Is Doubt the Enemy of Faith?

25 01 2012

Doubt gets a bad rap. We live in a world where we are not supposed to doubt, it is unhealthy—bad. Doubts, though, are like confrontations, which also have a bad rap. However, it is in confrontations that change can happen. Sometimes my wife needs to confront me, and at that point there is a back and forth until eventually one of us realizes our error (or often we both do) and we change. Today—we are so afraid of confrontations—we don’t have them. In a Facebook generation we just unfriend, ignore or avoid—but then we are depriving ourselves and others of possibly growing.

Doubts are the same way. We often are afraid of them—or we don’t deal with them—but then we never grow. In fact they may actually help. How do I know? Look at the famous, but often misunderstood biblical story of Doubting Thomas often used to illustrate how it is wrong to doubt. It can be found at the end of the Book of John.

What does Jesus do when he approaches Thomas here? Two things: First, he calls him out for doubting clear evidence—the other apostles eyewitness accounts. Most people highlight this aspect of the story. However, the second thing Jesus does is actually gives into the demands of Thomas! Thomas demands to see Jesus, his pierced hands and side, and then Jesus—after rebuking Thomas, actually gives him exactly what he demands. Why would he do that?

Jesus is trying to keep Thomas, as well as the listener from falling into one of two camps prevalent in ancient and modern culture. The first camp can be called the blind faith camp.  This group of people thinks doubts are the enemy of faith. That blind faith camp never questions their faith, never ask hard questions, and never seeks answers for when doubts rise up. They say that the definition of faith, is you don’t know, so stop trying to ask questions and just believe. There is almost a fear if that if you do ask questions then you will lose your faith.

The second camp out there is what I call the persistent cynicism camp.  These are individuals who try to poke holes in everything and mock all truth statements, and undermine all claims of purpose. I know these people exist because I was one of them. Whose to say what is true? What is true for you is true for you, but what is true for me is true for me. In some respects these people are committed to the belief that there is no belief—there is nothing else out there.

Through his actions, Jesus wants to avoid both extremes. Notice he rebukes Thomas not for doubting in general—but for doubting clear evidence from his friends. In other words, he was in the
persistent cynicism camp. He was not seeking or trying to find answers, he made a blanket statement and he was not going to budge. However, on the other hand—Jesus actually gives into his demands, and validates and even answers Thomas’ demands. So it seems, from a fresh reading of the passage, doubts are not necessarily the enemy of faith, only if they stay in a persistent state of cynicism.

In fact, they may actually boost a faith/trust paradigm. How does Thomas respond after Jesus shows him the evidence? All the gospels have Jesus trying to show others who he really is, but the one person who confesses Jesus’ full nature is Thomas!  No other human being had a higher view of Jesus than Thomas. In verse 28 he says, “My Lord and My God.” This is a personal expression of intimate relationship that is accomplished through processing doubts. So use them, search them, and build off them.

Michael Keller


Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: , , , , , ,
Categories : Spirituality for the Rest of Us

A Beautiful Life

28 11 2011

What if I’m wrong?

Whatever space we happen to inhabit on the worldview continuum, this is a question that is bound to occur to all of us.  As human beings we simply do not and cannot know as much as we would like prior to deciding upon ultimate matters.  And I suspect that the “what if this is all a colossal mistake?” question occasionally occurs to even the most settled of minds.

At the end of Miroslav Volf’s Free of Charge there is a brief chapter entitled “Postlude: A Conversation with a Skeptic.”  After coming to agreement that the life of Jesus was good, beautiful, and worthy of emulation, Volf records the following hypothetical exchange around what would he do if he found out that the whole notion of a generous God who gives and forgives and who expects us to do the same, was nothing but an enormous lie:

Skeptic: “What if your dark thoughts at night—and my sober observations!—are true? What if you are waking up to a dream?”

Volf: “Well what?”

Skeptic: “You’d be wrong.”

