’t prove it true or false in this way, for faith does not work like that. We can most assuredly, however, test its claims from the inside and see whether they abide by what we intuitively know to be right, just, and true. In fact, as I was pondering these thoughts, I had just read the fourth chapter of Mark; in particular, Mark 4:21–25 states:
And He was saying to them, “A lamp is not brought to be put under a basket, is it, or under a bed? Is it not brought to be put on the lampstand? For nothing is hidden, except to be revealed; nor has anything been secret, but that it would come to light. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” And He was saying to them, “Take care what you listen to. By your standard of measure it will be measured to you; and more will be given you besides. For whoever has, to him more shall be given; and whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him.”
The footnote in the NAB seemed especially relevant to me: “Acceptance of the original light gives promise of more light in the future (24). Conversely, rejection of that light results in greater obscurity and misunderstanding (25).” That not only strikes me as being very true of life, it also speaks to this idea of desiring proof to allay the nagging doubts. In order to draw closer to God and receive more light, we have to walk in the light that we do have. And that is precisely the area in which it seemed that my classmate fell short: he did not seem to have the same level of honesty in his quest that I currently do; in fact, he reminds me somewhat of my former agnostic self. He has much going for him and no one can deny that fact. But there are still a few areas in which he does not see nearly as clearly as he thinks he does, suffering from blind spots that can only be discovered from the inside looking out.
No, the truth that we seek is available to us, but we have to test it for ourselves. As I was speaking to my classmate, my assessment of faith was not limited to an external text but was rather prompted by the internal testimony of one who has taken Jesus at His word, testing His claims to see if they are true. I have not always lived up to His high standards; in fact, I have often let Him down. But I do believe. And many of the hard sayings that my classmates puzzled over made sense to me on a very deep level, though I was at a loss as to how to communicate such truth. As the footnote in the NAB suggests (in part) for the passage in Mark 4:10ff:
The light shed by the parables on the reign of God, though real, is far from complete. For the disciples, well-disposed to accept the teaching, questions are answered; not so for the crowds, ill-prepared at this time to abandon their false preconceptions. Thus Mark indicates a gradual unveiling of the mystery, beginning with the parables and continuing as a slow realization on the part of the hearers that the traditional conceptions of God’s reign were false and contrary to His plan; cf Mt 13, 33.
I could not tell my classmates what some of the things Jesus said really meant, for they would have no point of reference for understanding them, no way to discern what I was trying to say. Many of them have never taken Jesus up on His challenge and thus have only a very limited spiritual understanding of some of His admittedly difficult sayings. Instead, they simply stumble over many of the things He said, taking offense at Him, just as many people did in His own day. Yet all the textual criticism in the world cannot obscure what personal experience has unveiled. If you want proof, there is only one answer Jesus offers: “Put Me to the test: taste and see that the Lord is good, place your finger in my side, inspect My fruit, see whether or not I come from the Father, ask and it shall be given you, seek and ye shall find, knock and the door will opened unto you.” As we have noted, if we strive to walk in what light we do have, more light will be added unto us, but if we fail to walk in the light that we already do possess, even that light will gradually begin to fade. The proof of the pudding is in the eating—or not.
God bless,
Eric
“An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign; and yet no sign will be given it but the sign of Jonah the prophet.”
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