How weird…: just after I published the last post I stumbled over a post I had written a while ago but not published. It had the heading “authentic, passionate or schizophrenic?”. It said the following:
Is it possible to live with the following two attitudes at the same time?
I am honest about not believing the bible to deliver a true description of God’s existence and nature. I admire the authenticity of atheists and agnostics.
When looking at images from space and thinking about us little earthlings…..when comparing Blaise Pascal on his deathbed to Richard Dawkins on his deathbed………when thinking about how many of my religious friends are in line with what I intuitively sense life to be all about while many many non-religious friend seem to miss something deep, adventurous, true…….when thinking about the fact that I have only one life to live and not much to loose…… I aim at living with God as my counterpart.
The question is: Can I live it? And is it upright to live it?
First: Sorry for not showing up on my own blog! I messed it up.
I realized how difficult it is to write and respond regularly on the blog; and so I decided this week (against my initial goals) that instead of constantly having a bad conscience about not writing regularly, I’ll just change my goal: I’ll write when I feel like it and I won’t write when I don’t feel like it (the latter is more likely once I don’t work as much overtime as I do at the moment…)
Recently, somebody opened my eyes regarding my troubles with faith. He observed that the things I say about my faith are anything but unified. On the one hand, I am extremely critical of Christianity and I feel unable to believe the story. On the other hand, I feel so much drawn to it and I like going to church and when there’s christianity-bashing going on on TV I am outraged and I can talk about theological ideas not only from a detached perspective but as a spiritual insider and when I am in church I feel like I’m in the right place, in “my father’s house” so to speak, and I place much importance on attending church regularly.
Realizing that I’m kind of schizophrenic was almost an epiphany to me.
I always wondered why I have so much trouble giving up faith even though I obviously don’t buy into many of faith’s doctrines. I always thought that I have so much trouble giving it up because walking away from faith would cost me too much (less emotional comfort, broken relationships, …). But now, I realized that my hesitance to give up faith is not only weakness, it’s not just that I stick to something cozy even though I know it’s wrong. No. It’s rather that different aspects of my personality are in conflict as to whether sticking to Christianity is the right thing for me.
The friend who opened my eyes suggested that I aim at unification: If the different voices in me are in tension, I ought to aim at integrating them, bringing them in line, becoming a “whole” person.
Even though I am very fond of this advice, I am only convinced of it to 90%. There’s a 10% doubt in me that asks: Isn’t it a sign of strength and honesty that I am able to endure these multiple voices in me? So many people simply hammer and squeeze the confusing variety of their experience into a neat picture rather than accepting the difficult fact that being open for reality leads us to a perplexing cacophony of impressions and a dazzling variety of evidence pointing into all kinds of directions.
But, all in all, I am very fond of the advice. In particular, bringing the different pulls within me in touch with each other will help me decide where I want to go.
It must have been about two weeks ago. I felt really tired of carrying the responsibility of bringing myself back to faith.
“God”, I suggested, “how about a division of labor. You take the responsibility of bringing me back to faith. I take the responsibility of being honest and to stop trying to believe it if I can’t believe.”
A wise person recently told me (with respect to my faith problems) that some things die when you dissect them. Obviously true. Animals, for example, die when you dissect them. And I am very open to the idea that faith might die, too, when you intellectually dissect it.
Or in another metaphor: In quantum physics (if I remember correctly) there is very roughly the problem that the properties of some things are unobservable because observation changes these properties. Observing God might be in a similar way impossible, because our way of approaching him as spectators might make him invisible.
The difficult thing is: What am I to make of these wise insights even if I were to agree with them?
I compulsively try to observe God, I obsessively dissect the arguments for and against him. How should I not? I worry about being able to believe day and night – how should I not direct my intellectual attention to that issue continuously and dissect it intellectually? In what different way (i.e. different from intellectually dissecting) could I aim at returning to belief? And how could I possibly refrain from focussing compulsively on the God issue?
Just read an autobiographical piece by A N Wilson on why he de-de-converted. I liked the tone of his narrative. Not all his reasons for coming back to faith convinced me. But one thing that I found very noteworthy is this extract:
When I think about atheist friends, including my father, they seem to me like people who have no ear for music, or who have never been in love. It is not that (as they believe) they have rumbled the tremendous fraud of religion – prophets do that in every generation. Rather, these unbelievers are simply missing out on something that is not difficult to grasp. Perhaps it is too obvious to understand; obvious, as lovers feel it was obvious that they should have come together, or obvious as the final resolution of a fugue.
What I learned from this quote is the following. The way to see the problems with atheism does possibly not lie in showing where atheist arguments go wrong. If atheism can be refuted at all, it might rather have to do with showing how the atheist is missing something obvious. He misses the obvious because he doesn’t take up a certain perspective — a perspective from which the reality of God would suddenly seem very plausible. Missing out on this perspective: this might be the problem of atheism. Like someone who doesn’t believe in music because he never opened his ears.
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BTW, won’t be able to engage in discussions in the next two weeks. I’m on vacation — offline vacation to be precise.
Sometimes I interpret my faith of the last years as being based on an infinite longing. I interpret my faith of the last years in the following way: I didn’t have much reason to believe that God exists – but neither did I have much reason to believe anything else. And since I knew I had this incredible longing for “the light”, for wholeness, for “salvation” and happiness, I took an adventurous, crazy step and threw myself into Christianity. Not because I was so certain of its truth but because I found it so infinitely meaningful and attractive that even if there was only some little chance of it being true, it was worth it to make the bet (a very Pascalian line of reasoning).
Now….. when some of the Christians I know enjoy their easy certainties, I do not feel understood. They just lean back because they have their belief that Christianity IS true to relax upon. They can lean back because they’ve sorted it out and can base their faith on a comforting and certain knowledge of the truth about God. If they are of that kind, they do not understand just what kind of big struggle it is for me to believe. They do not understand just how adventurous, heroic or crazy it is of me, to venture faith. They have never felt the despair upon which my faith rests.
Actually, many of the feelings I’ve listed so far apply symmetrically to being a non-christian. I consider many secular people so ridiculous in how convinced they are of their position. I look down upon so many secular folks – they take it for granted that they’re right and they don’t see all the problems there are with their worldview. I am even angry at them because of their despising attitudes towards my faith. If I more explicitly left the faith than I do now, they could think “Finally, this poor indoctrinated soul has come to his senses, too, and has accepted the obvious. He managed to deceive himself for so long in order to have a clear identity and live in a fundamentalist fantasy world. Must have been difficult for him to leave that.” They don’t realize that even now, I actually still think there are so many things that are intellectually much more better captured by a religious worldview than by a non-religious worldview.
I might be terribly embarrassed: For so long, I’ve defended Christianity infront of others. And now, I myself must acknowledge that there are so many difficult sides to it. Indeed, I think embarassment in many ways is an important topic about my current “faith crisis”.
I might be angry: For so long people have handed this faith over to me and have passed it off as something trustworthy. Shouldn’t they have been more careful in what they’re giving me? Didn’t they know within that it might just be a beautiful myth? (It’s actually interesting to see how many people in their deconversion stories talk about the disappointment they experienced as children when they realize that their parents have known that Santa is unreal all along)
I am so angry at this universe. Why must it be shrouded as a riddle? Why is this urge in us to go beyond eating and sleeping to find some deeper meaning — but at the same time there is no answer to our questions in which we can find peace?
I am embarassed (again, this seems to be a forceful emotion) of not being more courageous. Often, I just feel like I stick with faith because I’m too timid to break off. I am not courageous enough to disapoint people and live a life without comfort. This lack of courageousness is embarassing.
Miscellaneous emotions that come up when thinking about reconciling myself with faith:
At the moment, I sometimes feel like just spitting out all the anger I have at the complacency many Christians have about basing their faith on implausible arguments. At the moment, I sometimes feel like looking down at the naïvité of some Christians. (How ugly of me!!!)
But still, I don’t do these like spitting out anger or ridiculing others. Why? Because I feel that if I should ever manage to find back to faith, it would then be very embarassing and humbling for me to admit that I — who once looked down at faith — now has to sumbit to it myself.
It would also need humbleness to come back to faith if I had to deal with people who feel that they’ve been right all along. People who are so convinced of themselves and their possession of the truth. Those people could feel superior and think within themselves “Now, he finally realizes what we’ve known all along”.
If I would join faith again not because I consider it coherent but because (in this mysterious universe) I consider everything else even less coherent, then it would take a lot of humbleness to identify myself with with folks from the flock who take their certainties for granted while I, in contrast, would come as a desperate, confused, intellectually empty-handed man.