Volf: “And I would have lived the right kind of life, the life you called beautiful.”

Skeptic: And have lived a false beautiful life! Wouldn’t that matter to you? Can a false life ever be good?”

Can a false life ever be beautiful? Can it be good?  And what, if anything, does our answer to this question have to say about the worldviews we adopt?

Some would suggest that our worldviews are simply the result of the culture we happen to have been raised in.  We are all socialized into and inhabit a particular “plausibility structure”—a taken-for-granted way of thinking about and living in the world which privileges certain kinds of answers to certain kinds of questions. At its most extreme, this view sets forth a kind of sociological determinism where our cognitive and behavioural options are completely determined by our social environment. Is it even possible to just accept a different way of looking at and living in the world given what we know about the nature of belief formation and the myriad sociological and psychological factors that contribute to the process?

Obviously it is.  People do, after all, change their minds about matters of faith.  But when they do, it seems that more often than not it is the quality of someone’s life that proves most compelling, as opposed to the comprehensiveness of their facts or the logical rigour of their argumentation. People respond to well-lived lives—to “beautiful” examples of forgiveness, grace, compassion, kindness, patience, and joy. The beauty and goodness of human lives can and do lead people to the conclusion that the foundation upon which such lives are based just might be true.

What is the connection between truth and beauty? However we answer this question, I think that the fact that we seem to be hard-wired to expect, even demand that the two be linked is suggestive. Is it possible that a genuinely good and beautiful life would have no connection to what is ultimately true about the world? If so, what would we be claiming about the nature of the world? About human beings? About God?

Sociologist Peter Berger has said that “to have faith is to bet on the ultimate validity of joy.” I think that it is also to bet on a deep and permanent connection between truth and beauty—between our deepest aspirations and intuitions and the way the world “really is” and will one day be.


Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: , , , , ,
Categories : Bar Conversations and Cheap Advice

Vested Interests

14 11 2011

“If God did not exist, I would be necessary to invent him,” quipped Voltaire.[1] Indeed, no matter how passionate debates on God’s existence become, Voltaire’s observation is something skeptics and believers surely agree on: there are immense benefits in believing in God. A sense of protection, benevolence, purpose, and hope awaits those who throw themselves at God’s arms, and equal levels of certainty and stability arrive to those who do so in an uncritical manner. Any fresh convert would say how they feel their life improved after they embraced God, how they sense peace and love, and how they want to share this discovery with others. There is a wealth of intellectual serenity and emotional relief for those who cross the threshold of belief in God.

To examine the issue of God’s existence objectively, then, it is not enough to limit oneself to philosophical debates, scientific discoveries, theological discussions and historical developments. The greatest field of inquiry is actually the arena our own soul, and its vast fears, hopes, and desires. “The question of the existence and nature of God is a question attended by a host of vested interests,” noted R. C. Sproul. “If we are to examine the question with integrity, we must both recognize and face the implications of our vested interests. If we refuse to do that, then truth will perish, and so will we.”[2]

On the other hand, one cannot avoid the fact that there are also immense benefits in not believing in God. One gets a sense of liberty, of freedom from moral constraints which are not one’s own, a sense of control over our life, an easy dissociation from believers who are credulous, sticky or cheesy (or the three at once!). “[I suppose the reason] we all jumped at the Origin [Origin of Species] was because the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores,” disclosed Julian Huxley. “The sense of spiritual relief which comes from rejecting the idea of God as a supernatural being is enormous.” [3] In a similar way, C. S. Lewis describes how he preferred atheism for years because he did not want to relinquish control over his life and his destiny. “The materialist’s universe had the enormous attraction that … death ended all … And if ever finite disasters proved greater than one wished to bear, suicide would always be possible. The horror of the Christian universe was that it had no door marked Exit.”[4]

I have a feeling most people drift to or away from God. We believe ourselves to be self-made people, who consciously and independently make up our minds. Yet our spiritual choices may be more a product of our relationships, upbringing, and lifestyle preferences than we may want to acknowledge. A friend’s approval may be more determining to our belief than Aquinas’ arguments, for instance. Or our emotional preferences may already predispose us in one direction or another, say, if we long for God’s stability or fear his authority, or if we fancy the prestige of morality or the pleasures of boundless exploration.

