Searching for a Credible Faith?

From time to time I meet people who are searching for a dependable faith. The older woman I mentioned in my April 23, 2009 blog post “I Believe in the Absence of God” was one of them.

I met this same woman again recently at my swimming pool and she questioned me intensely about my faith. This surprised me since she hardly knows me. She is searching eagerly for a source of hope before she dies—but she is not prepared to settle for any belief that lacks credibility. The blind faith she had as a child disappointed her. She now wants to find TRUTH, not just pleasant myth. Finding a reliable faith has been my life-quest as well.

I use the term “faith” (or religion) to mean our ultimate road-map for life. This concept applies to an individual, and also to a family or a community of people. It helps to have a group of people living together who share the same values and the same “faith” road-map. That is a faith community.

So in a sense, a Materialist or an Atheist can also have a “faith”—faith is defined as whatever system of living and thinking that we are willing to bet our life on.

Both Albert Einstein and the renowned British historian Arnold Toynbee included Communism and other secular belief systems in their observation of religious phenomena. I quite agree with them: any system of thought and practice that drives its adherents with consuming passion is a kind of “religion” or “faith”.

I would include “Environmentalism”; in my category of faith. Some of my friends believe that there is nothing more worth living and dying for than to save the fragile planetary environment. Heroes of Greenpeace have risked their lives in trying to save the planet and its endangered species. Although their faith is not supreme wisdom for living, I have no quarrel with most of their goals. On the other hand, they may fail to address some of life’s most perplexing questions. Or they may worship Creation, but forget its CREATOR.

The term faith implies principles we believe intensely, but that cannot be proven to a skeptic. True faith involves struggle and contention, almost by definition.

Faith is also something we value so much that we naturally want to share it with friends. That may cause conflict, particularly if we become too zealous and impatient to convince others.

Any search for faith that is not linked to finding wisdom and understanding will eventually prove unsatisfying. Real faith changes our emotions, but it should persuade our minds as well.

The religion of my childhood seemed too peculiar for me to accept without question. People in my Amish Mennonite community in the 1950’s followed their traditions as best they could. However, they believed some things that seemed naive, if not foolish to me.

My father was an example of this naivete, although he was also a marvelous man in many respects. My Dad was born over a hundred years ago in 1906. He dropped out of school after grade six to help support his family when his mother died in the great flue epidemic of 1918. Like many rural people, Dad had some far-fetched ideas that seemed laughable to his better educated children.

For instance, my father claimed that fishing worms fell down from the sky whenever it rained. There is no doubt that whenever there was a heavy rain at our farm, the ground was covered with earthworms; they came out of the earth to avoid drowning. My father’s interpretation, however, was that the worms fell down out of the sky together with the rain. His observations fit the facts as he understood them, but his line of reasoning was humorously deficient. His approach to the Bible seemed equally haphazard to me.

Traditional religions often become mixed up with elements of superstition or folk tales. We see this ofttimes in other people’s religions, but not always in our own tradition. I notice that city dwellers have their own superstitions, such as astrology. Whenever there is an absence of real faith, then folk tales and superstitions fill the vacuum.

Albert Einstein famously remarked: “All men are equally wise and equally foolish before God”. The Infinite One must laugh at the pretentions of small earth dwellers. How little we humans truly understand; but our preachers and academic teachers hold forth with bland confidence nonetheless on subjects none of us understand very clearly.

After years of observing religion and faith in its many forms, I have become less critical of primitive and traditional religion. I did not realize as a boy that people admired my Amish Mennonite family. I thought we were far too peculiar to be accepted by our neighbors. However, most people have considerable respect for sincere believers: whether they are Catholics, Baptists, Jews, Buddhists, or Environmentalists. In one sense, each of these faiths is incredible. Perhaps that is the very nature of faith—to believe profoundly in what other people do not (yet) find convincing.

I have concluded that even the ignorant and simple people rarely go far wrong when they sincerely try to follow their scriptures—that is exactly what scriptures are for. Thus in my older years, I find that I believe many if not most of the things that my father held dear. I don’t accept all of his superstitions, but I find faith in God, in Jesus, and in the Bible better for me than any of the alternative faiths/religions that I have investigated.

Although some people may be struck by the lightning of God’s truth at any age, authentic faith must be proven genuine on the battlefield of life. Faith that is not pure gold will not endure the refiner’s fire.