It would also need humbleness to return to faith because I would have to mould into the stream, to join the flock, to do what my friends do when there is so much in me that rebels against the thought of not having found something by myself, of not doing my own special thing, of identifying with people whom I cannot identify with. I particularly don’t like the idea of following in the footsteps of my parents. (Crazy that I should still have this feeling about dissociating from my parents after 30… I wonder what it is… interestingly, I don’t have this pull to do something else than my parents in other areas than religion… strange…).
I’m afraid that if I’d be lucky enough to find back to faith people would say “I thought all the time that you’ll come back in the end” or “I never lost my trust in God bringing you back”.
Even if all intellectual obstacles preventing me from reconciliation with the Christian faith were resolved there would still remain a host of emotional obstacles. These emotional tensions might possibly have more force than my intellectual burdens.
For this series of posts, I first aimed at a neat list of the objects making up the emotional landscape within me. But I realize that a neat and tidy account does not really match the nature of emotions. So, I’ll go for an unsystematic picture. Here are some things I observe (particularly related to my reactions to the thought of imagining myself reconciling with Christianity):
I’m angry at those Christians who put me in a certain “box” when I’m doubting. These are the Christians who always know in advance where my problem must lie. Sometimes, these are the more fundamentalist Christians who think, for example, that I have too much confidence in my own philosophical musings or who think the problem is only that I haven’t experienced God. But very often these are the more liberal Christians who immediately diagnose my problems with Christianity to be rooted in my naïve approach to faith. They all have their prejudices of what must go wrong in someone who can’t believe. They are so certain that if I just had their paradigm and their presuppositions (which they are so sure must be the right ones), then my pitiful misled thinking soul would come to the same conclusions they do. Or they are so sure that if I just had experienced something as intense as they did, then I wouldn’t have doubts.
It makes me angry when people pretend to know me better than I do. (Interesting – what is it about that that should make me angry?)
It makes me angry when people think it’s just all my fault for being where I am now.
I long so badly for Christians who take my skeptical arguments without immediately scanning them in order to find the fault in them but who first try to understand my perspective. It’s awesome when people first appreciate that there might be much good in my perspective, that there might even be something to respect in my journey (a quest for truth and honesty) before they start to treat me as a patient to be helped. It’s something beautiful to feel treated as someone who might have something of value to offer in his search. It’s awesome when people feel my problems with faith might be worth being understood (rather than only cured). When people acknowledge that I am not doing this out of fun (but rather suffer badly from this crisis), they might realize that I only pursue it because I feel it is something important.
It was a big eye-opener for me, when my girlfriend recently asked me “On a scale of 1-10, how much would you like to be a Christian?” and even after reflection, I was still fairly positive that my spontaneous answer of “10″ was right.
I want to be able to continue the kind of life I’ve started, the relationship(s) I’m in, the hope that there’s someone good behind this universe, the sense of belonging to a home like the church, the trust in a foundation for my fights for justice, etc. I’d be so incredibly frustrated to have to give up that kind of stuff. Of course, there’s also lots of “anti-emotions” (to be blogged about soon) but overall, what I want to be is a Christian. Exclamation mark!
This “10″ also worries me. Because I know that I am so eager to be a Christian, I grow evermore suspicious of myself. Everytime I find a reason to re-start my faith, I become skeptical of this reason and cultivate the suspicion that its root might be found in my wishful thinking rather than in my honest sense of what’s real.
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My girlfriend also asked me how much I long for God (as something separate from “wanting to be a Christian”). And there the answer was not as clear. I long for God but I couldn’t give it a 10. No.
I want to be a Christian for many reasons that are unrelated to longing for God. Such reasons are: Staying with the friends I have, Living in an enchanted universe, Enjoying a traditional marriage ceremony, etc.
I think I wasn’t able at all to give a 10 to my longing for God because I think life without God would be bearable. It would definitely be extremly frustrating to loose faith and I’d feel empty – but I have the impression that it would be bearable. I’d be really annoyed – but I wouldn’t fall into depression. I am blessed with so many earthly good things (good job, good family, good food, etc.) that I have the impression that I would only be incredibly upset about loosing faith — but not completely broken. It seems like I wouldn’t fall into a hole of cosmic sadness. I’d just be frustrated so badly. (But, of course, this is partly guesswork).
This was different when I lost faith 8 years ago: Deep within me and far below the surface, I felt such a tremendous inner sadness and brokenness about life back then, that being desperate by itself was enough reason to long for God.
Here’s a basic dilemma I’ve carried with me for many years:
I consider it more plausible than not that there is a God.
For every single specification of God I know of (Conservative Christianity, Deism, Mormonism, liberal Christianity, …), I find it more plausible than not that it depicts God wrongly.
So, I’m stuck: I tend to believe there is a God. But it seems that if I believe there is a God, then I have to believe that there is a certain specific God.
But: I cannot believe in any specific God – i.e. I don’t believe in any of the historical proposals for painting a more concrete image of God (and neither can I come up with my own plausible specifications of who God might be).
An analogy is the following: It’s my co-worker’s birthday and he believes that I will bring a cake to the office. At the same time, if someone asked him whether he would accept a bet (which will cost him a pound in case he’s wrong and give him a pound in case he’s right) that I bring a chocolate cake, he wouldn’t go for that bet (because he thinks the chance is less than 50% that I bring a chocolate cake). Neither would he go for the same bet on an angel food cake. Neither would he go for the same bet on a lemon cake or any other specification of a cake. He only believes that I bring a cake; but for any given cake, he doesn’t believe that I will bring it.
What should I do? If I’m right that I cannot give my life to “a” God but only to a certain specific God (such as the Christian Trinity), then both seems irrational: to believe in some such God and not to believe in some such God.
I’m stuck. I offer a prize money of £5 to the person who tells me either what to do in this situation or else what’s wrong with my depiction of the situation.
I’m sorry for the long absence. I had the stupid idea in my head that spending the last 12 years at the university made it necessary for me to gain some practical experience in the so-called “real world”. However, this just meant working way too much and dealing with really difficult people out there, in that real world.
…A friend of mine was in Africa, these last months and she wrote that when she would walk in normal speed on the sidewalk, people would turn to her and remind her: “Tranquillement!” So, that’s what I told myself, too, and I therefore let some things in my life, such as this blog, go less well than they should.
I know that this is not the way to go for a blog… It is my intention to now start blogging again with a certain regularity.
Easter was a special experience. My girl friend and I went to a Christian retreat up in the mountains. I liked it. But I also made a bitter experience. Even as a person whose faith has gone bankrupt, I could follow a lot of the program: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Stations of the Cross, Songs, Prayers, etc. They all meant something to me and they were interesting to follow, observe, go along. But when it came to Easter Morning, I crashed. On Easter Morning I wasn’t able to be truly happy, joyous from within (not that surpising, given the state of my faith). I didn’t manage to believe the “big thing”, i.e. the resurrection.
I could follow other spiritual activities much more easily. They were activities that one could follow half-heartedly and with doubt in my mind. But Easter Morning couldn’t be followed half-heartedly: I had to face the fact that the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus doesn’t make me euphoric. And since I couldn’t go along with it half-heartedly, I turned to the complete other side, emotionally speaking.
(Maybe it also had something to do with celebrating at 5.30 a.m. This is a time of the day when I usually am very grumpy (VERY grumpy) regardless of what I’m doing…)
sorry, dear potential blog readers, for being so absent.
I was offered an internship two months ago which I – most stupidly – thought I was able to additionally cramp into my already tight schedule. This proved wrong and now I need all my energy to work, sleep, eat and lead life and have no energy at all left over for written reflections about life. I am not doing too well. I feel like I have crossed the thin line from being a Christian who is dealing with doubts to being a Confused Earthling who has lost his faith (and would like to regain it). For a long time it felt more like I was constantly “oscillating” between being able to believe and not being able to believe.
Here’s a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip I liked.
BTW, I am not claiming that I see all sides of the issue. But after intensly staring at my faith and intellectually circling aroud it for a year, I sometimes cannot help but wish (just like good old Calvin) to lose some perspective.
One of my good friends also asked me whether my problem possibly is that I take the diversity of opinions too seriously. He asked me whether my problem was that as soon as someone (Christian, Buddhist, Agnosticist, Hedonist, …) made a claim I give it some plausibility and take it into serious consideration – which seems like a sure recipe for being puzzled in the end.
BTW, I recently wrote about reading Blue Like Jazz. Here is a statement of one of the best images/points in the book (in the book it’s longer and better put into words). I also finished reading “Simply Christian” by Tom Wright. It’s a lovely book and it presents one of the most attractive versions of Christianity I can think of.
It is symptomatic, that at the end of the book, I wrote down for myself “But is it all true?” – i.e.: I like the faith he so beautifully talks about, but I’m not sure whether I trust this story to be reality.