The question of God is not a theoretical exercise; it spurts from our guts as well as from our minds. To know God or to reject God includes knowing oneself. We will not be more intellectual if we run from our hearts, but less.

René Breuel

[1] Voltaire, Épître à l’Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs (OEuvres complètes de Voltaire), ed. Louis Moland [Paris: Garnier, 1877-1885], tome 10, pp. 402-405.

[2] R. C. Sproul, The Psychology of Atheism (Bloomington: Bethany Fellowship, 1974), 156.

[3] Julian Huxley, Religion Without Revelation (New York: Mentor Books, 1987), 32.

[4] C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of my Early Life (London: Houghton, 1995), 170-173.


Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories : Tough Questions

“What if you’re wrong?”

1 08 2011

A girl asked atheist Richard Dawkins one day, “What if you’re wrong?” In typical deprecating  fashion, Dawkins turned the question back to the girl, “But what if you are wrong?” [i]

The argument in Dawkins’ response, if you think about it, is essentially relativism. The reason we believe what we believe – in flying spaghettis, Zeus, or the Christian God – is because we were brought in a particular culture and nurtured in those beliefs. Had we been brought up somewhere else, our religious outlook would be different. As Dawkins has expressed in writing, “No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth.”[ii]

The assumption behind this assertion is significant: geographical determination. None of us can pretend to Truth, because our belief is socially determined. If we would believe in Thor had we been born a Viking, how can we pretend that our belief in God could be true? Atheists like Dawkins conclude that the diversity of human belief across history is the definite proof against God. If we see humans inventing objects of worship so creatively and so pervasively – sacred cows, the sun, Mother Earth, or God – surely the monotheistic God is just another invention, maybe more complex and civilized than the others, but a human creation nonetheless.

But let’s turn the table again: “Yes, sure, but what if you are wrong?” By the same logic, the only reason someone like Dawkins believes in relativism is because he was brought up in contemporary Britain. His belief is also socially determined, so how can he assert that his view is right and every other religious view is wrong? How come every other view is relativized but his relativism remains absolute? Relativism is not only arrogant toward others, but thoroughly inconsistent with itself.

Still, the argument of religious diversity is an eloquent one. Humans are intrinsically religious, and will find something to worship no matter how strange the god or goddess may be. On what basis can we assert that one specific belief is true while so many others are wrong? Doesn’t religious diversity lead us to conclude that religion is essentially a human creation?

For me the evidence points precisely in the opposite direction. Humans are intrinsically religious because there is a real God who created us, and who we are searching for. We have this innate hunger because there is true satisfaction for our divine longing out there, just like our physical hunger demonstrates that there is real food that meets our needs. The fact that people eat the most bizarre objects – serpents, leafs, eggs of fish – is not proof that our physical hunger is a projection, but a precise proof of our need for food. Similarly, the diversity of belief across history is not proof that our soul hunger is a projection, but a precise proof that we have a craving for the divine, and will search for God even in the most unlikely of places.

But the skeptic may still rightly ask, “Ok, but on what basis do you claim that people search for God while adoring nature, and not, let’s say, search for the true goddess Aphrodite while worshipping the monotheistic God?” This is a great question, and could be dealt adequately only with another article. Yet atheism gives us a telling hint: if there were no God there would be no God to deny. “If there were no God, there would be no Atheists,” quipped G. K. Chesterton. Has there ever been an articulated, sustained movement like atheism against sacred cows or Aphrodite? Our very denial – of an eternal, omnipotent Father – assumes the form of what exists objectively. Our doubt mirrors our faith: we would not have to deny the existence of God if there was really no God to deny.

