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”.
(tbc)
You better watch out or the need to humble yourself alone could become an argument to embrace Christianity. “Just take a step of faith and *humble* yourself before God…” That’s tough, because it seems part of the definition of being Christian is “humbling yourself before God.” So could it be possible to accidentally equate the two, the need to be humble yourself and being a Christian? Could that be one logical solution there but not the only logical solution?
Thanks for the warning for obstacles ahead on the road!
Maybe I could even see the problem you mention as a major example of a much wider class of problems:
Sometimes we are so worried to reject faith (or, respectively, to accept faith) NOT based on our willingness to honestly follow what we consider to be true BUT RATHER based on wishful thinking, false motives, human desires etc.
Examples of such wishful thinking, false motives, human desires are:
– not being willing to humble oneself
– wanting to fulfill the expectations of others
– peer pressure
– wanting to feel at home in the universe
– fear of hell
– rebellious spirit
– etc
And sometimes we are so afraid to fall prey to one of those human desires that we explicitly do the OPPOSITE just to make sure we didn’t listen to the desire.
Examples:
– We are so afraid to accept faith based only on the motive to please our parents, that we start to reject faith just to make sure we don’t let that motive reign.
– We are so afraid to accept faith just because of our wishful thinking which wants to feel at home in the universe, that we start to reject faith just to make sure we’re not dictated by this motive.
– We are so afraid to reject faith out of a feeling of self-sufficiency and exceeding self-importance that we start to accept faith just to make sure it is not the lack of humbleness which dominates us
– Etc. etc.
So, I very much agree: We should never ever simply accept faith in order to prove to ourselves that we are able to humble ourselves!
(And neither should a lack of being able to humble oneself be an obstacle to return to faith, of course)
P.S.: AND, here’s a very important point: When OTHERS tell you to PLEASE start humbling yourself now, there’s something that makes me skeptical about that. I wonder in how many cases that type of advice is rooted in LOVE for you!
I am going to make a weird comment — but then, I have lived in many cultures and so I inevitably say weird things. But who knows:
In Buddhism, there are many mental training to strengthen the mind and build compassion. And in Tibetan Buddhism, experienced teachers realize that we all have different temperaments and thus each needs individualized trainings to maximize growth. So that, for instance, to a self-loathing person, meditations which build self-confidence and self-respect would be encouraged before meditations on our humble position in the universe. And for arrogant people the opposite strategy would be applied.
Fear of humility should never stop you from pursuing the truth UNLESS you have a personality where focusing on humility will weaken you further.
Take care in your spiritual disciplines, they can harm you. One size does not fit all.
Wowy,
Bullet 1 – you know it makes sense not to look down on these people. Their arguments may be unfounded, we may be intellectually superior to them… but there will also be others who are hugely intellectually superior to us. We wouldn’t want them to insensitively rip apart our beliefs.
Bullet 2 – I know you have the strength to forgive those who feel superior to you! And I think you do yourself a disservice to describe this future you as a “desperate, confused, intellectually empty-handed man”. OK, you would have changed your mind, but the arguments you assessed would still have existed. You (the hypothetical future you) looked at the evidence, and drew a conclusion. Maybe some new evidence came to light. (Keep an eye out for angels.) You changed your conclusion. There’s no shame in that.
Bullet 3 – will you blog about how your loss of faith has affected your relationship with your parents? Does this mean that there are certain aspects of your religious upbringing that you resent, and you want to punish your parents for? (Sorry to sound like an amateur psychiatrist.)
Bullet 4 – you have to admit that, if that happened, they would be right!
In a way I can’t see what your problem is. I almost imagine that if you did return to faith, it would be big hugs all round and a return to that warm, fuzzy feeling of fellowship in Christ.
But (as I commented on another post), I think once you’ve been broken in this way, you can’t be remade how you were. If you do find your way back to faith, you will still be an intellectual who knows all the arguments, and knows that another piece of evidence (or good argument) could tip you back the other way. You will never again be a warm and fuzzy, intellectually weak believer. So maybe I see where you’re coming from, after all.
So, what else can you find that makes you warm and fuzzy?
My current philosophy is Matthew 22.36-39. I can’t do the first, because I don’t know what it means. So I just have to try and do the second as best I can. One out of two ain’t bad. (Maybe…)
A belated “Thanks”, Sabio, for this!
(actually, Christianity, would have that potential, too, I think. When I look around churches, I find that those people who manage to believe in God, to have that shine on their face, to be changed to the good, to experience and give love, to sing songs of praise: those people all have SUCH an individual path, SUCH a personal history with God, SUCH a unique faith.
but, alas, people like me – with the kind of mindset I have, not untypical for conservative christians of all denominations – imagine faith to be a “one size fits all thing”. We imagine God must work the same for everyone.)
oh, and thanks to you, too, BigDan — also for taking me so seriously in your comments!
- “You changed your conclusion. There’s no shame in that.”
SO TRUE! But: not easy to believe. I remember once listening to a rock star who talked about how he learned that it’s OK to change one’s path. In his (and my) upbringing, changing track was seen as not being loyal, as not carrying something through, as being an unsteady personality. BUT WHY SHOULD IT BE LIKE THAT? Isn’t it a sign of wisdom to be say “I was wrong, I saw it differently in the past, I follow a different path now. THERE’S NO SHAME IN THAT.”
- “In a way I can’t see what your problem is.”
That has to do partly with the fact that I just wanted to describe some emotions I have. Emotions don’t necessarily make sense. They’re not necessarily something I approve of. They can easily be contradictory. They’re just here.
So, I agree that I don’t really have a reason for some of these emotions.
- “I think once you’ve been broken in this way, you can’t be remade how you were.” and “You will never again be a warm and fuzzy, intellectually weak believer.”
I don’t know how many times my mind (in one of its clearer and more alert moments) KNEW that it can’t return to the same place I’ve come from. I can’t return to the same innocent and warm place I’ve come from. Once you’ve been broken in this way, you can’t be remade how you were (maybe you SHOULD become a psychiatrist! or maybe you are one?)
But even though, I am aware and 1000000% in agreement with this insight, most of the time my heart starts dreaming of just returning to where I came from anyway. it’s like I’m on a slippery slope: I just slip into imagining myself returning to the old faith again. It’s like the insight that this is not possible doesn’t have a grip on me.
Not even God (IHE) is fond of this childish, backwards looking, unadventurous attitude, I guess. But it happens to me, all the time, anyway…
(btw, I’m reading Chesterton’s Orthodoxy at the moment. He starts by a powerful image of an englishman sailing off to discover new lands and landing in Dover by accident. But the englishman doesn’t realize he’s back to where he came from and thinks he discovered something new. He sees his old country with new eyes.)
“My current philosophy is Matthew 22.36-39. I can’t do the first, because I don’t know what it means. So I just have to try and do the second as best I can. One out of two ain’t bad.”
If you don’t become a psychiatrist, I suggest trying out Rabbi.
“Once you’ve been broken in this way, you can’t be remade how you were (maybe you SHOULD become a psychiatrist!” – kind words, but I don’t think this insight is all that original. It’s really a type of loss of innocence, which is of course a very well-documented concept throughout human history.
Now here’s a thought: is being born again a kind of recapturing of innocence?