It brought to my attention something he himself writes about: In some way the story of Israel, Jesus, the New World etc. is so peculiar, unique, extraordinary. Based on your natural faculties of judgement alone you could never have the feeling: This must be true. For this it is much too special. Our secular, “two-dimensional” human common sense tells us that a thousand other stories might be true just as well. If it ever does deeply convince us, it must make sense to us in another way. If it does capture our intellectual allegiance, it must be our spiritual eyes who cannot but embrace it. Wright himself compares it to being overtaken when watching a beautiful painting or hearing a symphony – you just cannot help but say “That’s it”. In fact, that goes well with how Wright begins the book (the book has three parts: first, reasons why there could in general be a God; second, the story of the Bible and Church; third, how the Christian life looks like). He begins the book by pointing out how we are so familiar with a voice calling us, so familiar with longings which point to something, so familiar with desires for justice, beauty, relationships and spirituality. This he takes to be our homesickness and awareness of God (That was very rough).
A large part of what convinced me of Christianity in Wright’s book is what convinced me in any apologetic writing: Not primarily the content of the book itself, but rather the fact that such a wise, smart, educated, sharp-minded (and in Wright’s case: cheerful and life affirming) person does manage to be a Christian.
OK, so much for today. I will quit my internship latest by the end of March and I hope to start to reflect and answer more systematically again.
sorry for not showing up in the past days… I know it’s not good for the flow if I take so much time to answer… but life’s just too intense at the moment, got sooo much work to do. It’s so difficult: how shall I work through faith decisions, existential issues, meetings with God, frustrations, etc. while at the same time trying to lead an active professional and social life? It’s a mess… …too much for my old soul
Have not been doing too well these past days. Recently I woke up and realized that in my dream I was banging my fists on a bible because I was so angry at it!
I’m just about to finish Tom Wright’s “Simply Christian” (which is a good book! I hope to write about it sometime soon here. I like how he compares thinking about God to staring into the sun).
I also finished Donald Miller’s “Blue Like Jazz”. Great book! I think some people are put off by how he sometimes acts like the “cool guy” and stresses that there are also cool christians (who don’t like Bush and who smoke and all that). But this showing off in the sense of “we’re cool, too” didn’t bother me (I guess he knows enough people for whom this message is liberating and so it made sense to have it in the book). Anyway, what I liked about the book: It was difficult to put away! There are so many books I try to read because I consider them to be extremely important for making up my mind about my faith and I crave for reading them. But even those books that are important to me and which I am eager to read just tire me and I have to work through them. Don Miller, in contrast, just takes us on this enjoyable, touching, deep, unsystematic journey through his inner life, his faith and the things he’s experienced. He didn’t help me sort out any of my difficulties, but I felt understood. His honesty and writing style captured me.
All the best to anybody hanging around here…
hope to give my view on some of Big Dan’s bible thoughts soon…
OK, I hope this huge outpouring of words didn’t deter potential readers too much…
I think my best chances for reconciliation with the bible must begin with researching (and maybe imitating) how people (including my former self) who do get along with the bible read that book. That’s where I must dig in my treasure hunt.
If my dia(b)logue partner Big Dan should have read these posts: I’m not sure what you meant with the question “Are you going to touch on the idea of the Bible as “God’s Holy Word”?” (but I’d of course be interested to know)
A sixth attempt at finding my way back to the bible would be take one problem at the time and explain it away.
For two problems (contradictions in the infancy stories and the question of a cruel war God in the old testament), I did a bit of this (with the help of a website the content of which has much more substance than the credentials of its author and the design would let you think). I was surprised that it did help – it helped much more than I expected it would and really did mitigate some of my worries.
However, it didn’t silence my problems completely. And the list of problems seems to be so long, that, in the end, this approach seems not very promising.
P.S.: You know what’s strange? When I try to think of what the specific problems are that I have with the bible (such as specific verses or specific claims), it’s not so easy for me to give examples. This surprises me because my overall impression about myself is that I just have tons of problems with the bible.
Here’s a fifth attempt at how I might reconcile myself with the bible.
One thing is for sure: The bible strongly speaks to certain persons (at certain times surely including me). It’s like the book is alive. It’s meaningful.
So instead of trusting the bible because I have some explanation of how it can be reliable in the face of its apparent difficulties, I could trust the bible despitelacking an explanation. That is: I discard the need for having a neat theory (or any theory at all) about how the bible can be true in the face of its difficult passages and I take the power of that book as sufficient ground for trusting it.
It’s similar to listening to a very charismatic speaker and following his words even though you don’t really know why (or whether) the content of his words makes sense (Richard Rohr comes to mind as an example).
This might seem blatantly irrational to some. But this is not necessarily so. Here are two considerations which hint at why it might be rational:
#1 (hold your breath, it’s a bit messy what I’m writing, but I have the feeling I’m on to something important).
Here’s a scenario:
(i) Assume that God is very different from how we expect him to be and that he surpasses our understanding in many ways.
(ii) Assume that God poses himself the challenge of informing us about his character and his ways.
(iii) From premise (i) I can conclude that if God would simply describe his own character and his ways, then we would have no reason to trust this description as being reliable (since – as laid out in premise (i) – he is very different from how we expect a God to be). As rational beings we have to filter the various accounts there are about God. And we filter those accounts by whether they match our expectations of how God would be if there were one (we have to do is! – how else would be able to tell that psychotics lie who think they’re a reincarnation of Jesus?). If the true God (who is assumed to be very different from how we expect a God to be) gave us a simple descriptive account of himself, then according to the criteria we use to check the reliability of religious claims (which are based on how we expect a supposed God to be) this account would not pass our reliability check. That seems like a dilemma.
How could God circumvent this dilemma? He knows that honest, truthful, rational humans would not have reason to trust his self-description when they only look at the content of his self-description. So what he might do is the following: He might give his self-description but at the same time command the Spirit to powerfully touch people when they read it and to induce people to believe it when they read it.
#2
There are many things in life where we (justifiedly!) do things simply based on instinct or intuitively being pulled towards doing them without understanding why we should do them or how it can be that they work. For example, as a child I learn to walk without understanding how walking and the anatomy of legs work. For example, most individuals aim at founding a family even though they have no theory to offer of why this should be the better choice for life (they just do it out of instinct or out of a tradition in society). For example, when I get to know a new person I trust my intuitive judgement of that person even though I couldn’t tell which specific things about that person (such as little details about facial expression) led me to that judgement.
So why shouldn’t we trust the bible even though we don’t know why this trust is the right thing? If in other areas of life we presuppose that trusting our instincts and following our gut reactions and intuitive sense is good — why shouldn’t we trust our instinct of using a book that has such life-transforming power?
(Something I wrote about in an old post, makes this all even more plausible to me: We would be so narrow-minded to disbelieve that there’s an obvious and clear picture in “magic eye images” simply because we aren’t familiar with these images or, even if we are familiar with them, we can’t scientifically explain how they work. Similarly with the bible: Some people just sense that the bible’s right even though they don’t have the theory about how that strange book can be right).
P.S.: Of course, if I started to trust the bible based on its touching and transforming power even though I have no idea about how that book can be true (given my current ways of interpreting it), then I would of course not be able to do exegesis the same way as I did in the old days. In the old days, I would look through the bible to see, for example, what it says about handling money. I would collect verses and chapters and try to form a coherent picture about the bible’s overall “message” about money. Once I admit that I trust the bible even though I can not make sense of it, this kind of finding simple answers is over.
Here’s a fourth attempt at how I might come to terms with the bible again (deep down it might be the same thing as the third attempt):
Imagine a little girl that can’t count to more than ten – any large number counts as ten for her. Imagine that the girl thinks of any tall man with a moustache as a mean man. Imagine now that the mother talks with the girl about a visit to the girl’s doctor (who happens to be a tall nice man with a moustache) in a month. The girl remembers the doctor and asks her mother “Are we going to the mean man?” The mother answers “yes”. The girl asks: “when are we going – tomorrow?” The mother answers “no”. The girl asks: “In ten days?”. The mother answers “yes”. Now my question: Did the mother tell the truth or not? In some way not: The doctor is not a mean man and they are not going in ten days. In another way, however, she did convey the truth to the little girl. The little girl knows more true statements after than before the dialogue. What the mother did was to make use of the (false!) beliefs and of the (false!) worldview of the little girl in order to convey a statement to the girl. The mother did not replace the deficient worldview of the child with the correct one in a wholesale fashion but rather added some truth to its false views. In such a gradual amendment of the girls beliefs the mother might be more successful in teaching the girl something than if she said only pure truth. The mother makes active use of the girls false beliefs in order to make the point.
