.I recently received a copy of a letter from someone who cannot decide whether to believe in God. He points to all the suffering in the world as well as the apalling behavior on the part of religious extremists. Here is my reply
Dear .......,
Your letter about your religious views intrigues me. Here are a few thoughts in response.
I am sure you are responding to some specifics in Peter’s letter, who must have been concerned for the ‘state of your soul’. It is possible that you sense his desire for you to be something which you see no need to be. Hmmm. I think a more interesting issue is to discover who you actually are. As you delve deeper into who you are, you might find a need to account for it in spiritual terms, since the physical/biological structures we are used to cannot handle it.
So who are you? And who am I? And to what extent do those two questions have the same answer? By-passing the obvious answers about our being members of the human race, a biological reality which appears related to the ape family, let us think about the more intriguing aspects of personality.
The key instincts of the entire animal world are FIRST survival and SECOND propagation. One remarkable thing about the human race is that it seems to have got the priority of these two confused. Hence there is a preparedness of humans to give their lives to save their young, which may or may not exist among the ‘lesser’ species. Somehow this extends into a readiness to surrender our possessions, our prospects and even our lives, for the sake of causes in which we believe. Are you like that? Am I like that? Obviously we are – to some extent at least. Furthermore, do we not admire those who possess this altruism to a greater extent than ourselves? Those who risk life and limb to save the lives of people they have never even heard of, for example. And does this not make us believe that Jesus is somehow the archetype of humankind at its best?
So where does this amazing, non-biological aspect of our race come from? Maybe we are indwelt by a Spirit of some sort, which is absent in the other species. (Incidentally, it would not matter if it were found among them, but I suspect it is hardly so.) Does it matter if we ignore this aspect of our make up. Or do we become better people if we focus on it and allow it a more controlling place in our lives? And does the future of the world depend to any extent on our doing so?
Religious belief is not, in my opinion, about providing people with a belief structure to fortify their baser instincts, among which are their arrogance and their selfishness. It may be that many people, including many Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc. use their religions as an excuse for pursuing self interest: this is very unfortunate. One of the results is that people who do not want to be like any of them are tempted to reject all theologies and the blessings that come from pursuing one.
What are those blessings?
Accepting a theology as an intellectual apparatus for understanding one’s life experience is liberating. It allows one to move on from first base. It says, “let us move forward in making something of our lives instead of continually wrestling with questions that have no definitive and scientific answer.” The analogy is someone who is waiting at a station for a train to some particular place when he does not know what that place is anyway: eventually he should get tired of waiting and get on a train which looks, at least promising. Finally he will begin to get somewhere, even though he knows he might have to decide to change trains later on.
Secondly, accepting a theology is empowering, in that it provides a reason for being and doing things of merit, which build up one’s self esteem and allows one to determine that life is not a waste of time. It can, as it has in my case, allow me to take hold of opportunities in the confidence that they are my calling (AKA my destiny) and so to pursue them with more vigor and fewer second thoughts than might otherwise be possible.
Thirdly, it gives me hope that the world in general, and the human race in particular, has a destiny, even a reason for being, and therefore a future worth believing in. More than that, it allows me to believe that, ultimately, the power of good will prove stronger than the power of evil. This is not an easy hope to justify, for many reasons, but it is important to hold it if you can. Actually, without a theology, there are no absolutes of right or wrong (does that matter?) and the final authority of good versus bad is the intelligence of man as represented by the will of the majority (God bless democracy!) Isn’t that a terrifying thought?
None of this deals with your problem – that the extremes and absurdities of the more obvious religious sects are objectionable, even offensive. I choose to disregard them as illustrative of the true meaning of religion, and so (actually) do you. They are therefore not worth much discussion.
Once you are ready to align yourself with a theology, you can then contemplate that your life has a purpose, and that there might be something more to you than the animal being which you undoubtedly are. Where that takes you, who knows? Since any words and images which we might use to describe God cannot begin to do justice to so unearthly a being, none of us can claim to have a firm hold on the truth. However, we can claim to say, “I believe the truth lies in this direction…..”. For me, Jesus is a good indicator of the direction. He is God incarnate, in the sense that there is no better clarification of what life is about and where goodness lies, or who indeed the unknowable God might be. So I “run with the story”, I use the images of the Jewish/Christian tradition to enable to me to develop and explain my grasp on the ineffable. And I accept, without understanding, that there is a part of me which does not belong to my biological machine, and does not necessarily die with it.
One further thought. I like to use the analogy of a ball, mounted on a piece of string and being whirled around in a circle. There is a centripetal force which constantly tugs the ball toward the center in competition with the centrifugal force which tends to throw everything apart. This is a fundamental principal of creation – seen in the galaxies and the atom and many things in between. It even holds man on the face of the spinning planet. God, the spirit of goodness, love – call it what you will, is the forces which holds the universe together, and keeps it from self destruction physically, morally, spiritually. In contrast, evil is the sum total of all destructive forces whose ultimate goal (ultimate achievement were those forces able to triumph) would the shattering and scattering of everything. In this context, my theology allows me to attach myself to, to rationalize and to work with a morality which has a reason and a purpose.
Does any of that make sense to you. It does to me – sort of.
If you want to send me your reactions to this letter, I will be pleased to hear from you ..... dfraser7@gmail.com