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.