Similarly, the statements of the bible might not be supposed to be taken at face value. Rather, the “real” statement in the bible are excavated when you look at the difference between the ancient people’s worldview and the bible’s worldview. The “real” statement of the bible might lie in letting the beliefs of ancient people progress in a certain direction. Here’s some example: To understand the message of Genesis 1 – 3 we might have to look at how it differs from creation myths en vogue at the time in the ancient near east. Or another example: To make the point that he is a mighty God to people 3000 years ago, God might have had to help them gain victory in battles because that’s how – within their belief system – the message that God is awesome was able to “connect”.
(to be still continued… wow, will this series ever take an end?)
Here’s a first attempt at how I could come to terms with the bible even though it seems to make statements which are not true:
One of the purposes of the bible might not be to make statements – i.e. to inform us about facts – but rather to do something with us, such as drawing us to the worship of God, changing us, healing us etc.
However, even if that should be one of the purposes or even the main purpose of the bible I cannot believe that it is its sole purpose. One of its purposes seems also to be to make statements about the way God and the world are. And even if “doing something with our soul” were the sole purpose of the bible, I cannot see how it could perform this task withoutsimultaneously also making statements about God and the world.
So, in the end we cannot escape the fact that the bible does make statements – statements which can be true or false.
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Here’s a second attempt at how I might return to respect for the bible: God might be so incredibly mysterious that when we make statements about him we are forced to say contradictory things. If we try to grasp him partially through statements at all, there’s no way but using paradoxical language.
How far does this solution take me? Even if I don’t think that strictly everything about God is mysterious, I agree that there might be things about God that can only be said – or at least be said better and more easily - using contradictory language. This might account for some of the things that seem like contradictions and implausibilities in the bible. The question is: does it account for all bullets that are hard to bite in the bible? It does not seem so to me.
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Here’s a third attempt at how I might make peace between me and the bible again: I might change my view about the way the bible makes statements.
For example, I might take more careful note of genre and conclude that what looks superficially like a weird statement is in fact a metaphorical exclamation in a psalm which is not to be taken literal and that the statement “beneath” the metaphor is more plausible. This will take me some way and do away with some of the problems I have with the bible but not with all of them.
A more important question about the way the bible makes statements is the following: Are the statements the bible makes (i) directly about God or are the statements rather (ii) about how people experience God?
(i) yields problems: If the bible should say God is X and God is not X, then it makes a false statement. However, if the bible should say – in line with (ii) – that Solomon experienced God as X and John experienced God as not X, then it does not make a false statement. People can see things differently – there’s nothing special about that. And if the bible should not be a list of truths directly about God but rather a record of how people through the ages experienced God, then a lot of my worries about inconsistent claims about God vanish.
That’s very good.
However, there’s still a major problem with (ii). If different persons experience God in contradictory ways, they can’t all be right. How then can we learn something about how God truly is, if the bible simply records the skewed sometimes-wrong-and-sometimes-right perceptions and conceptions of God that various humans had? How can we separate the truth in their experiences of God from the falsehood?
I have problems with the bible. It seems to make statements which are not true.
First, it seems to make statements about the world and God which contradict each other. Second, it seems to make statements about the world which contradict things we know from other sources (such as science as practiced in western universities of our day). Of course, these other sources might be wrong, too, and not only the bible, but in some cases this seems not very plausible. Third (and this is pretty much the same thing as second), it seems to make statements about the world and God which just seem intuitively implausible given the general background picture I have in the back of my mind and with which I grew up with in my culture. Of course, this intuitive background picture might be wrong, too, and not only the bible – but then it is hard to see how I could give up my deeply engrained basic framework of looking at the world.
So, on the face of it, the bible does not seem like a reliable book to me. How could I believe in Jesus as the son of God anyway even though the book that reports his divinity does not seem reliable? That question is the starting point for my following ramblings.
It’s Christmas tomorrow. And the last post just reminded me of a Calvin strip I once saw. I love Calvin & Hobbes – they’re good friends of mine.
Ah, I love Christmas, too. (Isn’t that part of what’s horrible for people who lose faith: That rituals like Christmas and wedding ceremonies are partly closed to them?).
Anyway, I’m looking forward to Christmas. And I hope you guys have reason to be looking forward, too. Thanks to all who have read posts and also to those who have commented! Merry Christmas!
Often, I feel very much drawn into faith. I go to church and something is happening with me. I read of other Christians and I feel connected to them. I’m fond of Jesus. I am drawn towards the world of faith.
The big dilemma of mine is that I can react in one of two ways to this “pull” into faith.
The first reaction says: “The cause of this sense of being drawn into faith is the higher reality called God – the higher reality that my little human brain cannot understand. The mysterious pull into faith is just a reflection of God’s presence and I’d be stupid and naive not to intuitively give in to this pull. The wise reaction is to discern this pull as a hint of an ultimate reality and to trust the gut feeling of being drawn towards it. If there actually should be a God who operates in dimensions that we cannot understand, then it would not be surprising at all that his impossible-to-grasp-sort-of-existence has the effect that our hearts are strangely drawn towards him when He’s on the move.”
The second reaction simply says “Well, religion is something attractive and so, of course, you’re drawn towards it. But being drawn towards something only reveals that you want it to be true. There’s nothing cognitive going on in this pull or desire for faith. Being drawn into it is simply a reflection of wishful thinking”.
My dilemma is that I don’t know to which of these two voices to listen.
I’ve been disappointed by the emergent church and McLaren. I put too high hopes in this movement. I knew that neither classical evangelicalism nor classical liberalism are good options; and therefore I was so eager to find out what kind of “Third Way” (which does not just amount to a middle way between evangelical and liberal) the emergent church would open up.
My conclusion is: It doesn’t open up a third way. The emergent conversation offers nothing fundamentally new. McLaren’s books provided no life-altering insight to my journey.
Don’t get me wrong: I think the emergening church thing is a great movement. It takes our times and our postmodern sensibilities seriously and it exposes how many supposedly “christian” things are actually more reflective of modernity than of genuine christianity. Emerging voices are open, creative, spiritual, … – being part of these churches is probably one of the best ways to follow Jesus in our day. And McLaren’s books on Finding Faith have awesome passages in them (e.g. what he says about deism or the bible).
All I’m saying is that it disappointed me given the high hopes I had put in it. It didn’t open up a radically new door for me.
Often, when I tell Christians about my doubts and problems with the Christian story, they’ll tell me that the problem is that I’m having false expectations about God. “No wonder you’re disappointed!”, they’ll say. “The problem is not God but your false picture of him. Don’t discard your faith but rather discard your unrealistic expectations of him”.
Just to give an example: If I am troubled by scientific and historical falsehoods in the bible, they reply to me that I shouldn’t have expected the bible to be a science and history book in the first place.
This reply often is convincing to me. And if changing my picture/expectations of God (or the Bible) makes it possible for me to continue believing in him, then I’ll gladly change my picture of God.
But: This strategy can turn into a “joker” strategy that can be played to silence any doubt – even justified doubt. Sometimes, when my expectations of God are not fulfilled, I should conclude that the problem lies with God’s reality and not with my expectations. Some of my disappointed expectations might actually not be false expectations but legitimate expectations.
I’m trying to stay away from pouring too much time into this searching. I keep telling myself that it’s more important to do than to think.
This resonated with something that has recently become important to me.
Assume that I am in the situation that I am very confused and agnostic about the big issues, in particular whether there is a God. Given that I am neither certain (or even just mildly convinced) that there is a God nor that there is no God, i.e. given that the evidence doesn’t determine what choice I should make, I am then free to choose to follow Jesus (just as I am free to choose not to follow him). I am then a “low conviction follower” or, in different words, a “christian agnostic”.
So far, so good. But it suddenly struck me that there are two completely different kinds of “christian agnostics”.
The first kind of christian agnostic says: I can’t settle the issue of whether christianity is true or not and I leave it at that and decide to follow Jesus.
The second kind of christian agnostic says: I can’t settle the issue of whether christianity is true or not and I keep on searching and, in the meantime, I follow Jesus.
I think whether I choose the first or the second option (if I am a christian agnostic at all, that is) makes a huge difference for my life. The first option closes the books and says “Well, I’ve been searching for thirty years, – been searching high, been searching low, been searching everywhere I know. The upshot is: After all this searching, I’ve got no idea what the truth about God is. No way to find out. No hope that investing further energy and time in this search is worth the small probability of making any progress. It’s time to take stock and start living out christianity instead of continuing to think about its truth”.
The second option, in contrast, is driven to search on and is fueled by the hope or the compulsive obsession to keep the eyes open. It says “Well, I haven’t found any answers yet. But I have this deep urge to keep on looking out for the truth. This doesn’t hinder me to live out christianity until (i) I’ve found something better or (ii) until I can confirm it more definitely or (iii) until I die”.