Belief in God could still be wrong, of course. But the diversity of human belief does not discredit faith, but rather, shows how forcefully we crave to worship something. If people are ready to adore even built statues at times, this shows us how urgent and true our spiritual hunger is. Religious diversity does not discourage robust faith, but is actually a compelling motivation to lead us to search, and discern, and surrender to, what is it that pulls our spirits so strongly toward worship.

René Breuel

[i] This video clip is actually the most seen Dawkins video on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mmskXXetcg

[ii] Richard Dawkins, as quoted in his own website, http://richarddawkins.net/quotes/10.


Comments : 8 Comments »
Tags: , , , , , , ,
Categories : Tough Questions

Adventures in Doubt

4 05 2011

It’s rather fashionable to be agnostic nowadays. The modern project of finding indubitable certitudes on which to base my life is said to have collapsed; Descartes’ adventures in doubt, however, are still all the rage, albeit devolved to dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum: “I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.” And what do I doubt? Well, a whole range of things. In this upside down world, I’m like the Queen of Heart’s antithesis: sometimes I’ve doubted as many as six highly plausible things before breakfast. It just takes practice.

I doubt whether the Royal wedding, telecast to millions, represents “true love”—after eight years waiting, Kate must have some qualms about her balding prince. I also doubt the idiot box on which it was telecast, with all those inane ads. Will that latest shampoo really regrow hair on my own bald-spot? They can’t fool me—I’m too suspicious for that. (Though I did buy the product, just in case, of course.)

On a different front, I doubt whether PJP2 deserves beatification in a world where science has surely debunked miracles. But I’m also pontificating over whether scientists and their threats of global warming can be trusted—the Himalayas may be hot, but Brisbane just had its coolest and wettest summer on record.

The wavering cascades like a waterfall. Was Obama really born in the USA? (The certificate could be forged.) Is Trump seriously running for President? Did the moon landing even happen? Does religion have anything meaningful to say? Is every kilometre over the speed limit really a killer? Do my parents really love me? Can I trust my spouse?

I doubt it. I doubt everything, right?

Well, perhaps not.  I mean, to be truly sceptical, I must believe something solid on which to base my doubt. I doubt Trump because I believe his whole life is implausible. I doubt miracles because I trust a materialistic scientific method. I doubt global warming because it lies under the shadow of my local cooling.

Closer to home, I doubt the speed signs because I’m confident in my driving skills. And, if I’m honest, I waver over parental love and spousal honesty because I’m safeguarding myself against disappointment from abused trust. I believe that I am worth protecting. Doubt functions like a universal acid to dissolve any claim that threatens to control me.

Perhaps, then, my adventure in doubt hasn’t gone far enough? My totalizing deconstruction preserves one indubitable certainty: Me. For at the root of it all, I believe in me. My hermeneutic of suspicion extends to everyone and everything that threatens my autonomy or demands my allegiance. Religion has nothing worth listening to, as I am the only ultimate authority in this universe.

Okay, trying to be even handed, there seem to be at least two good reasons for doubting myself. One, I’m finite. How could I know it all? Surely I could be mistaken—on politics, religion, love? A bit of humility wouldn’t hurt. I guess that Professor had a point:

“If you’re going to be a doubter, be sure to doubt your doubts as well as your beliefs. We’re taught in our culture to think that a person who doubts is essentially smarter than the person who believes. But you can be as dumb as a cabbage and still say ‘why?’.”[1]

So I could be wrong. But there’s a second good reason for doubting myself. Not only am I finite; I’m also fallen. I’m limited, and biased. Contrary to the evidence, I think I’m normal and everyone else is weird and mistaken. But taken to the extreme, this blind trust in self—from which “flames the fixed star of certainty and success”—is tantamount to tyrannous insanity. As G. K. Chesterton mused, “The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.”[2]

Touché. So where does this leave this doubting doubter?

