Once in a while, sometimes in joy and sometimes in suffering I come to this question: "Do I really believe?". That is the essence of a question that takes on many forms. Here are some others, "Is Faith a reasonable thing?" "Have I fooled myself into believing out of Fear? Comfort? Laziness?" It makes me wonder, did I really give unbelief a chance?
God Forgive me as I let my mind pursue that last question. If I am going to pursue unbelief, that leaves me with two options (for the purpose of this exercise): Seek alternate explanations for the questions that still remain OR Become truly agnostic, not knowing and not seeking. I am a seeker by nature, so the latter will be difficult. Being a seeker will be hard as well. In my Christian walk I have still had the luxury to be open to all sorts of discovery. As a Christian, Science is a critical vehicle for discovery and a way of understanding the wonders of God. Theories like Evolution are not the enemy of Faith or the Bible. Now, though, if I take a secular path I will lose a vast sphere of my intellectual options in making sense of the universe. If the unexplainable cannot be explained, then they must be dismissed until they can be explained. Their unpredictability eliminates them from the equation. But that approach doesn't really address the question underneath the question in this search for answers. The question underneath that problem is the problem of Faith itself. Unbelief in God does not necessarily eliminate Faith. Science is, at it's root, a search for order. An expectation for order may be a little closer to Faith than it would first appear. And it is that expectation for there to be order that introduces the element of Faith into the Science. Take Evolution as a concept and try to describe it or perhaps explain what we know about the beginning of the Universe and try to comprehend what 14 billion years means. Though we have information and predictability there is still an element of Faith in presuming we know anything. We have Faith in our own capacity to understand, even though these concepts should boggle our minds. It's not only Faith in our own abilities but I am also putting Faith into the intellect and explanations of Darwin, Einstein, Hawking and so many other names that I don't even know by which I have been influenced. Our minds seek order, and with a little information I can come up with rudimentary explanations. But with so much time involved and variables approaching infinity, only a fool could expect a unified comprehensible explanation of everything. If we make it more personal, even the capacity to ask "What does it all mean?" presents a philosophical journey to which some devote their entire lives. The point is that even if I were to cling on to some answers that were devoid of the mystical, mysterious and supernatural, we will still be left with the philosophical "Why?" And like a child relentlessly asking questions you get, "And what came before that?" at the end of each explanation. There is a certain point where every path becomes unknowable. The elimination of doubt in any pursuit seems untenable. And if you can't eliminate doubt, it would be hard to function without faith.
Suddenly, the Agnostic approach doesn't seem so bad. Perhaps I can enjoy the Joys of this life just as they come or even endure the Pain without total despair, because in the end: none of us really knows anything. What about Love though? Do I chalk it up to a evolutionary chemical process? Beauty? Why would a sunset stir me so? Death? Can I really face my own immortality and shrug? How can I stop my mind from pursuing these questions? Because if I did chase any thought it would lead me to need an answer, be it secular or spiritual. And why does my mind want to know? Why do I seek to discover?
My own questioning makes me tired. Perhaps belief in God is a surrender of sorts. I have tired of my own pursuits and decided that everything that I cannot explain I will put under the category of God. God is my coping mechanism. Were that true and if I could really surrender to this coping God, I would still be disappointed. In this model, nothing achieves real significance. God is distant, neither comforting, nor rejoicing, nor punitive. The lows never convict and the highs never redeem. A distant God may keep the hard questions at bay, but it also keeps real joy and growth away. God is personal and he has set forth the Universe that we may each discover him on this basis. There is nothing more revolutionary than the concept of a personal God, a savior that not only addresses you by name, but one that will not leave you alone if you have called on his name.
I was recently watching the Going Clear documentary about Scientology. Those exposes get uncomfortable as people describe the mystical and miraculous with the same convincing tone and rationality that I myself use about my faith. But the power of Faith is in the object of that Faith. From Mormonism to Scientology to Christianity the stories are crazy. At face value, I don't know how I could convince anyone that one was true and the rest were hogwash. That is, if it weren't for the person of Jesus Christ. Nothing compares. Nothing compares to the completeness of his life and his story in Cosmic terms and in very personal terms. In the documentary a man describes the difference between Faith and a Cult.
"radical Islam, and other cults, the one common factor he found was that all these extreme faiths feature a “crushing sense of certainty.” He says they have no room for doubt, which means they have no room for questioning"
I haven't been very thorough or scientific in my approach to exploring this doubt, but I think it is important to make the attempt. At least for me it is. If I claim that Christ is who he says he is, The Truth, then my search for truth will always lead me to him. I would like to think that is why in my seeking, I could not shake his presence. It seems that trying to go without Jesus is like trying to go without air. It's just not healthy. The Gospel keeps creeping into every thought and conversation and I even see it in the dying leaves that will spring forth renewed once again. I hear his name and my heart races. Not out of fear, but out of excitement. One day, his Kingdom will come. I can't escape that thought anymore than I can escape knowing that in a few hours the earth will spin round to reveal the sun again. I don't have proof, but I do have evidence, and that evidence has formed and informed belief. Search for that evidence began in doubt. Doubt is a big beautiful question mark etched in our DNA that bids us to seek out our maker, that we might know him....that we might be saved.
"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.” C.S. Lewis
We don't make life altering decisions in a vacuum. None of us is truly and completely clinical or exclusively emotional, devoid of rationality. We must all process all of our experiences in pain and deduction and beauty and joy and make certain conclusions using the best of our faculties. We are all tarnished and warped and at times see things so clear and at others, so dim. The miracle of all miracles is that Jesus seeks us where we are and how we are and uses all we are to retrieve us. I don't understand it, that is just who he is.
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