Both options are agnostic, and both are christian. But they make for a very different kind of life.
The second reaction says “We humans have this craving and longing. We have these desires. So let’s just fulfill them to whatever degree is possible”. This doesn’t mean a ruthless and egoistic grabbing of whatever one gets. It just means that one actively looks out for opportunities to make life more satisfying and happier. Instead of surrendering my life (to God) as in the first reaction, I take my life in my own hands. Instead of giving up the fulfillment of my wishes, I actively manage and plan the satisfaction of these wishes. I inform myself about what makes human life go well and I take responsibility for bringing my life on a track where I will be able to reap good fruits. Of course, whether I will be able to have many of my human cravings fulfilled depends a lot on luck, not least on which part of the earth I was born into. But nevertheless, whatever my starting position is, whatever misfortunes and fortunes I have to deal with, I just make the best out of whatever I start with. That’s all I can do. Life is short. I have only 50 or 70 or 90 years, so let’s not miss any minute of these few years and make the best out of them. Sex is beautiful, so let’s enjoy it. When there’s free chocolate on the table, let’s eat it. A stable family is one of the most happiness-producing factors in life, so let’s work towards building one.
What do I think about this second reaction? Well, to some degree it will be and should be part of any life. I am too weak to live the life of an ascetic (as a radical version of the first reaction would recommend). I need at least some earthly enjoyments. I don’t have the strength to forego them all. In addition (and more importantly), I think that these little satisfactions already are part of the way in which God (if he should exist) will fulfill our ultimate longing for the Big Thing.
But on the other hand, there is something deeply unsatisfying about this second reaction.
If those earthly enjoyments (such as a good family, good food, sex, success and nice vacation) are all we have, then they leave us strangely empty. Then we continue humming: “But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for…”. If, however, those earthly goods are enjoyed against a background of knowing that in addition to them there is also a much larger satisfaction ahead (a satisfaction compared to which they are only a shadow), then they suddenly do yield a bit of satisfaction. But when those earthly goods are had without the context of putting them into perspective, they don’t quench our thirst. It is as if those earthly enjoyments couldn’t stand the weight of having to be the only answer to our longing – when they have to carry this burden, they crush under that weight and don’t yield anything at all. When they don’t have to carry this weight, they yield at least some satisfaction.
Also, I have the feeling that contenting myself with the satisfaction of my little wishes will in the end still lead to an egoistic, brutish and animal way of life. Even though it doesn’t have to. But I just can’t get rid of the suspicion that if I know that the little earthly pleasures are all that I can get, my more noble ways of living might be undermined in the long term.
The third reaction to infinite yearning is to try to shut down the yearning. Without wishes one cannot be disappointed when they are not fulfilled.
This option is not open to me (even though to some degree we all engage in that practice – life would not be bearable without it). There’s just too much hope within me that all this yearning somehow makes sense and will be answered some day. You don’t need very much hope for that: A little hope is already enough in order to deny oneself the option of killing off the longing. Also, it seems the opposite of an adventurous, risk-loving and heroic lifestyle to just let my yearning cool off. Even if there’s just a small chance that this longing for the Big Thing leads me to where I want to go – I’ll take the risk.
Postscript: There is one aspect of this whole yearning-stuff that is a bit egocentric. Rather than wondering how I can fit into the big scheme/do my part in this life/serve God&others, I wonder how I can fill my emptiness…
The first reaction consists in living out this longing and consciously embracing it. This reaction is based on faith: Faith that some day, our longing for the Big Thing shall and will be fulfilled. It’s the faith that there truly is “Living Water” that is able to quench my thirst (regardless of whether it does so at the moment or not). It’s the faith that makes my eyes fill up with tears when I read the last of the Narnia chronicles – the book where they finally arrive at the land where everything is in order, the land of green pastures and milk and honey, the land of delight where our souls come to rest. It’s the faith that God is the answer to our questions: He is the fulfillment which puts an end to our emptiness. In him our yearning finally meets its object.
I don’t mean to say that such faith believes that fulfillment will only happen after death. But I do believe that such faith does not claim that this fulfillment is already instantiated. Faith is the attitude that is still full of longing but at the same time firmly trusts that “some day” (not to be understood in a temporal manner) this longing will come to an end and the Big Thing will finally be among us. Such faith does not say that our desires are already fulfilled but it is confident that ultimately they will be. Peace and satisfaction is around the corner and we only have to wait for them. We are certain that our present craving (which is very real) will not be frustrated in the end. That’s faith.
Now, when you believe that some day your longing will find its fulfillment, it is much easier to bear that longing. It feels more like waiting and it doesn’t feel like a desperate cry into the dark. It is more like “gratification delay” rather than a fire that burns up the soul. Living through this infinite longing is not only easier once you believe that ultimately it will be met, there is even some beauty to going into it. If you know that your thirst will be quenched in the end, there is an incredible depth of joy in living through that thirst. It’s like leaving the chocolate cake on your plate for a while before finally taking the fork and eating it.
This is the beauty of ascetism: Ascetics celebrate waiting with all their heart. They are so fascinated by the incredible joy of knowing that in the end all their burning desires will find their maximal satistfaction in the bosom of God’s new world, that they try to turn up the heat of longing as much as possible. I have never understood why people despise ascetism in this sense. It seems like one of the most intense and attractive forms of life.
The big question concerning the first reaction is: Do I really believe that there is a God who will ultimately fulfill my longing for the Big Thing? Or is our longing just an absurd stretching out into the dark & empty space? Is it just foolishness to forego present fulfillment of desires on the basis of the doubtful belief that there is a God who will ultimately fulfill them?
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The fact that I find something beautiful about ascetism and the fact that I find it to be one of the deepest expressions and celebrations of faith also explains something that has hitherto been a riddle to me. I once had an very close friend with whom I shared all my personal thoughts and feelings and we both considered ourselves to be Christians. My friend at the time slept with his girlfriend. I understood him as saying that one of the reasons for sleeping with her was that he just wanted to do it so much. Being faced with this reasoning somehow deeply shook up my whole identity and coming to terms with this explanation of his behavior led me to the heart of my personality and faith. Isn’t the belief that we do not need to fulfill our desires (the mundane sexual ones but also all the other ones) the very essence of faith? Isn’t it the ultimate sign of practical atheism to believe that one has to make sure by oneself that one’s desires are fulfilled? If one truly believed that ultimately God will quench our thirst, why can’t one wait till marriage with sex? If one truly did believe that God’s ways of bringing our desires to their destiny, why would one take routes (such as premarital sex) not envisioned by God? Doesn’t this show mistrust of God? Isn’t this atheism? When thinking about my friend’s giving in to sexual desires, I said to myself: “It isn’t easy for me neither to believe that God really will take care of my longings. It takes a lot of strength to put all my stakes on the faith that God does exist and that he will ultimately quench my thirst. I don’t have the power to live that faith alone – I need fellow believers to encourage me. After all, I am staking a lot: I give up the fulfillment of many more immediate desires. I give up trying to fulfill my craving by means of chocolate, sex, career success, watching happy movies, and by many other kinds of earthly goods. I engage in all kinds of gratification delay. I am a little ascetic who foregoes all kinds of enjoyments and things which would bring a cool breeze to my burning desires. It’s not easy to do that. It takes a lot of determination to run this race of faith. It uses a lot of energy to constantly tell oneself that all this foregoing of fast and easy satisfaction is worth it. It takes a lot of courage to believe that one is not a fool in doing so.” Given these feelings of mine, I was deeply distressed to find out that my close friend didn’t share these feelings with me. Apparently, the fact that he did sleep with his girlfriend showed me that he did not have the same kind of faith as I did that waiting for God’s way of fulfilling our deepest longing was worth it. This deeply disturbed me.
(Very important remark: In writing this, I am deeply unfair to my friend because he is very much a person of faith. Humans are all different from each other and he goes his way with God and God goes his way with him in a strong sense. My whole description above was only about the way I experienced it. What I write about him is not how he is but how his handling of this specific issue appeared to me in my skewed perception. It reveals much more about myself than about him. I only used the example and also exaggerated it to make an observation about myself. In addition, I must say, that I no way actually practiced the ascetism I described in such positive words above, in no area of life).
This morning I woke up and the shrieks of excitement from the young woman in the hotel room next to me clearly indicated what she and the man she visited were enjoying. I didn’t fall asleep afterwards and the quiet morning hours gave me the opportunity to let my thoughts wander. It all started with thinking about human craving. Not just for sex.
