Meditations Part III: a Faith Among Many Faiths

I apologize in advance if this seems is the most stream of consciousness blog you've ever read, but this is how I process things. I'm not even sure what I want to write or say, but something is in there that needs to come out. So here it is.

So, obviously, this question about Faith has been haunting me lately. This thing called "faith" is so ethereal, so cloudy and elusive—how could something so intangible be so important? And yet, I think, it is. It is how we live, whether we realize it or not.

My faith, as a Christian, creates a great tension for me in the way I engage my world. Many Christians try to engage our culture—its arts, sciences, and religions—with sanitized rubber gloves on. If it weren't for this "evangelical" component of Christianity, these Christians would very likely cloister themselves up in a iron wall-fortified Christian ghetto where all that ever happens is Bible study while they would wear Christian t-shirts, Christian shoes, Christian watches, eating Christian chicken fried chicken, and Christian after-dinner mints. The Bible, this "special revelation" we have from God is the only Truth that is important to them.

But this is a problem for me. Even as I accept Christianity by faith, I study the Bible and find that God reveals Himself in many ways, not just through the Bible. There are such concepts as "common grace"—grace given to all of humanity ("He makes his sun rise and set on the evil and the good")—and "general revelation"—the revelation of God to all of humanity, a revelation that happens much through his Creation ("the rocks cry out," see also in Rom 1), and as these concepts emerge in the Biblical text, it makes me realize that the Bible claims no monopoly on Truth. The only monopoly that Christianity has any claim to, perhaps, is "saving grace" or "special" revelation which happened mostly through Christ. But this saving grace is not the only thing that matters in life.

I would say that it is the most important thing because it carries with it eternal implications; you can have all the "common grace" in the world but you can't take it with you unless you inherit eternal life. Yet, I don't understand why anyone would want an eternal life of getting to know their Creator, if they have ignored a vast portion of His work while they were here on Earth. We can learn about God and love Him by observing what he has created, and we can do this, I think, through the arts, sciences, philosophy, theology, and even other religions because religions often reveal truth about Humanity. Now if you have a friend whom you love deeply, you naturally get to know this person's work. How could you tell an artist friend that you love him, and yet you never look at his art? He asks again and again, "What do you think? Do you find it lovely?" but instead of looking, you turn your head and close your eyes, and think about how much you love him, or read a letter that he wrote you once. Meanwhile, he stands there in your presence, watching you read, waiting for you to look at what he is holding up to show you. This is how I think God must feel with many Christians who have no interest in exploring his Creation and getting to know Him by looking at what He has done for all to see. Such beauty lost.

This mentality of some Christians that I find disturbing is not, however, without its valid concerns. As I begin to look at Creation, my senses are overloaded with the abundance of what is out there, much of which seems, at first glance, to go against what I understand to have been revealed to me—this "special revelation" from God that has been recorded in the scriptures. These cloistered Christians see these dark horizons and gather their children under their wings, fearful that their young ones may get lost in the darkness and lose their faith.

I can't pretend to know how to raise children, and it would be completely presumptuous for me to cast any judgments, but I can at least speak of what seems to make sense to me without assuming that I'm right. What seems to make sense to me is that there is some goodness in this way of protecting their children. I don't think it is good for children to go about roving in the darkness until they can understand how to navigate this darkness. Yet one day, perhaps far off into the future, these little children will be grown up, forced out into the world, taking their steps now without holding the hand of their mother and father. It is necessary, as a part of growing up, for them to let go of their parent's hands and walk "on their own." But I am afraid that many of these cloistered parents, in their fear of exposing their children to the dangers of the darkness, have not prepared their children with good advice on how to navigate the shadows. "If you see a shadow, run from it!" is perhaps the best advice they offer.

But this seems to me to do a disservice to the shadows, and to the people who live in the shadows—these ways of thinking about life that seem foreign to the Christian faith. I have particularly encountered these shadows as I have tried to discuss my faith with people who do not share the same faith as myself. I remember as a young boy in the third grade going to my elementary school counselor (who happened to be a Christian) and asking such questions as, "How do we know that we Christians are right? I mean, if I had grown up in India, I would be just as convinced that my religion there was right."