Perhaps it leaves me blogging with my friend Mitch, trying to escape ‘Descartes’ Watchhouse’, “detained in an imaginary cell by my own epistemic impotence.”[3] I must squarely face my deep seated trust issues. Perhaps it leaves me with Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver, facing up to my own identity as a backward yahoo in a world more complex and beautiful than I had heretofore perceived. Perhaps it leaves me, like the early church father, Origen, realizing that I only truly know that which I truly love. Love is risky business that dethrones my own superiority and leaves me open to being deceived; but is there a better path to traverse?

Wherever it leaves me, this genuinely ‘Wondering Fair’ article should leave me searching for anything, or anyone, worth trusting. For if I could find one who is trustworthy, then maybe I could set out on the greatest adventure of all: the adventure of faithful and courageous commitment.

Dave Benson

[2] Orthodoxy (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Christian Classics, 2006), 9.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories : On Anything and Everything, Spirituality for the Rest of Us, Tough Questions

Hearing the Silence

15 04 2011

Despite all our highly rational arguments for or against God’s existence, a lot of the time, the issues are far simpler – more an experience than a theory. That experience is simply this: God doesn’t walk into my living room, sit down on the couch and talk to me.

Of course, this absence, or silence, is cause for a rational argument against God. God seems to only “reveal” Himself in highly ambiguous ways: “a still small voice”, interesting coincidences, an ancient book (full of stories of a time in the ancient past where He supposedly did come to humans more tangibly). It’s all so vicarious. If He does exist, why can’t God just be direct, come out, and show Himself, now? The logical answer is, because He doesn’t exist.

But truly, those rational arguments aren’t the real problem surrounding the Silence of God. It’s an experience. It’s the experience of people telling you there’s a God that loves you, you looking around for Him, and not being able to find Him. That hurts. Amidst all the arguments, it comes down to the heart – “He doesn’t talk to me, so I won’t talk to Him.”

Actually, Christians sometimes face that silence, too. When it comes, we question if He was ever there at all. I go through times like that. In one of those times, I found this quote from a Cistercian monk: “Silence is the very Presence of God – always there. But activity hides it. We need to leave activity long enough to discover the Presence – then we can return to activity with it.”[1]

Silence is always around you, it does not leave. It is merely hidden. Ironically, silence is muffled by sound. It does not disappear. It merely waits. It waits for you to stop the noise, and to listen.

Out of all the people in history, we today are the worst at finding silence. I’m terrible at it. I have music, TV, work, cars, my friends, my wife, my kid, always going in my ears. And the few times I could have silence, my mind is noisy – all those things leave a mental “echo”, as my brain recalls song lyrics, conversations. Perhaps my mind sees the silence as an opportunity to get more done. But I suspect sometimes my mind keeps destroying silence, because I’m afraid of it. Silence is so strange, so alien to my life. And it is scary, because if I am not all those things, am I anything at all? I fear silence is a suffocating vacuum.

And what of God? Could God be like the School Teacher, standing silently at the front of the classroom, waiting until the class “settles down” before beginning the lesson? I resent His silence, but is it really there not because He is silent, but because I refuse to relinquish my nice, familiar noises?

There are two solutions for this problem in the Christian tradition. One is the Cistercian monk’s solution. It is to slowly drive the noise away, and wait for the Presence, hovering hopefully,  terrifyingly in the Silence. Not long after the previous quote, the monk says: “… I went out on the balcony… The Lord came in power. My whole being longed to be dissolved and be in complete union…. I finally went to bed and continued in the Presence. How I wish my every moment could be in this painful, sweet state.”[2]

That seems to work for him. But it’s very hard for most of us to get there. The other solution is to use things that God has traditionally given people as a “megaphone”, to “amplify” His Presence and drown out the noise. These things include the Bible, worship in Christian community, and good books – the Cistercian’s book has been one of those for me.

The point is, the Presence is there, always there. He is merely waiting for you to hear Him in the Silence. Face the fear of losing all the noise, and enter that Silence.