How deeply do we humans crave for something, for the Big Thing, for fulfillment, for satisfaction! My whole self consists of longing. My entire life is one big thirsty exclamation. The fire of desire burns hot within my soul. My heart is restless. If there is one song that sums up what my sensitivities are all about it is U2’s “But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”. All I look out for in life is determined by this infinite Sehnsucht. I am driven by an unquenchable thirst. Sometimes my longing resembles a hungry tiger walking back and fourth, aggressively roaring. At other times (and more often) it resembles an empty, naked swimming pool before summer waiting silently for being filled with the heavy weight of thousands of gallons of water. My hands are stretched out. I suffer from emptiness and an unspeakable homesickness. I wait for the Big Thing. I long for the the thing whose shape matches the hole in my soul. Sometimes I am thrown to the ground and simply lie there because I am so stunned at the powerfulness of the umet desires of my soul. Believe me, it’s real. I long so hard for something.
How can I react to this longing? I see three possible reactions. I want to describe these three reactions in the following. The first reaction consists in living out this longing and consciously accepting it on the basis of a firm belief that some day my longing will be fulfilled. The second reaction consists in taking my life in my hand and actively aiming at fulfilling my desires to whatever degree is possible (even if it’s only possible to a small degree). The third reaction consists in eradicating this longing. Let’s look at these reactions in turn.
By the way, this post is written while driving round in the Tokyo Subway.
Yesterday, at the end of the conference I attended, we were invited for a reception where I had some beer. Funny thing is: After the reception, I had some time for myself and thought about my faith (as I constantly do). And, given that my state of mind was modified by the effects of beer, I suddenly had a more relaxed attitude towards my crisis of faith. I felt much more like fully embracing faith again. I said to myself: “Common, why do you worry so much about your faith? Why don’t you just keep on going with it? What hinders you? Why do you spend so much time thinking about the problems associated with believing the christian story? Why not just surrender into it? It seems so natural to live a life of faith and it seems so inhumane to keep myself from doing it – why worry so much? Why not just relax and say ‘yes’?”
Interestingly, it was not the first time that I observed a more positive attitude towards faith after having had some wine or beer. It could also be the opposite way round, but it’s not.
thanks so much for your lines and thoughts and stimulation!
Right now I am sitting at the airport because my university pays me to attend a conference in Japan (lucky lucky me!!!). That’s part of the reason I haven’t been so actively blogging these past days and maybe will not be so active in the coming week. We’ll see.
Just for now, here’s a quote from the first part of “No One Sees God” which I discussed today with a friend.
To be empty of consolation, however, is not to be empty of faith. Faith is essentially a quiet act of love, even in misery: “Be it done to me according to thy will”
Here is another one:
The Creator did not make us to face a reasonable world in a rational, calm, and dispassionate way – like a New York banker after a splendid lunch at his Club, sunk into his favorite soft chair in the Library where a fragrant cigar is still permitted, as he comfortably reads his morning papers. Instead, there is war, exile, torture, injustice.
And another one:
Suppose that Got is not like the Hitchens model. Suppose that God is not a Rationalist, a Logician, a straight-line Geometer-of-the-skies. Suppose that the Creator God – like a great novelist, and long before man arrived on earth – created a world of probability schemes and reduncancies, of waste and profusion, of heavy buffeting and hardship.
And a last one:
If it has ever occurred to you to ask, even if you are an atheist, why did God create this vast, silent, virtually infinite cosmos, you might find your best answer in the single word “friendship”.
And one very last one:
“No man has ever seen God”
(The Bible on page 1342)
Two children in the mother’s womb talk about there being a reality&life beyond the womb. They both agree that they have this strong sense that it is not all over when they leave the womb. How could they ever have criteria which tell them whether to trust this sense? Is that sense just a squirk of the human mind? A product of wishful thinking? Or does this sense somehow track reality and represent what the world is really like? What criteria ever could give them a way to find out whether to trust this intuitive sense about life-beyond-the-womb or not?
I guess the analogy is obvious. We humans are faced with a strong religious sense and by nature are drawn to believe in a higher reality. What ever could tell us whether to rely on that intuitive sense that “there’s more to reality than molecules”, that impression that God looks upon us and that feeling of facing him?
The rhetorical questions seem to indicate that we have no way of knowing whether to trust this sense or not (and, therefore, the rational thing seems to be to take the sense as reliable – just as we do with the five senses for which we have no ultimate way of testing reliability either). – - But actually, I think there is something to be said concerning the reliability of this religious sense: If that sense should give us impressions which are incoherent and if that sense should imbibe us with “knowledge” that is at odds with knowledge from other sources (such as the source of the five senses or of logical thinking), then something speaks against its reliability.
Last week my coach told me that I have to let God convince me in his ways. In some sense, this seems right, in another sense it doesn’t seem right.
In the end it is still me who has to be convinced and therefore, somehow inescapably, my criteria which have to be met. So, in some sense, God has to convince me in my ways. On the other hand, it is open to me to adjust my criteria, and therefore to let him convince me in his ways.
Please, God, if you’re hearing this: please, please make this journey of doubt of mine have some purpose! I just wish so badly that all this questioning and de-construction is useful for something.
I just wont give up hope that persisting on this journey will deepen the life, love and faith of me and others.
And even if walking the valley of darkness should have no deeper point — even then… even then, well, I’ll just move on. But not without at the very least pleading God it to all be necessary for something.
Sometimes, when I talk with others about my crisis of faith, they interpret my doubts not as a problem on the intellectual level (“Is God real?”, “Is Christianity true”) but as a an emotional, existential problem on the relationship level. Often, this interpretation comes out of an experience of the way they experienced their problems with God.
One of three responses is open to me, when people interpret me that way:
First, I this might lead me to question myself. I could start wondering: Even though it might seem to me that I have an intellectual problem with God, what my subconscious possibly does is to project emotional, existential, relational problems into a intellectual form. That is, I might be deceived by myself: In reality I do not have doubts about the existence of God, but I am mad at him or at my own biography or whatever and I externalize these feelings by making myself seemingly intellectually doubt God’s existence.
Second, I might simply resist these people’s suggestions and say “Well, that’s the kind of problem you have – but if you are mad at God or have some other relational problem, then this still presupposes that you believe in his existence”. And to this they will answer, that, yes, the existence of God is completely out of question for them. They have no doubts on that level.
When they say something of that sort, I don’t feel like I’m understood. Because I seriously do doubt whether God is real or not (I am almost getting jealous when thinking of their feeling of being completely confident of his presence – since this natural and strong belief is so alien to me). To me, the existence of God is a pressing question. And for people for whom this question is no burden whatsoever, it is suggestive and obvious to think of my doubts as an emotional, relational problem. If it’s unimaginable to them to be an atheist and if they assume it to be equally unimaginable to me, then they obviously must assume there’s another root to my doubts. But – and this is the second strategy – I might simply resist this assumption/interpretation and claim that there’s nothing psychologically deeply revealing about my doubts. I simply have intellectual problems. That’s it.
Third, I might resist the re-interpretation of my philosophical/cognitive doubts as emotional bubbles of my soul, but at the same time use these suggestions to become at least aware and sensitive to thepsychological dimension of my problem (which might exist additionally to the intellectual dimension with the latter still being the basic one).
Becoming sensitive to the relational level of my doubts might mean, for example that I might miss church one Sunday and watch myself closely to see how it feels. Or, to take another example, I might reflect on whether I do not want to disappoint my parents and how that influences my decision. And so on.
As you might guess the third position seems like the most balanced one…
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By the way, I’ve added a blogroll (which I inted to continuously adapt). I’m most grateful for good hints. I really am looking for further good blogs.
And btw, not that I want to be one-sided, but I’m particularly grateful for hints about blogs where Christians debate the issues that I’m interested in (and where they do this in an intelligent, open-minded and faithful manner).
Assume that I am not very convinced by the God of Abraham and of my own forefathers actually being a true God. Maybe, if someone asked me to bet money, I would only make a 1:10 bid (though, strangely, it is very difficult to express one’s own inner confidence in such numerical terms as 1:10 – I don’t know why that is…).
What would be some pros and cons of following Jesus anyway?
Some pros:
It’s more adventurous than the opposite
It involves a much more beautiful and deep hope
I wouldn’t have to change life so much as if I left the path of faith (though, with God you never know… he might make me change life anyway and get me out of my comfort zone )
If he is the true God, then it is extremely rewarding to belong to him (remember Pascal’s Wager…)
Some cons:
It’s so exhausting to live something you have difficulties to believe. Wouldn’t it just be relaxing to lay back and say “OK, I can’t believe it”?
It’s somehow more upright and honest to just live out what you believe most strongly. I think that’s why I sometimes have a feeling of admiration for those guys like Dawkins etc. Even though there isn’t much about Dawkins to be admired otherwise, there is this stance of his “Let’s just be honest and look the problematic side of religions squarely into the eyes” that has something strong about it.