How can we know if we are "right"? Ah, but that's a modern question. The post-modern question then, I suppose, is "Is there such a thing as 'right' when it comes to religion?" I think my questions as a young boy gave me this sense of finitude and inadequacy to make bold assertions that I still have today. This causes some tension with the fact that my faith is an "evangelical" faith, a faith that wants to multiply itself. It is not out of arrogance that my faith wants others to believe the same—it is the only response Love can have to receiving this Gospel of salvation: we want to share this good news of salvation with others. I've shared my faith several times throughout my life, but every time I've run into this little "bump" along the road: people don't just accept what I have to say because I have said it! Go figure! Just as I assumed when I was a young child, these people are just as confident in their faith as I am in mine! And even more surprising, many of these people wanted to convert me to their way of thinking as well! How astonishing! The way they see is best to live life, they want to share with me so that I can have what they think is the best life I can have! The nerve!

Of course it is only out of love (usually) that these people want me to change my way of thinking, but I found myself resisting them without even considering what they have to say—"If you see a shadow, RUN!" But then I stopped myself thinking, "If they have the same attitude toward my faith, spreading the good news is impossible with these people!" I found myself extremely frustrated that others wouldn't consider my faith, while at the same time I refused to consider theirs! It didn't take very long for me to see the hypocrisy in my approach to Faith, and it made me realize that it was really my moral obligation to change the way I encounter these other worldviews.

It is not an easy thing to do to seriously consider other worldviews. Not at all. Often it means that some of the things—even THE thing—that you hold most dear are called into question. Not long after this, I found myself being encountered with ways of thinking that very seriously challenged my own, ways of thinking that seemed to make more sense to me—at least in some respects. "Ok, this makes sense, I've seriously considered it…now what?"

There were several things that kept me from trading in my Christian worldview for another. First of all was the residue of the "run from shadows!" approach that still remained in me, but I think this "run" mentality really had more to do with love than it did fear. My Christianity, my God, is so much more than just a "worldview," a way of thinking—it is a relationship, a very meaningful relationship to me. It is my identity. It is me. One should never be so quick to trade something so important in. I'm glad I didn't. Yet if it is this important to me, surely it would be that important to others as well.

Yet my love for God is not the only reason why I held on. It also had greatly to do with my love for my family and my close friends. I knew that if I were to let go of my faith, my relationship with my family and these friends would undoubtedly be changed dramatically, creating a tremendous tension where there wasn't such tension before. It would have torn me completely for something like this to happen. My life would never be the same. My love for God and for my family and friends, thank God, made the giving up of my faith a colossal task not to be taken flippantly in the least. And because of this realization, I cannot help but to approach the evangelization of another with a great humility, patience, respect, and understanding for the difficulty of the proposition I have given them.

Again and again, I have encountered challenges to my worldview as I explore this world of light and shadows in order to carry out my relationship with God. Again and again, these challenges that lurk in the shadows have been extremely convincing, offering great "proofs" and compelling ideas that make my Faith seem to appear weak when compared to them. And yet I held on. Besides my love for God and how much my Faith composes my identity, the other thing that keeps me from letting go is the fact that there are so, so many Christians throughout history whom I greatly respect that have held on to their faith in spite of these same oppositions, Christians who are far more intelligent and accomplished than myself. Surely the chief of these Christians in my esteem since high school has been C.S. Lewis. I thank God for that man. Absolutely brilliant. Question after question that I and others in my life would ask, challenges to the Christian faith that seemed insurmountable, Lewis would provide excellent and insightful possible answers for, pointing out ways of thinking that I would have probably never considered myself. Inevitably, there would be difficult questions that I couldn't find answers for from Lewis. But these previous experiences of having seemingly insurmountable questions overcome made me realize that it is quite possible—even most likely—that there were answers to these questions that I just hadn't found yet.

All of these factors—love for God, love for my family and friends, respect for other Christian thinkers, and the realization that there could be trajectories of thought I've not yet considered—all served as a "buffer" for my faith, a cushion that immensely softened the impact of opposing ways of thinking that seriously challenged my faith. I wasn't aware of this in the beginning of my faith journey, but this cushion seems to make the shadows not near so terrifying to me. I now face challenges to my faith on a regular basis, and I do so without fear. Yet, there are many Christians who are not aware of this cushion that exists for matters of Faith. While the cushion of Love may be inherent to them, the other realities that can serve as a cushion may not be self-evident. Thus, when they encounter the first or second serious challenge to Faith, their world is shattered. An immediate answer is not found to a question that they have, and thus they assume that the answer must be, "There is no Christian answer for this, therefore it must not be true."

