I’ve been thinking of reasons why I would decide to believe in God and/or Jesus Christ despite my inability to prove God’s existence (or nonexistence) in a satisfactory way and despite my unfortunate dearth of much-desired mystical experiences. Like I’ve said before, the same process that allowed me to walk away from Mormonism has left me floundering- my basis for believing in God weas the same set of “spiritual” experiences that were my basis for believing in Mormonism. Thus my slow spiral into atheism.
Atheism has it’s attraction, sure, and I’m not talking about license to do whatever I want. There are plenty of checks on behavior other than belief in God: love, empathy, society, law, culture, etc. And disbelieving in God hasn’t made me a worse person.
But it hasn’t made me a better person, either, and I don’t think it will. That’s the rub, the real difference between atheism and Christianity for me. Christianity invites me to be not just a much better person, but an entirely new person. Atheism tells me I’m pretty good the way I am, and that’s fine. Don’t get me wrong; I think I am basically a good person. But I really don’t think atheism is going to make me any better. In contrast, Christianity has transformation at its heart. At the very least, Jesus’s teachings invite people to be better people in absolutely radical ways, ways that don’t necessarily come naturally or intuitively. I’m not talking about demanding that we’re perfect- that’s no good because we’ll always fail, and then our lives will be dominated by guilt (which tends to be a problem in Mormonism). I’m saying that the way I see Christianity, Jesus invites us to come up to a higher level in the way we live with and relate to each other. On top of that, Jesus’s divinity adds a sense of gravitas to that invitation, a cosmic legitimacy that he wouldn’t otherwise have as a merely human philosopher.
I’m not saying that Christianity categorically makes bad people good, because we all probably know many, many people who are Christians who are pretty crappy people. I’m not talking about a universal imperative; I’m merely saying why I think I would be better off as a Christian.
I talked about this before in another post, but I didn’t feel like I articulated what I was thinking as well as I would have liked, so I want to try it again. Also, it’s still on my mind so I still want to talk about it.
I feel like I’m on the verge of believing, but I’m holding myself back because I am extremely conflicted. I know I’ve been over probably a dozen problems that were “the thing” that kept me from believing, but this is the one that’s bothering me right now.
I’d like to believe, and I’d even like to be a Christian, but I’m uncomfortable with having to see the whole world and all of existence through the lens of Christianity. Its what I was talking about before when I said I was reluctant to take on a worldview, but I don’t think that expressed what I meant to express very well. I don’t want to have to interpret everything I experience and think about in terms of its relationship to Jesus Christ. I just don’t know if I’m cut out for that, and I don’t see how I can be a Christian without putting on Christianity-colored glasses.
I don’t always want to see everything in that color, that’s all. And I fear that if I’m always looking at things through a Christian lens, that my life will be poorer for it. That life and existence will be less nuanced and less
Like I said before, I’ll be getting my head into a Christianity groove, and then I’ll hear some cosmic, mysterious Moody Blues song or something and Christianity will suddenly seem so small, provincial, limited, and limiting. I feel like there’s so much mystery out there and I’m not sure that Christianity is a perfect fit. Since it’s nit a perfect fit, you wind up having to cram the universe into the Christianity shoebox, where either the universe or the box gets broken and warped in the process.
I don’t know how to articulate it better than that, so that will have to do. I’m thinking about disabling comments on this post, though, because I’m afraid that what I’m trying to explain will once again be minimized, misunderstood, and dismissed.
I recently read Finding Faith by Brian McLaren. It’s worth reading, though now it’s being published as two separate books under different names.
The thing is, I don’t know that I really want to be an atheist. Kind of. I’m torn in quite a few directions. The reason why I would be an atheist is not because I’ve been logically convinced of the nonexistence of God. Logic is great and useful and everything, but to me it isn’t the be-all end-all of existence. I’m not uncomfortable with being nonlogical or even a bit illogical. Logical arguments aren’t really going to convince me one way or the other. I don’t really make any other decision in my life based on pure logic, so why should I decide what to believe (or not to believe) based on pure logic.
I’m not a mathematician, a philosopher, or a scientist anyway, so the sad fact is that other peoples’ logical arguments are likely to dazzle me a bit because I’m not trained to shoot them down. That’s not to say I reject logic entirely- I even think I’m pretty good with it and I’m actually fairly consistent about being able to see holes and hidden assumptions in other peoples’ logical arguments. But I’m not an expert, and I don’t claim to be, and I’m not confident enough in my command of logic to want to base really anything on it. Especially something of this level of importance.
That’s not a new revelation or anything; it’s why I’ve not been totally convinced by anybody’s logic in the past, and I’m unlikely to be convinced by it in the future.