I wouldn’t have to worry about losing further bits of faith (“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to loose”)
I could constructively start to work (intellectually, emotionally, practically) on an alternative to my faith; this is impossible as long as I invest all my energy in keeping up my faith
Some people (...) talk as if there was a continuum: atheism –> agnosticism –> deism –> liberal christianity –> conservative christianity.
I, however, think that agnosticism doesn’t fit into this continuum (and that point is really important to me). Why not?
Because being an atheist, a deist, or a christian is a decision about how to live/act. Agnosticism however is a decision about what to believe.
In the choice about being a person of faith, there’s always two tiers: There’s the cognitive/epistemic level of what to believe (and agnosticism fits into this tier); and based on this epistemic level, there’s the practical level of how to live/act (and atheism/deism/christianity fit into this tier).
It’s like two axes which are orthogonal to each other (remember the x- and y-axis from math classes): On the one axis is how strongly you believe in christianity (from 0 to 100), and on the other axis is how strongly you live christianity (from 0 to 100).
Here are three additional remarks:
What is really under my control, is how I act and how I live. In contrast, I can hardly choose what I believe. What I believe — i.e. what seems plausible or convincing to me — usually happens to me and can only be changed by me in a very limited way. What is my own decision, however, is how I act.
So, when people talk about choosing faith vs. choosing atheism, they should make clear that we can hardly choose what to believe and that the real choice is about living this way or another.
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What I believe, doesn’t predetermine how I should live. On the epistemic level, I could be 80% convinced by Christianity, but still, on the practical level, rationally choose to live atheism (e.g. because I believe that Christianity should only be chosen in case of great conviction and certainty). Alternatively, I could epistemically give Christianity a 10% chance of being true, but on the practical level still rationally choose to live it (e.g. for the same reason that I buy a lottery ticket: the chance is small, but in case I should win, the gain would be huge).
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In some way, on the level of belief, all of us are agnostics: Who is 100% or 0% convinced of Christianity? None of us. So, claiming not to be sure or not to really know, doesn’t really amount to claiming something interesting. All of us have to decide how to live under the epistemic condition of being uncertain.
And in some way, on the level of practical action, none of us is an agnostic: you either pray or you don’t, you either put some hope in Jesus comforting you or you don’t, you either love others or you don’t.
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I want to start a series of posts that have to do with being a follower of Jesus while having a low degree of confidence in the truth of Christianity. Here’s a first thought:
“Given that we can’t know whether the christian God exists or not – given that we are in this state of complete ignorance: shouldn’t this give us the freedom to choose to follow Christ (if we like to)?”
The idea of this thought is that instead of starting from the premiss that Christ is God and therefore coming to the conclusion to follow him, one starts from the premiss that neither can the truth of Christianity nor the truth of its alternatives be assessed and therefore one is free to choose whatever option one likes.
I think something along these lines has been an important factor in keeping me a person of faith up to now. But I have two critical remarks concerning this line of thought.
First, it is not at all true that we know strictly nothing about the truth of Christianity or its alternatives. We might know very little, it might be very hard to grasp and we might be deeply confused about it. But, there are at least some pros and cons that speak for or against its truth (however undecisive these pros and cons might be). So we can’t start from the premiss that we know zero.
Second, some walks of life might be more easily lived out on the basis of not being convinced of them than others. And I wonder whether following Christ is something that is naturally done without being convinced of it. Atheism might be much easier to live without being convinced of it.
The fact that there are many religions has had various consequences for believers. Here’s one consequence this fact had for me in my journey of doubt. It’s kind of a re-phrasing of my last post.
A lot of my faith is founded on my “experiencing” God: It’s like I meet him. It’s like I feel existentially drawn to this reality larger than me. It’s like the Holy Spirit talks to me when I read the bible. To sum up: We humans seem to sort of have a faculty – a spiritual sense, so to speak – which enables us to “perceive” God.
Now, when I look at other religions, I realize that quite a lot of what I experience with the God of the Bible is similarly experienced by people in other religions. They make similar reports about encounters with the divine. But they frame it in a totally different story.
So, this tells me that my “spiritual sense” which can “perceive” God is not very reliable. It’s like the eyes of an old person: They can see that something is there. But they are very unreliable when it comes to determine exactly what it is that is there. Similarly, with our spiritual sense: Given that the different cultures conceptualize their experiences of an ultimate reality so vastly different, we can conclude that this sense is not very reliable.
And since a lot of my faith is built upon that spiritual sense, the unreliability of that sense (which is hinted at by the plurality of religions) undermines one of my most important reasons for belief in God.
Imagine that you are babysitting your two nieces one Wednesday (one of them just barely two, the other soon 3 years old). The one tells you that Grandma visited yesterday; she claims that Grandma came on her own and told stories about Grandpa. Later, the other niece tells you that yesterday the whole day they’ve been all alone with Daddy but that Grandma & Grandpa visited on Sunday.
What should I conclude frome these reports?
If the two nieces are taken to stand for the different strands in the Bible or for the different religions, then the different strategies go as follows:
The Atheist thinks that because the descriptions of these events are contradictory, the events probably didn’t happen. (The children may have played “Grandma & Grandpa” or dreamt or seen something on TV or just made it up due to wishful thinking or for fun).
The Deist looks at the data and says: Well, there’s a common message: Some Grandparent visited them. So, that’s what I believe. The rest of their reports is inconsistent and must be discounted as untruthful.
The Theist believes one of the two nieces (for example the more mature one). Or tries to harmonize the reports.
The Deist’s approach seems to me to be the soundest one.
(But then, who wants to believe in a Deist’s God?)
A question that has troubled me for some time now is the following. Imagine I went to the doctor and to my surprise he would find out that due to some unexpected disease, I have 6 more months to live. I would walk home and on my way, I would start thinking about death and wonder whether it would all be over after I die. I would then ask myself:
“Do I expect to meet God after I die? Would I be surprised to meet him?”
I find it unsettling to think about this. Because in some way I think I would be surprised (though I’m not really sure about it – isn’t it strange that we have a hard time finding out what we ourselves really believe?).
But at the same time, hope for that time “when everything will be fine and whole and glorious” has always been one of the intense parts of my faith (regardless of whether I believed strongly in it or not).
Isn’t everybody – even the average Christian – somehow deep down unsure about what will really happen when s/he dies? After all, even the most fervent believer must admit that in some sense she doesn’t really “know”.
On the one hand, I live with the impression that there’s some silent agreement amongst all of us believers. The agreement gos like this: We all know that when we’d be totally honest, we’d have to admit not to expect to be hanging out with Jesus the day our friends meet for the funeral meal, but we keep silent about this skepticism-deep-down-in-our-soul. On the other hand, I have to admit that this impression of mine is probably wrong. In my life of doubt it has just become completely normal to me to be unsure about the reality of God and unless I am reminded every week at least once by other people that they really&truly do fully believe the Christian story, I start to project my own perspective on them. And to my perspective it is completely alien to have strong confidence in the truth of Christianity and to have strong beliefs about what happens after we leave this old planet.
Another thought that crosses my mind is this: Is it
strange or
wrong or
normal or
praiseworthy & a sign of true faith
to be a Christian and at the same time be so agnostic about the reality of God as to expect to be surprised should one meet him after death?
A last post on miracles: Some christians scorn reliance on miracles. To them, faith based on evidence (in particular based on sensationalist special effects) is not in line with the bible.
I agree that faith that can do without miracles might actually be something more noble than a need for witnessing supernatural events. But: saying that this is more noble doesn’t imply that it is illegitimate to look out or miracles.
In the context of wanting to base my faith on evidence (including miraculous evidence), a saying of Jesus that has become important to me is the following:
Happy are those who have not seen and yet believe.
In this word, Jesus does not proclaim it wrong to look for evidence and miracles. He simply says that people who don’t need evidence&miracles are happy (or, in other translations: blessed). I can completely go along with that. It’s just that I do not belong to those happy people.
Jesus granted Thomas’ request (to whom these words were adressed) and he pitied him for the need to see & touch but he didn’t reproach him for it.
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Postscript: There is something weird, though. How many of those craving for a miracle (such as “Hey look man. If you can get some priest, abbot, layman, whatever from Orthodoxy to provide me with just one clear miracle, visitation, revelation, etc, I will go to confession immediately.”) will actually believe when faced with a miracle? Puzzingly few, I think.
At least for me, the miracle with the cross I described below had much less power to bolster my belief in the existence of God than I would have thought in advance (even though it did have some power). I think it’s a paradox that has happened to many doubters: Even though they think that one single clear miracle would be the rock-solid thing they needed, if that miracle actually does come, it doesn’t magically dispel all doubt (as they presumed). Doubt is somehow miracle-resistent.