Matt Gray

[1]    Basil Pennington OCSO, The Monks of Mount Athos: A Western Monks Extraordinary Spiritual Journey on Eastern Holy Ground (Woodstock, VM: Skylight Paths, 2003)

[2]    Ibid.


Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: , , , , , ,
Categories : Spirituality for the Rest of Us

The Crystalline Mountain

15 09 2010

I grew up in the land of the shadows,
Where nobody ever saw light
In the fields or the glades or the meadows,
Nor on the highest height
But there was a story we told
Of a glassy and crystalline mountain,
Where courageous pilgrims of old
Saw the sun sparkle down like a fountain
And atop that mysterious hill
Lived the glorious Infinite One
Whose ultimate, glorious will
Was for all to encounter the sun.

A wonderful wives’ tale indeed
But could it be possibly true?
Such questions did nothing but feed
My need for a hint or a clue.

And so I decided one morn
That since I was so fully torn
I’d welcome man’s praise or man’s scorn
By seeking the truth, come what may.

Two factions in my land there were
Who felt so completely cock-sure
That they could correctly infer
The truth of this legend of Day.

The Jeevers were believers who claimed to believe
That belief in the Mount was the way to achieve
The meaning of life and a life full of meaning,
Existence devoid of this darkness deceiving
And filled with the splendor of light.
But though they claimed to put trust
In the road as an absolute must,
They never were moving, they always were staying,
Fearful of doing, fearful of straying,
Filled with no faith and much fright.

The Jinkers were thinkers – bright, intellectual.
They sat and they thought – being quite ineffectual.
Their only activity would pass for passivity –
They’d sit and they’d ponder how a Jeever could squander
His life on the road without end.
I went first to the Jeevers, the house of belief,
Hoping believers could offer relief
And I asked…

“What do you know of this Infinite One?
How do you know he exists?
What do you know of this dazzling sun?
Can you tell me of what it consists?
And what do you know of this mountain of glass
That no one has seen with their eyes?
Can one really ascend, can one truly pass
From this darkness and into the skies?”

And they answered…

“Well, um, gee, gosh, mister, gee, I don’t know,
No one has asked how we know what we know.
But we know it, we know it, we know it, we do –
We always have known that our story is true.
The best way to believe is to murder your doubt,
Do this first and then you will soon figure out
That the Infinite One surely reigns in his glory –
Just doubt all your doubt and believe in our story.”

Their answer didn’t satisfy,
In fact it sounded like a lie!
How could I in vain deny
The power of my doubt?

So there I stood my mind confused,
And as I stood, my mind, it mused,
Maybe the Jinkers so enthused
About doubt could help me out.

So I went to the Jinkers, the house of doubt,
Where thoughtful old thinkers were milling about
And I asked…

“Why don’t you believe in the Infinite One?
Is it true that he doesn’t exist?
If it’s dumb to believe in a dazzling sun,
Then why do such thoughts still persist?
All skills and all notions are at your command,
You claim that by knowledge you’re powered,
Yet you always dismiss what you can’t understand –
Doesn’t that make one a coward?”

And they answered…
“Well, um, gee, gosh, mister, gee, I don’t know,
No one has asked how we know what we know.
But we know it, we know it, we know it, we do –
We always have known that our story is true.
Believe in your doubt and doubt your belief,
I’m sure you will find it a welcome relief
To know that your life is a meaningless hole –
You no longer need to pretend there’s a soul.”

I stumbled away in grave melancholy,
Refusing to say that my life was mere folly.
I was tired and weary of looking for truth,
Existence was dreary, all notions lacked proof.
In light of this doleful and dismal analysis
Both mind and heart were trapped in paralysis –
Neither a Jinker, nor a true Jeever!
Neither a thinker, nor a believer!
So by the end of this spiritual squall
I sadly believed in nothing at all!

