I read today of an interesting quote by Lewis Smedes in his book Keeping Hope Alive. It speaks of his suggestion that hope "is a combination of wishing, imagining, and believing for things in an unknown future. Hope is the spiritual power for living successfully as creatures endowed with godlike ability to imagine the future but stuck with humanlike inability to control it." A little later he's paraphrased like this: "...our spirits were made to hope, just as our hearts were made to love, our brains were made to think, and our hands were made to create things." Now, this is personally interesting because it suggests to me that I can have hope in Christ without being certain of even His existence. I can wish the Bible accounts of redemption and such are true, I can imagine that Heaven is a real place prepared for us by a loving Father, and then I can believe that a personal relationship with Christ is possible, all without having any certain proof that any of it is "real".
Furthermore, I'm beginning to think that my personal experience has been that of owning a lemon. If religion is merely the vehicle of spirituality, in which one expresses his/her faith, then the religion I was a part of for a chunk of my life was the problem, and not the spirituality I found there. I've maintained an inward distinction between the form of religious activities I was a part of and the belief I held while participating in them. This has allowed me to believe that what I've experienced is "real", while the bitter feelings I've harbored have been the result of a major engine failure in my spiritual vehicle. Hmmm, the jury, as it were, is still out, but I think I may be on to something for myself here.
4 comments:
I think one of the biggest problems with fundamentalist Christianity is their insistence on absolute certainty. I keep hitting this same note over and over again, but I sincerely believe that we will never have certain answers (that is, certain in any scientific or mathematical sense) to any of the so-called ultimate questions in life – the existence of God and the veracity of Christian dogma are only two examples of these ultimate questions. I believe it is a mistake to expect that level of certainty (pro or con) in religious belief. Healthy Christian faith expects and allows doubt. Fundamentalism is unhealthy and perceives questions as a threat. That is why, as we have discussed before, those who are intellectually curious usually end up leaving fundamentalism. I do believe there is a possibility of more certainty than you are proposing, but I also believe God isn't angry with us for questioning. It hurts religious folks' pride (and I count myself as a member of this crowd) to pray with the desperate father in Mark 9: "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief."
Well said, as always. I am totally with you on the "possibility of more certainty" angle, but for an entry-level, still-questioning soul, I think I'm most comfortable with looking at it all as a wish. Perhaps that will lead to greater faith in the future, who knows, but it certainly produces a strange warming of the heart to at least hold to this much. Peace!
Why is it not faith to say "I don't know about what the next world holds, but I don't have to know. I can live well and unselfishly here and now." My faith is religious humanism, and I stand in a long tradition of like thinkers.
That doesn't mean I'm sure conservative Christians are wrong. I think they are, but I'm not sure. Problem is, a lot of Christians are sure Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs and religious humnanists like myself are wrong. The tenets of their faith necessitate such 'one true way' thinking.
Blind allegiance to that which we can never know for sure is one kind of faith. Having the vision to live well in spite of uncertainty is another.
Andy: I think what I've come to terms with for myself is quite simply that although most Christians subscribe to the "one true way" mantra, for now I'm content to just believe in the story of Christ without advancing into such an exclusivity based mindset. To me, the gospel story of redemption, the love God and love your neighbor as yourself, and the practical ideas of ethical behavior promoted in Scripture are all enough to demand my attention, without drifting off into the gray areas. Besides, I've felt for a long time-even prior to leaving the PCH-that too much emphasis was on inconsequential matters and not enough on the important stuff. You know, the whole majoring on minors and minoring on majors issue. Perhaps the "weightier matters" (Mt. 23:23) Jesus spoke about should be enough for me to focus on for a while, and branch out from there. For me, there are too many beautiful lessons in Scripture to neglect it, and I wish to attach myself to them without being bound up in them, if that makes any sense. Bottom line for me, I wish enough that the Gospel story is true, but I'm not certain of any of it, so I'll stick with what I can hope for.
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