It seems to me that some masters of faith decry reliance on miracles as immature and unimportant. I, in contrast, am happy to have miracles (if there actually are miracles) as evidence for the existence of God.
For many believers, belief in the existence of God is mainly built on a very vague, squishy, hard-to-grasp but strong foundation: the “perception” of God or “innate” knowledge of God. God is just “present” in the lives of those believers and that kind of “experience” is the main “evidence” they have for the existence of God.
Now, even if this kind of vague-but-strong sense of knowing there is God should be a very legitimate and also the most important ground for belief (as philosophers Plantinga, Alston, etc. argue and as I agree), it opens the door wide for skepticism. The reason is that this sense is so hard to grasp.
And that’s where miracles enter: They are something rock-solid. They are something very concrete. They are something in the physical realm – a realm we feel much more secure about in our knowledge and which is easier to grasp than the mental or even the spiritual realm.
To me, even if the best argument for the existence of God should be based on the common human “experience” of God, miracles complement this purported best argument in a very important way. They are like little “anchors” that tie that whole huge but vague sense of knowing God down to earth.
(Here’s an analogy that’s a bit weird but to the point. Assume that you have two painters who both paint abstract, modern art. You can only judge intuitively and with your aesthetic sense which of the two truly produces art and which of the two is just straining after the effect. How to distinguish which of the two really has the ability to express in extraordinary ways something deep through paintings? Of course, the important way to judge this is by your inner impression of their pictures. But then, even if that’s the important test, this test is very vague, squishy and hard to grasp. So, one might occasionally ask the two artists to do a concrete, realistic painting and that will separate the wheat from the chaff. Similarly with miracles: they’re the occasional down-to-earth thing which helps us sort out whether that impresson that there’s more to reality than the natural world, is true or not.)
There is this song that touches something so incredibly deep within me. And it’s done so with millions of other people:
(BTW, here is an really electrifying version by Cher)
Can anybody tell me whether this song is the ultimate believer’s song or the ultimate unbeliever’s song?
I know that many people (including U2 itself) have called it a gospel song. But when I once told my friends, in the midst of my doubts, that this song expresses something so real within me, it strangely felt more like a confession of “atheism” rather than faith — just look at the title of the song…
(i) Events that maybe are miracles – events which could also easily have natural causes
(E.g.: “I didn’t sleep enough and in the morning I asked God to carry me through the day and suddenly I felt so energetic”)
(ii) Events that probably are miracles – events for which there is no easily available alternative explanation
(E.g.: Very specific foreknowledge or weird changes to the physical world)
There’s a series of questions I ask myself:
Have I had first-hand experience of miracles?
Have I had second-hand experience of miracles?
Are there widespread stories in society and history about miracles happening?
Is it only miracles of type (i) that seem to happen and never of type (ii)?
Concerning 1: Well, yes – I did experience a lot of type (i) things. But what about type (ii)? Nothing rock-hard, but still some stuff that I have a very difficult time of explaining scientifically.
Concerning 2: Wow. This summer, a guy from our church talked about a horrible night he experienced: Shouting and crying and nightmares. Finally, the horror ceased. After that night, he was cured of all kinds of hepatitis he had. And: he had a very clearly and distinctly visible cross “engraved” on his chest. I once went up to him when it was only him and me and he showed to me. There’s nothing to interpret or question – the cross is so obvious. No doubt that something did happen to him. Also: his girlfriend was with him that night and observed everything. (And it’s not like I belong to some charismatic church. It’s rather a partly liberal church – so it was even more authentic).
Interesting side remark: This happened exactly 1 or 2 days after I questioned very hard whether all the miracles I ever heard about in my life by first-hand or second-hand experience all belonged to type (i) rather than type (ii).
Concerning 3: There’s so many cultures and so many people for whom the occurence of miracles is something obviously taken for granted. Talk to your friends: It’s not like only the few superstitious weirdos among them experience strange stuff. There’s so many of your friends who will have a story about something seemingly supernatural to tell. This is particular true for those cultures which are open to the possibility of miracle.
Or read Carl Gustav Jung. After reading that (even if not pointing to Christianity) I could hardly believe anymore that there wasn’t some realm which is active in a way that doesn’t fit into current natural science.
Here’s the video Big Dan pointed at (My question is: why are there so many of these stories?!):
Concerning 4: There’s two very good questions which cast doubt on what I said above. First: Why doesn’t God heal amputees? Second: If miracles actually do occur (as I claimed), how could it be that something as conspicuous as miracles would be disputed? Why wouldn’t there just be clear cases? Or are there?
Isn’t it funny how people are convinced by different things of Christianity? And how doubts about Christianity are grounded in different things as well? If we made a list of all the pros and cons for faith, every thinker would tick his own unique combination of what convinced him or made him doubt.
In contrast to most christians who struggle with faith, I would hardly tick evolution and the problem of evil as my biggies (though the latter problem has many disguises, and I guess in some of them, I do know it). My important problem has always been the bible or also the fact that there are many religions.
On the other hand, what convinced me of God is also not what convinced everybody else. I guess I would put a lot of weight on “direct experience/perception” of God. And on miracles.
Miracles?!
Yes, I’m serious about that. I’ve always found it deeply troubling for atheist positions to somehow have to explain away the evidence.
This weekend, I’ll post a small series of comments on this issue.
There is this famous idea associated with Freud that a lot of our behaviour and thinking is actually driven by sexuality. I often wonder whether and how this is true for the decision for/against faith. I have two points in mind.
First, sexual fantasies are some of the most forceful powers driving the human life. They can very much occupy the mind. They’re strong. (And just in order that this doesn’t sound like some confession only about my own experience: I have looked at the stats, I have talked to friends, and I have read the reports).
Now, most christian lifestyles regulate sexual behaviour to quite some degree. Can’t our subconscious craving for sex manipulate our reasoning about faith? Aldous Huxley, for example, admitted: “For myself, the philosophy of meaningless was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.”
Second, many people have trouble living their sex life the way they would like to. The “fire of the night” has them under complete control. Christianity offers an answer to this feeling of being at the mercy of an untamed “dragon of desire” in that it offers an alternative to the anarchism of “free love”. Christianity offers some time-honoured rules (doesn’t matter whether they’re the best rules or not – as long as they are rules), together with a community affirming those rules (though often only affirming instead of living them, but still…) along with a community who offers support on these issues.
The two points point in opposite directions but I guess the first point is the more salient one. Maybe I can deepen the reflection on these issues in some later post. If you have any opinion, please comment. Are doubts about Christianity just a disguised craving for less sexual boundaries?
Often in the past, liberalism hasn’t opened the wellsprings of faith. It has often been an obstacle to the flow of that „living water”. Liberalism isn’t known for opening the doors to a life-changing faith which “strangely warms the heart” and feels like the magic of Narnia.
This failure is a sign of it being on the wrong track; Faith often is a black box for me and I judge it by its results and so, if some stream within the global body of Christ changes lives, makes souls come alive, makes people love God and their neighbours and is accompanied by miracles, then this makes me pay attention. If not (as is often the case with liberal theology), I get suspicious.
Now, not all liberalisms live a dead faith. Some of the persons who grow very deep in their relationship to Christ seem to become more and more open and less and less concerned with what exactly is true or not. To this kind of liberal (but authentic and deep!) faith, I am very open. As long as the relationship to God is truly on track, many other truth questions that seemed essential may prove to be less essential than originally thought. But this is a kind of liberalism that has as its root a relationship to God (and God of course is someone who has the authority to declare questions of dogma unimportant if he thinks right). This is in contrast to the prevalent kind of liberalism which has its roots in wondering whether the bible is true or not.
Paradoxically as it might seem, much of modern theological liberalism is grounded in the same mindset as evangelicalism: a preoccupation with the correct dogma.
There is also a psychological part to my aversion against liberalism: growing up in a rather evangelical environment, the Zeitgeist constantly gave me the impression of being a little naïve and of low intellectual ability to believe something as old-fashioned as the christian story in its more literal interpretation. This engendered the need in me to build up a defense, both intellectual and – since liberalism sometimes has this degrading smile on its lips when it tries to enlighten you about, say, the ridiculousness of believing in miracles as modern man – emotional.
Miscellaneous emotions that come up when thinking about reconciling myself with faith:
Even if all intellectual obstacles preventing me from reconciliation with the Christian faith were resolved there would still remain a host of emotional obstacles. These emotional tensions might possibly have more force than my intellectual burdens.
It was a big eye-opener for me, when my girlfriend recently asked me “On a scale of 1-10, how much would you like to be a Christian?” and even after reflection, I was still fairly positive that my spontaneous answer of “10″ was right.
Here’s a fourth attempt at how I might come to terms with the bible again (deep down it might be the same thing as the third attempt):
Today, I brought back my copy of 
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