But just as I made this dreadful decision,
My focus beheld a magnificent vision –
A man who was dressed in traveling gear
Saw my distress and kindly drew near.
His eyes wisely twinkled like flames in the night,
His face, nicely wrinkled, was beaming with light.
His eyes pierced right through me, I felt understood,
He knew me as only a traveler could.

“Where are you going?” the climber inquired.
“Oh, I’m not going,” said I.
“Well, everyone goes, it’s the way that we’re wired,
You choose but the path you will try.”

“I’m glad that you’ve found the great mountain,” said I,
But that path will not do for me, sir,
For I’ve seen way too much to ever deny,
But too little to ever be sure.
Don’t bother to preach about faith and belief,
Why don’t you just move along,
For I’ve found a nice way to conquer this grief –
By not choosing, I cannot go wrong.”

“A choice not to choose is a choice in itself,
Just look at the Jinkers and Jeevers!
Their lives are deprived of a traveling health,
They’re nothing but vain self-deceivers!”

“I will not commit, I simply refuse!
I will not submit to a choice I could choose,
For a choice is a risk, a decision for strife,
To journey this mountain would cost me my life!”

A fire in my head, a war in my brain,
I couldn’t discern what was sane or insane.
Then the man spoke with a storm in his eyes –
His words held the hope of the infinite rise.

“So you’d forfeit your life to stay where you are,
Where the land is dismal and dreary,
And yet won’t consider the mountain afar
As more than an unfounded theory?
Faith is required at either extreme,
It’s a risk either way, my dear friend.
As badly repulsive as that thought may seem,
It’s still what is true in the end.
So why not bear this load with me
And see what it’s all about?
Why not take this road with me,
Where faith isn’t threatened by doubt,
And belief is more than pompous opinion
Fostered by ignorant fears,
And doubt has a voice, but never dominion
Over volitional spheres?”

That was the day my decision was made,
Reluctant, recalcitrant mule.
That was the way, though distraught and dismayed,
I became a spectacular fool.

At times I see this mountain,
And sometimes I cannot.
And sometimes this crystalline mountain
Moves from its mystical spot.
But always it supports me,
This glass beneath my feet,
Whether or not I’m allowed to see
A visible mountainous street.
And so I keep on plodding
One step at a time,
And still my feet keep trodding
On this treacherous, tremulous climb,
Until my eyes behold him
On the day my race is done,
Bathed in the sunlight golden
Of the glorious Infinite One.

Matt Mattoon


Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: , ,
Categories : Spirituality for the Rest of Us

Freud and the Love Delusion

4 08 2010

If you think Christianity is foolish, you’re not alone. Marx believed that the promise of immortality kept the working classes shamefully submissive. Nietzsche said Judaism and Christianity had inverted human virtue, trading strength for pity. And Freud diagnosed religion as a form of mass delusion.

But to cite Marx, Nietzsche and Freud is merely to round up the usual suspects. What is interesting is to hear Christians weighing in on the same side with many of the same words. Most prominently, the apostle Paul says that the message of the cross is foolish, weak and scandalous: “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.” (I Cor 1.18-31).

This is one thing that believers and skeptics should be able to agree upon: the story of Jesus is nonsense. Christ’s call to love all people universally and unconditionally is the height of idiocy – if the natural world is all there is.

Whereas Ivan Karamazov famously argues, ‘If God does not exist, all things are permissible,’ Freud argues that if God does not exist, unconditional love is impossible. Why? Because for Freud, love must be earned. Love is not love if the other person does not deserve it. Otherwise it is worth nothing. And how does one deserve such love? ‘He deserves it if he is so like me in important ways that I can love myself in him; and he deserves it if he is so much more perfect than myself that I can love my own self in him.’[1] In short, to love another person is to love oneself.

What then happens to the one who has nothing to offer in return for my love? Freud answers that it would be wrong to love a person who has ‘no worth of his own’ since it puts the unattractive on par with those whom I prefer. It would be an insult to those I truly love.