So, with reluctance to let my provisional atheism soldifiy into something more permanent, I’ve been trying to figure out what I can believe, what I want to believe, and what I do believe, in a way that is honest with and true to myself. McLaren’s book was useful. It’s not a recipe for instant monotheistic belief- I could probably refute many if not most of the points he tries to make. The usefulness of the book lies more in McLaren’s honesty and authenticity. He’s aclearly a guy who’s been spending his whole life trying to figure out life, the universe, and everything, and Finding Faith is basically just a structured set of observations that he thinks might be helpful to someone else on the same journey. Even when he actively tries to persuade, he admits it up front, and he’s transparent about it, which is refreshing.
I don’t know that Finding Faith was my spiritual panacea. I didn’t walk away from it suddenly believing in God. But it did get me to start thinking about important things in some new ways, and it may have helped me get to a place where I think I can start believing again.
Also I had the chance to talk to McLaren at church on Saunday and thank him for the book, and to briefly tell him how it had been helpful to me. He’s a really nice guy, and he’s speaking at church nexty Sunday, which I am eagerly anticipating.
We watched this at church on Sunday, as kind of the prelude to the sermon. The lady who was speaking asked the congregation to say what they felt about it. One person said she thought is seemed ominous. I said it certainly was uncomfortable, but “ominous” isn’t the word I would necessarily use. It made me think of being on an almost out-of-control rollercoaster. The things of God are a little bit intense, and not everyday- they should leave us unsettled. Aslan is not a tame lion.
I set up a new page to hopefully keep myself from having to explain what this blog is really about again and again. I suspect that my previous “About” pages were too oblique or too light-footed about it. This way, when a problem arises, I can just direct folks to the Please Read This First page and not feel like a broken record.
Just when I think that I can do this, that I can believe, that I can even be a Christian, my mind does a 180º and runs sreaming in the other direction. I find that I can “be a Christian” and more importantly want to be a Christian as long as I am immersed in Christianity. When I’m reading the Bible, thinking about religion, reading theology, listening to Handel, etcetera, then I find myself okay with Christianity and believeing in Jesus. But then as soon as something outside the box happens- in this case it was hearing a song that in my opinion hits very close to the cosmic vein, whatever that is, I’m jolted out of my Christianity coccoon and I want to wad the whole thing up and throw it away.
It might also be that the reality, the true divine, the cosmic consciousness or whatever, is really so much bigger than we can even imagine, such that it makes our religions and philosophies look small and ridiculous. When I put on the blinders, I can go straight forward, but when the blinders slip, and I realize the incomprehensible hugeness of the universe and existence, then I can’t do it. I can’t be a Christian. Christianity is much too small. It makes me claustrophobic.
I envy the people who feel like they have a real relationship with Jesus Christ. Maybe it’s that personal relationship that allows them to be Christian and not feel so trapped, since their Christianity is not about religion so much as it is about spirituality. By that I mean that the rest of the peripherals don’t even matter since they’ve got a relationship withthe Great Jesus. The emphasis is totally inverted, and it’s outward-facing instead of inward-facing (I can’t explain what I man by that, but I know it sounds like something other than what I meant). There’s no claustrophobia because it’s not about a system or a worldview or anything. It’s about a relationship with a person, and they can go on adventures throughtout life and the universe together.
But I can;t seem to manage that, so I reach and grab at religion and I get a few straws but it’s not the right thing, not the real thing, and as soon as I realize it, I want to throw them away.
I’ve been thinking about truth and reality and the existence or nonexistence of objectivity. Here’s my conclusion (this may not be groundbreaking or novel or anything, but that’s not to point- it’s what I have settled on). Objective reality almost certainly exists. It’s out there, and we live in it. However, from the human perspective it is purely theoretical, and for the purposes of our day-to-day lives, it is almost meaningless.
From the moment a stimulus enters your body via your senses until the moment that it leaves in the form of a response, the information is constantly being corrupted by faulty perception, being filtered through lenses of experience, worldview, culture, point of view, coping mechanisms, random neuron firings, insanity, and who knows what else. There’s no point inside the system that is objective itself- the main processor is the brain, and the brain is the very culprit when it comes to putting a spin on reality- and so at no point is it even possible for a human being to perceive the world in a completely objective way. Ever.
Certainly there is some level of consensus to reality, like if there was a fire, we’d pretty much all see it, feel the heat, maybe be scared of it, and we’d all probably burn and die if we were consumed by it. That seems to be pretty objective (with maybe an unusual exception here and there), but that’s not what I’m talking about. The difference is that we’re all perceiving the objectively identical fire from a different standpoint, both internally and externally. We’re all ascribing different shades of meaning to it.
Objective reality probably exists, but we are completely incapable of accessing it because the only means we have of accessing reality by its very nature distorts reality as it accesses it.