There is one question that I have not mentioned yet, a challenge to faith more ominous than any "way of thinking" that I could ever encounter, and that question is simply, "Where are you, God?" I remember in college, I encountered this challenge with full force, and it brought me to the ground in tears. That God which I had once experienced in such a "real" way had seemed to withdraw his presence from my life. That warmth and comfort that once held me together seemed absent. I was cold and naked. I felt forsaken, left alone, orphaned. More than mere ways of thinking, this felt reality of abandonment seemed to make all other challenges to my faith seem like they were the philosophical musings of Jessica Simpson. THIS was reality for me: God was not there. That was the reality I felt and lived in. And yet I held on to my faith. There were only two things that kept me from giving that faith up: the memory of that experience with God that I longed to have again, and a U2 song.

Yes, U2 helped save my faith. I could sound really pious and say, "this passage out of the Psalms saved my faith," but in all reality, it was not the Psalms that echoed in my mind but the chorus of U2's "40," a chorus that cries out to God, "How long to sing this song? How long? How long? How long? How long?" When I was on the verge of giving up on God, that chorus was what kept me holding on, a chorus that is taken from Psalm 40 as David was crying out to God, feeling abandoned. "I waited patiently for the Lord…" Patiently. I don't know how patient I really was, but I waited anyway, all the time singing, "How long? I'm dying here, God…HOW. STINKING. LONG!!???" I held on.

A friend of mine once pointed to an author who encouraged a young friend to "Live the question." When I first read this, I thought it was nonsense. "Live the question? What is that supposed to mean? That's stupid." Now, I think I see what this author was talking about. In fact, what I once thought was nonsense, I now think is sage advice for a young Christian—or any person for that matter. There you go, me making another shift in thinking that occurred after about a month of contemplation. I have so much to learn. "Live the question." I guess I interpret this now to mean, "Don't be so quick about coming to conclusions about things. Let the cushion do its job. Don't be so quick to forsake your love for your God, your family, your self. Don't be so quick to think foolish what so many intelligent people have thought was the highest truth. Don't try to be so quick when, in reality, what you are is slow. We are all slow. Be slow, and let slow happen. Let the question happen. Live the question." I don't think that means, "Don't listen for answers, and don't seek out answers." Indeed, to not seek answers is not to ask a question. We seek. The question is the journey. And then we weigh all the answers that come along before we exchange who we are for another "Me."

"Live the question." For how long though, I wonder? I don't know. But that is what I'm going to do as I am trying to seriously consider what the Eastern religions (namely, Taoism for the present) have to say about God and Truth. It seems to be the best way of both respecting my own experience and understanding as well as respecting and considering these other perspectives that are so important and meaningful to other people. It's not dismissing other perspectives out of hand, but neither is it embracing them uncritically. It's the middle way—the way of Love, I think.

Meditations Part II: On the Nature of Faith, Certainty, and the Existence of God

In my understanding (and the understanding of several prominent theologians) of what "faith" means in Christianity, there is really no need for an absolute certitude (i.e. "I know without a shadow of a doubt that I am correct in saying 'Christianity is true.'"), there is only the need for (a) a knowledge (Notitia) of the Gospel, (b) an assent (Assensus) that the Gospel is true and (c) an act of faithfulness (Fiducia) to that assent.

For example, I do not have to have an absolute certitude that my office chair will hold me up when I sit on it. I could even watch as person after person sits in that chair, the chair holding them up, yet still I cannot be absolutely certain that the chair will hold me up. Perhaps there is a screw that has been about to fall out the whole time the others sit, but when I sit that screw will finally give and collapse under me. It is possible. There is always a first time. But should that lack of *complete* certitude keep me from sitting? No. That would be absurd and irrational to let such a slight possibility keep me from sitting down. In fact, I wouldn't even stop to consider such a possibility unless I was forced to stop and think about it--it's just not something that you do. It's silly. So I don't dwell on that. Rather, I believe it will hold me up, based on that belief I sit. In that act of sitting, I have acted out my complete faith and confidence in the chair that it will hold me up.