It is God who fortunately reveals Himself to those who seek Him; it does not depend on our intellectual sophistication. That is why highly educated people may never find faith, while simple folks are still finding God all around the world. Humility before the ULTIMATE INTELLIGENCE is the only requirement for faith and worship.

The language of faith is mysterious because it attempts to describe a REALITY so much larger than human intelligence can grasp or explain. Faith may sometimes seem vague or precarious, but it is a lifeline. It brings hope, enthusiasm, courage and vision. It depends more on guidance from above, than our mental gymnastics.

Where faith is totally lacking, people find life very dark. However, there is always light available for those who will follow it. That light grows gradually brighter as we approach the ONE who lives in LIGHT. St. Paul describes God to his young friend Timothy as the one … “Who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honour and might forever.”

Faith should be credible, but it will also remain tantalizingly and spectacularly incredible.

The Absence of God

A few weeks ago I was swimming at our local community pool when a fascinating conversation broke out in the hot tub. Two women were discussing their religious beliefs. One woman was excited about joining the local Baptist church, having grown up in another denomination. The other woman said she was an Atheist. She said “I believe in the absence of God”.

I have reflected for several weeks on the absence of God. Many people have experienced God missing at times, whether or not they have a religious faith.

I was struck several years ago by reading a conversation with Mother Teresa. She said that she had gone on for many decades after her first potent experiences of God’s presence, where he spoke powerfully to her. However, her transcendent ecstasies were not repeated again during the next fifty years, despite her exemplary life of service to the dying poor in Calcutta.

I have been reading the French philosopher and mystic, Simone Weil. She wrote about the necessity of God withdrawing intentionally from the human sphere. Otherwise, she says, we would not have the freedom to become the mature spiritual beings that God wants; we might be more like animals or puppets, responding to what God desires in a slavish fashion, rather than in a willing manner. She said God’s love for us requires some distance between us and him.

God’s absence seems apparent in many places. I have seen the empty cathedrals of Europe, lovingly built by people of great faith, but now days admired primarily for their architectural elegance. Has God gone missing in Europe?

What of those who suffer unimaginable evil from crime, war, torture, and exploitation. Where is the presence of God for them? Or is he perhaps found more often during times of misery than in times of pleasure?

Finally, there are references in scripture to God’s absence, whether in the Psalms or in Jesus crying out “My God, why have you forsaken me?”

For many years I have reflected on the presence of God, but now I realize that we experience his absence as well. This dearth is a profound dilemma both for spiritual seekers and for atheists: how do we deal with feeling such an immense absence?

Twenty five years ago my wife and I lost a baby girl who was only 3 ½ months old to crib death. That event left us in profound grief, feeling totally deserted by God. How could God take away a bright child whom we loved so dearly? Kathy had put baby Hannah down for a nap while we celebrated our oldest son’s fifth birthday. But when Kathy went back to check on her, the baby was cold and dead. We grieved for most of a year, wondering what we might have done wrong. Such events shake us profoundly, even if we have a strong faith.

There is a phenomena of “absence makes the heart grow fonder”. When my wife, children or friends reappear after being gone a while, I am overjoyed to see them; I seem more excited than if they had been with me all along. Absence and separation from those we love most is a necessary facet of our existence. Perhaps this is part of why God doesn’t always seem present to us.

Even for those who strongly believe in God, our experience varies between feeling his uplifting presence and at other times experiencing his absences. I believe that God never truly leaves us, but our perceptions change. Should we focus intensely on recapturing his presence in our mind’s eye? Or are we better to wait patiently for this luminous light to reappear like the dawn?

Some people think that powerful worship can bring them quickly into God’s presence. Others wonder if emotional experience may not be more the result of suggestion than his real presence. They believe God is more likely to be heard in a “still, small voice” than in loud celebrations. Perhaps this depends on our temperament.

Our feelings of God are coloured by the religion we practised as children, or by the lack of any religion. We judge everything through that lens. So if we are bitter about our childhood religious experience, God may get tossed out, or at least his image may become disfigured in our mind.

I believe that those who seek God with all their hearts will find him eventually. We may seek God in music, books, scriptures, nature, meditation, prayer, or in other ways. The different ways we each experience God remain a magnificent mystery. So too are his absences.