What does this mean as far as religion goes? It means that as I search for truth, the best I’m going to get is a subjective kind of truth, because even if objective truth exists, I have no way of apprehending it.
Why do people insist on objectivity, when everything we know about the human experience suggests that for all intents and purposes there’s no such thing? Why do religious people in particular so often insist on the existence of knowable absolute truth? I wonder if it has something to do with controlling other people. I mean, if reality is largely subjective, then “sharing your religion” pretty much stops at “sharing.” But if you can insist on Absolute Truth, then you are justified in being a little more belligerent. It’s probably not fair to assign that kind of motive to so many people, though. The more likely explanation is that many people simply aren’t comfortable with a lack of meaningful absolute truth. It seems counterintuitive and it messes with one’s head.
For me, though, it means that I am looking for what is true for me. Part of me still thinks that sounds lame after a lifetime of being an Absolute-Truth-Insistent Mormon, but at the same time, it only makes sense. The only way I can sense and process and interpret reality is through my body and my mind, and those both have an inherent problem in that they severely warp anything they perceive. So absolute truth may exist, but it’s impossible to find it out. Therefore, the search for absolute truth, especially when dealing with things like “meaning” that stray from generally consensual aspects of reality, is a relatively futile one.
I tell myself that I’ll believe when I get a mystical experience of some kind. Maybe I’m waiting for the wrong thing. If God is everywhere, then everything can be a mystical experience, right? Is it me that makes the critical difference? That separates the mystical from the mundane? Is it the interpretation that makes something sacred instead of profane?
Or am I kidding myself here? Is that really just what I did as a Mormon, interpreting everyhting as a mystical experience and therefore as confirmation for my Mormon beliefs. Maybe the problem there was that I was trying to get meaning out of mysticism, to use it like a magic eight-ball instead of simply to experience, to “be still and know that I am God.”
Or maybe I just want a mystical experience so bad that I’m starting to waver and to be willing to label plainly mundane things “mystical” just to avoid the sheer disappointment of God never happening.
I wonder if God may exist after all, despite our best efforts to logically prove he doesn’t.
I’ve been tossing around this idea. Science can’t really prove or disprove God, right? Science rests on certain assumptions, and at the very least in order to come within the realm of science, something has to be falsifiable. An omnipotent God isn’t falsifiable, so science is simply ill-equipped to deal with the question of God. That’s not to say that science should therefore asssume God’s existence. Actually, it means that science should continue on, assuming God’s non-existence, because science competely breaks down if you start throwing in ascientific variables like “God.”
But who’s to say that you can prove or disprove God with logic, either? I mean, logic seems to be a great thing, but there’s no way to logically prove the rules of logic themselves- they are assumptions. Sure they seem to work on just about everything we have encountered, but if God is transcendent then could he not also transcend things like logic? Even science tells us that there can be places (even theoretical ones) where rules like cause and effect can totally break down (singularities, etc.). Perhaps God simply is not subject to logic. God may very well be a kind of divine paradox. In fact, theological precedent already supports that idea what with mystery (the trinity for example) and all.
Setting aside the ramifications of such a God, I can at least accept the possibility that such a God may exist. This also squares with what little I know about Kierkegaard and his view of religion as inherently absurd, but not in a perjorative way.
I’ve thought about the possibility of a paradoxical God before, but the thoguht sort of coalesced better after I read a very good article about why religion is valuable even if you are an atheist.
I’m also thinking about doubt, which seems to be one of my biggest issues (the skeptical voice in me) and I’m wondering if doubt might not actually be an okay thing after all. Again, I come from mormonism, where doubt isn’t really seen as acceptable, It’s something to work through as quickly as possible, and otherwise to avoid at almost any cost, as if doubt is necessarily the first step to apostasy.
Maybe it is, I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t have to be, though. Maybe doubt is only the first step to apostasy when the religion in question is a house of cards, and with a religion that is more enduring, more durable, and closer tot he truth, it can weather doubt just fine.
When Thomas admitted his doubts to Jesus, Jesus didn’t rebuke him; he reassured him. When the man in Mark 9 admitted his unbelief, the Lord supported him and blessed him. Doubt didn’t lead to a domino effect that brought his entire belief structure down in one shot and sent the whole thing spiraling down to hell. Maybe doubt can play an important role, and it doesn’t mean weakness above and beyind the basic weakness of humanity.
At the same time, Jesus seems to rebuke Peter for his doubt.
I don’t know. (Notice I say that a lot?) If I wait until I am completely free of doubt before I’m willing to believe, then I will probably never believe anything. And I’m not very certain that I’ll ever be totally free from doubt, so if believing without doubt is some kind of indispensible prerequisite then I might just not be cut out for belief at all.