As I said, there is always the possibility (however unlikely) that the chair will break when I sit on it. However, my faith in the chair is not negated by my realization of that. I could be mistaken to place my faith in that chair because (a) I do not have an exhaustive knowledge of the chair (i.e. of the chairs engineering and if everything in the chair's engineering is in the right place and unbroken) and (b) I cannot see into the future of what will happen if I sit in the chair. But my faith is demonstrated and completed in the act of sitting. There is no need for absolute certitude; there is only the need for a confidence (assensus) that the chair will hold me up (noetitia) that provokes an act of faith (fiducia).

I think it is the same way with our faith in Christ. I am not omniscient, thus I cannot know with absolute certitude that the Gospel of Christ is true. However, based on my experience with the Spirit of Christ and from what I have learned in history and logic, the only proper response for me is to have a faith in Christ and the claims of His Gospel. Placing my confidence in Him, I aim to trust Him with my heart and my obedience. I have yet to be disappointed in my decision to place my faith in Christ, however that doesn't mean that I am not wrong to do so. The one and only way we can know for sure is when we die and are/are not resurrected. But in the meantime, what matters is not that I have an absolute certitude that Christianity is true. What matters is that I have the kind of confidence (assensus) in Christ that provokes act of Faith (fiducia).

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that any claim of "absolute certainty" would be roughly equivilent to the claim of being God--a claim of omniscience. This admittance of lack of absolute certainty is, I think, an appropriate recognition of humility before an infinite God.

...still pondering...

Meditations on God, Faith, and Atheism

Perhaps I've been living in a bubble for the past 7-8 years, but I had come to believe that Atheism had become completely passé with the dawning of Post-modern subjectivism along with its evaporation of intolerant, absolutist statements. Perhaps Atheism has waned over the past decade. Indeed, in all my internet discussion, it is not atheism that I've found myself in dialogue with but rather agnosticism. However, thanks to my friend Pheirser for bringing this to my attention, it appears that Atheism may again be on the rise in secular thought with much help from Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Not just atheism, but a sort of atheist fundamentalism with the kind of heated rhetoric (and sometimes the kind of logic) that you might see from the religious fundamentalists they so harshly criticize. I've been thinking about reading Dawkin's popular book, The God Delusion, and offering my criticisms of it, but that is something I think would be fun to do with a small group of people.

My own worldview has been shaped with much thanks to a brief discussion (even though I'm sure I misunderstood him) with a college Philosophy professor who helped me to see the epistemological (i.e. our ability to know things) limitations of human beings. He really only hinted at this, never speaking in great detail on it, but the reality of it has sort of haunted me ever since. What can we really know for sure, without a shadow of a doubt? We have great limitations on what we can know for sure, simply because we are not God, we are not omniscient.

On "Truth," "Belief," and "Certitude"

First off, to define my terms:

Truth—what is, objectively, the content and order of Reality.
Belief—the body of knowledge concerning Reality a person considers to be True.
Certitude—one's notion that, without a shadow of a doubt, his belief is 100% true, leaving absolutely no room for the slightest possibility that he is wrong.

In college, before I talked to my professor, I thought that Certitude was inherent to Belief in Christianity—that one could not have Belief without Certitude. Now, I think differently. Now I think that Certitude about almost anything is actually impossible for humans simply because humans are not infinite in their knowledge of reality. [1] Therefore, when approaching almost any subject matter, humans should practice epistemological humility, realizing that they could be wrong. Let me give an example.

[WARNING: LIFE OF DAVID GALE SPOILER!] Think of the movie The Life of David Gale. The jury was pressed to make a decision, and because of the partial video they saw in addition to other evidence, they were convinced that the evidence convicted Gale of murder. However, the full video reveals the fact that Gale did not murder his colleague at all, but it was, in fact, a suicide. Likewise, we need to make a decision in life as to what we believe about the Gospel of Christ. The evidence and experience can be overwhelming that the Gospel is true (and it is, I think, overwhelming), and on that evidence we make a decision to follow Him -- we put our faith into practice. However, I will not know until I die whether what I believe is indeed true or not. By saying that I cannot accept the Gospel of Christ with Certitude, I am simply acknowledging the fact that I don't know everything. If I don't know everything, then it is possible in that shaded area of my ignorance there could be some Truth (i.e., "What actually is" not "what appears to be") I am missing that -- like that final piece of evidence in Gale -- tells a different story than what appears to be the case as I see it now.