In the end, Freud admits that the stranger must be put on the same level as the enemy. ‘Not merely is this stranger in general unworthy of my love,’ he writes; ‘I must honestly confess that he has more claim to my hostility and even my hatred.’[2] Christ’s command to love one’s neighbor, then, amounts to the same thing as his command to love one’s enemies.

Freud’s final reason for rejecting this call to unconditional love is simple. When one fails to live up to this impossible ideal of love, one feels shame, which in turn leads to neurosis. The believer becomes a fool.

Freud and Paul agree. Self-sacrificial love is foolish to those who don’t believe. It confounds human wisdom by exalting folly; it undermines power by reveling in weakness. However, Freud and Paul part ways at the point of decision – Freud rejects the way of unconditional love; Paul embraces it.

Foolish to the end, Paul gives his life for a story about a homeless Jewish criminal who rose from the dead. Whereas Freud, the realist, confesses in the end, ‘I have not the courage to rise up before my fellow-men as a prophet, and I bow to their reproach that I can offer them no consolation.’[3]

Paul is a fool for believing in the impossible — unconditional love. Freud is a fool for guarding his mind against hope, rejecting the possibility of love. There is no neutrality when it comes to the foolishness of self-sacrificial love.  What kind of fool will you be?

Matt Mattoon

[1] Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. James Strachey (New York: Norton, 1961), 66.

[2] Ibid., 67.

[3] Ibid., 111.


Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: , , , , , ,
Categories : Tough Questions

Doubting Faith

2 08 2010

[Editor's note: this article launches Wondering Fair's Open Mic category, in which guests can present views not necessarily our own, and with whom we want to graciously debate and interact.]

When it comes to matters of intellectual honesty it seems to be the general consensus that non-religious persons have a much easier time dealing with doubt and uncertainty than most believers. Believers are generally thought to believe anything and everything in the interest of faith, and are not very open to questioning their belief systems. Yet, even though believers are often accused of being dogmatic and prone to wish fulfillment, it seems that atheists can and do fall victim to just as much to wish fulfillment and close mindedness. It is true that many believers perceive any experience of doubt as a kind of infiltration of the Devil (a kind of spiritual cancer), but this could be equally said of many atheists. One senses a kind of desire or hope that God does not exist. There often seems to be a dominant tone of the atheist being completely convinced of him/herself. There is no leverage or room for doubt. God does not exist and that’s that.

On the other hand it seems that doubt is woven into the very fabric of Christianity, unique to any other worldview; namely that God Himself struggled (at least momentarily) with atheism. This is seen in particular on the cross with Jesus crying out, “Why have you forsaken me!!” For a moment in time God questioned his very existence. This is something that G.K. Chesterton points out in his book Orthodoxy:

“It is written, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” No; but the Lord thy God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane. In a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but let the  atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed himself for an instant to be an atheist.”[1]

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek (an atheist, by the way) also picks up on Chesterton when he writes:

“Chesterton is fully aware that we are approaching ‘a matter more dark and awful that it is easy to discuss … a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in that terrific rule of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but also through doubt. In the standard form of atheism, God dies for men who stop believing in Him; in Christianity, God dies for Himself. In his “Father, why hast thou forsaken me,” Christ himself commits what is, for a Christian, the ultimate sin: he wavers in his Faith.”[2]

As interesting as Zizek’s points may be, it seems that what to Zizek is the “ultimate sin” is in fact a normal process along the journey of faith. Time and time again in Scripture we hear the stories of those who struggled with doubt. Abraham for example, must have experienced INTENSE doubt when he believed that God was asking to sacrifice his only son Isaac. From Abraham to Job, right down to Jesus on the cross, true faith from time to time will wrestle with doubt.

[1] G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, p. 145

[2] Slavoj Zizek, The Puppet and the Dwarf; the Perverse Core of Christianity, p. 15


Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: , , , ,
Categories : Open Mic


Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 109 other followers