A Choice to Believe

My belief in God has not wavered, though my faith in so-called Christian institutions has...

Some of us are raised to believe in God, or a god, or gods, but at some point in our lives we must own it ‘Ok, do I really believe in God?’ or another version of this: ‘Am I following my faith tradition mechanically, without any real sense that God exists?’ When we consider these questions, invariably we look for signs. Have I experienced any miracles in my life? Has anything happened to me that can’t easily be explained? Was there a time when I experienced an outcome that was highly unlikely, and if so could that outcome best be explained with some intervention of an Almighty power? Is there any evidence for God in my life? Is God something else that I have not been taught? Does God exist but is dispassionate and unconcerned, like a cosmic genius that has grown bored with the latest toy and moves on to something entirely new?

During childhood, the adults around us tell stories, pass down family traditions, and remark about the passage of time filling in the unknowns with their own sense of reality, of purpose or lack of purpose. We want to have a sense of belonging to something. What that is, and how it is, begins to take shape from early childhood on into adulthood. Are we all connected to that life beyond what we can comprehend? Indigenous peoples often speak of life being connected even after death and that it is possible to communicate on some level with our ancestors, on a spiritual plane. There is an almost universal concept of the ‘soul’. For as long as I can remember, I loved puzzles and games. Anything that needed to be solved, analyzed, comprehended, recognized, and reshaped into something new – I was all over it. I was fascinated by patterns that words or numbers made. I was also the daughter of a devout Presbyterian minister. For me this meant serious study of the Word of God as written in the text of the Christian Bible.

In addition to my education in the public school, when at home I was educated by my father every night after supper. This went on for all my school age years, from pre-kindergarten all the way to age eighteen. It was so comprehensive that I believe it’s fair to say that I know more about what the Bible says than a good number of trained priests and clergy. It wasn’t until later, when I began to see how I looked from the other side (from those that do not share my faith), that my rational and emotional selves would incorporate lessons from childhood into a more enlightened philosophy. This isn’t to say that I’m right and the world is wrong. I also do not claim to possess some universal wisdom or insight, like some doomsday soothsayer crying ‘The End is Nigh’. Rightness and wrongness can only be seen much later when consequences become realized. Thinking you are right, and being right it turns out are two very, very different ideas.

Belief in God is a choice. I made that choice when I was a child, then I made that choice again as a young adult, and I continue to make that choice every day. My choice is based on a decision to interpret my life, my experiences, the things that are, the things that aren’t, the justice, the injustice, the wonders around me, and the capacity to love, the capacity to hate; that all of these elements can be best explained in a universe in which God exists. It is said that to build a philosophy one has to start somewhere.

I’m in pretty good company, it turns out. According to Pew Research Center, which conducted a detailed global survey about belief in God, 61% of respondents said that “God was important” in their life. What’s fascinating to me is that the percentage goes up in less advanced economies. Some might jump to conclusions about this, citing that belief in God is an indicator of being less advanced, less enlightened. My observations of human nature lead to a different interpretation. The more affluent a person or society gets, the more that society’s values are shaped by consumerism and wealth attainment – benefitting the rich. Wealth and the all-consuming need to accumulate it appears to be diametrically opposed to faith in God.

Karl Marx wrote that religion is “the opiate of the masses” because he saw deep connections between the institutional Church and oligarchs, autocrats, and despots. The entire quote reads like this: “Religion is the opium of the people. It is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of our soulless conditions.” The problem, as Marx saw it, was that religion represented the “status quo” especially in its relationship with economic and political systems. Organized religion especially had an adversarial relationship with science. Marx basically saw religion as irrational (a construct or delusion that we make to avoid the horrors of reality), as something that negates human dignity by making us slaves to unyielding dogma, and as something that is hypocritical (professing moral superiority yet siding with the oppressors).

Why do we put blinders on a horse? Do we put blinders on a horse to negate horse dignity and take away its freedom, or to protect it from its own tendencies that could result in harm? I’m not suggesting that people are horses. What I am suggesting is that pure human reason is flawed and will lead to destruction if we get too complacent and too confident in our own abilities. Did Karl Marx have some valid concerns? Absolutely he did. We are seeing these concerns playing out right now in the United States, in our churches. We are seeing the attack on science, we are seeing whole culture-wide denial of basic facts, we are seeing grabs for political power in the form of a religious crusade to ‘purify our government and social institutions’. What we are witnessing, my friends, is an all-out assault ON the church by what I call forces of darkness. Which I believe are very, very real.

What we are seeing is exactly the opposite of pure religion. When our religious institutions fail to uphold their own moral standards, they actually become the very thing they despise. We see human depravity at its lowest. Priests preying on children. Power-hungry and money-grubbing pastors. Preaching hate and condemnation of those that think differently or act differently. The disease is spreading. This is not worship. This is not what the Church is supposed to be. My hope for people, and for those officials who bear the greatest weight of responsibility for our future on this planet is this: that you should rely on wisdom, lead with humility, temper human rational thought with grace that comes from realizing that humanity is not the highest form of life, and that whatever IS the highest form of life can be touched through faith. From the gospel according to Saint Matthew:

7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

9 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. 13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

The narrow gate. There are hundreds if not thousands of commentaries written about just what the narrow gate is. I have heard or read most of them. And I have come to realize that the narrow gate is different for every person. It is to take the road not taken, as the poet had written. It is to be courageous, to have the strength of one’s convictions, and with an open heart, full of love for others, to perhaps go against one’s own tribe and to defy conventional wisdom – particularly when conventional wisdom offers blind allegiance to the status quo. The narrow gate is the exploration of one’s own purpose in this life, seeking it, never satisfied that one has found it. Always seeking. Always. Seeking. The narrow road means that ‘what we know’ is always far less than ‘what we still need to know’, and that ‘what we know’ may be in error.

Then we have this from the letter to the Church in Philippi:

“4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9 Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”

Think about such things. While taking that journey down the narrow road, think upon such things. Our actions come from our thoughts. Reality and thought are connected. Our thoughts create reality, and our perception of reality can influence our thoughts. The MAGA Church has lost their way. Not only have they abandoned the narrow path, but they have abandoned goodness and loveliness in their thoughts. Thoughts have become bitter, dark, condescending, and evil. My hope for the Church is that God will expunge those dark elements and bring it back to Him.

Finally, this is the essence of my faith from the gospel according to John:

17 On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. 18 Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem,19 and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home. 21 “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”

23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

24 Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 27 “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.” 28 After she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. “The Teacher is here,” she said, “and is asking for you.” 29 When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet entered the village but was still at the place where Martha had met him.31 When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there.

32 When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. 34 “Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied.

35 Jesus wept.

38 Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. 39 “Take away the stone,” he said. “But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.” 40 Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” 41 So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.” 43 When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

I choose to believe in God, and in the fulfillment of God’s plan for humankind in Jesus Christ, as it was told in this story. While Karl Marx and others who choose not to believe in God have my respect, I wonder if that decision is taken in part out of a desire to be free from any potential obligation we might have to our Creator. One can believe that freedom from religion offers any kind of freedom at all. What if instead, the delusion is NOT to believe in God? What if the true delusion is that we make our own destiny, our own future? What if slavery and servitude happens when we abandon faith entirely? Because we deny our full potential perhaps?

In the weeks ahead, I’ll share with you where my journey has taken me - in the sometimes failures, the sometimes triumphs, and the ongoing need to balance faith and reason.