As far as I see it, the only true rational or scientific verification of whether or not the Gospel is true will happen at the Second coming of Christ. The Gospel says -- among other things -- that at this time, there will be life after death for those who believe. Using the scientific method of verification is impossible here. We cannot conduct an experiment that proves there is eternal life for those who believe. We cannot cause the Second Coming to happen, and then record the results. Real and final verification is impossible. However, there is plenty of evidence that suggests the Gospel is true, and on this evidence we believe that it is true, and live our lives in faith that it is true.

The Faith of Atheism

However, this is a sore rub for atheists. Atheists seem to like to think that they have a philosophical worldview that is completely absent of Faith. My atheist friend told me that any belief that is based on Faith is "irresponsible." The problem for the atheist is that Faith is inherent to their worldview as well, whether they realize it or not. Now I need to define a couple more terms in this context:

Faith—a Belief (see above) that is based on an experientially unverifiable presupposition [2]
Presupposition—something that is an assumed and necessary foundation for a philosophical argument.

As far as I can tell, Atheists exercise Faith in these (if not also other) presuppositions:

1) That their physical senses are not deceiving them, that their experiences are an actual (and not fictional) reality.
2) That the scientific method is the best way of discerning Truth
3) That there is no reality beyond our spatio-temporal existence

Presupposition 1 is a presupposition that both Christians and Atheists share. The movie The Matrix is an excellent example of this. If it is true that all of our experiences are essentially electronic impulses in our brain that could be reproduced through other means, this very response that you're reading could be a fictitious fabrication of artificial intelligence. Of course, there is no real reason to believe that the Matrix exists, but there is also no way (that I'm aware of) to prove that the ideas of the matrix are false. Therefore, all science is based on the "faith" or "presupposition" that we are not in something like a matrix and that scientific experiments are not fictitious images produced by contrived electronic impulses. Therefore, if it is "irresponsible" to believe anything based on faith, then we are all in trouble. [3]

Regarding Presupposition 2, How do you verify that the scientific method is the best way of discerning Truth? A gut feeling? Do you use scientific method to prove that scientific method is True? You see, it becomes a circular argument because their foundation of scientific method is itself an unverifiable presupposition that requires Faith.

Presupposition 3 is especially unique to atheists. Christians have the opposite presupposition, that Reality does extend beyond our spatio-temporal existence. Now, by "spatio-temporal" what I mean the experience we have of space-time. For example, we experience three space dimensions (i.e., up-down, left-right, forward-back), and one time dimension (i.e., time only moves forward). But Christianity (and other religions) claim that there is more to reality than meets the eye, that there are aspects of Reality that extend beyond our tangible grasp. Now the problem this presents for Atheists is the fact that scientific method is entirely based upon empirical data. If there is Reality that extends beyond our spatio-temporal existence, it is, by definition, impossible to empirically test and thus beyond scientific method. Thus Atheists have to presuppose by Faith that there is no Reality beyond the spatio-temporal, because there is no way through scientific method to prove that it does or doesn't exist.

That is all for now. I'll try to write more on this later. Please, I welcome any comments, critiques, or suggestions!

__________________________

Footnotes:

[1] I say this in keeping with my lack of absolute certain. That is, even in this statement "humans can say almost nothing with absolute certitude," I realize that I could be mistaken, and I welcome any insights on how I could be wrong in this regard.

[2] This is a very contextually-confined definition of Faith. In other contexts, I will use the word "Faith" in a very different sense.

[3] This is, as I understand it, the epistemological reality that Descartes was dealing with in his Meditations and Discourse on Method. I just started reading his Meditations, so please forgive me if I'm mistaken on this, but as I understand it, Descartes concluded that the only thing that you cannot doubt, that you can know with absolute certainty, is that you exist. The only thing that Descartes could be certain of was that he was, indeed, doubting. "If I am doubting, there must be an 'I' to exist."