Faith,Wilful Ignorance and Mysterious Ways

For this post I’d like to discuss something I touched on when discussing the effects of immigration. I want to talk about having faith in the absence of specific answers, and as an alternative to bickering about things we do not and cannot know.

Faith is a tricky concept, especially when, like myself, you’ve been raised in a culture that prizes rationalism, absolute intellectual knowledge and scientific enquiry. These are all good things. As humans we are curious; we like to find out what things are, what they do, how they work, where they came from, what will happen to them if we do this or that or just leave them be.

As a species this curiosity has not only been our greatest asset, it has defined us and our development. Right from ‘If I tie these logs together, could I sit on them and float down the river?’ to ‘I wonder what happens if I mash these two lumps of uranium together?’ Our thirst for knowledge drives us.

As a result, because religion can often only be very vague in terms of certain knowledge, many people grow frustrated or disdainful of it. ‘Prove it’ is the atheist’s constant (and not, on the face of it, unreasonable) refrain. The whole study of theology is based on similar questions. Who is God? What is God? How does He work? Where did He come from? What does He want? Theology suggests various answers to all these questions. Where these answers differ we get schisms, arguments, even conflicts.

Some questions have answers that can be reasoned through, and if we have no physical evidence, we can at least demonstrate a chain of logic. There are some subjects, however, for which we cannot do that. For me, some of the hardest are well-known questions such as ‘Will virtuous non-Christians go to heaven?’, or ‘Do other religions lead to God?’

My natural sense of justice and fair play push me towards saying yes to both. Surely a life lived in accordance with the ideals of love, mercy, forgiveness and grace that Christianity preaches must count for something, even if the person in question has not explicitly accepted the grace of God.

On the other hand, Jesus seems fairly unequivocal. ‘I am the way, the truth and the life. No-one shall come to the Father except through me.’

One can tie oneself in theological and philosophical knots and say that such a person has accepted His grace even if they didn’t realise it. ‘Every good thing is done for me, even if you do not know my name’. Similarly it strikes me as horribly arrogant to state that my religion happens to be the only true and correct one, and everyone else is mistaken or misguided. It seems only fair to concede that all faiths at least point to God, even if some are distorted or only see Him very vaguely. I can perhaps say that I think mine is the clearest image of God whilst still admitting that not only are others at least partially correct but that my image is by no means perfect.

Issues of soteriology cause ructions within the church. How are people saved? How does it work? Theories abound but true knowledge is absent. This doesn’t stop serious arguments, fallings out, accusations of heresy and even persecutions.

Secular modernity disdains blind faith, and I think does so rightly. To me a faith unexamined, unquestioned, and untested is a weak sort of faith, a brittle kind that might snap at the first hint of doubt.

It’s easy (for me at least) to believe in God. It makes logical and rational sense to me. Much of traditional Christian doctrine likewise makes sense, or is at least of a kind that I am happy to believe in until I see definite evidence to the contrary.

Other questions though leave me shrugging and shaking my head, unable to arrive at an answer. The typical atheist response would be to say that these issues can be dismissed until a proper answer presents itself, but this strikes me as a kind of close-mindedness. We can dismiss the importance of the question, muttering something about ‘mysterious ways’, and this can often come across as wilful ignorance or an intellectual cop-out in place of a robust response. When used as such, the ones asking the questions get rightly frustrated.

However, I think that as a response it can be used actively as well as passively. Faith in the existence of God, or the Incarnation of whatever is one thing. There may be no scientific evidence, but I can believe the assertion anyway. Not knowing the answer, but being able to believe that even though it might not make sense to me, God knows what He’s doing, even if I can’t figure it out myself is a different and more difficult kind of faith. It’s much more like trust than belief, and as a result is much harder, especially given the human need to know how things work. I don’t know whether salvation is through election or free-will. I don’t know whether good non-Christians go to Heaven. I know what I think makes sense, but that’s not the same as knowing the answer. All I can do is believe that God is good, loving and just, that He knows what He is doing, and what He’s doing is for our ultimate good.

I don’t see this as blind faith or wilful ignorance per se. It’s not a faith unquestioned so much as a faith that doesn’t know all the answers, and is happy to admit that. A faith that is willing to trust that all will be made clear, even if at the moment I am incapable of understanding, and that I already know as much as I need to. It’s a faith that comes very hard, and can be rather unsatisfying. I’ll just have to try and deal with that, try to trust, and believe that ultimately, all will be made known.

Not What Will Happen, But What We Must Do

Immigrants. Migrants. Refugees. Asylum seekers. Day in, day out, morning, noon and night, the news is filled with them; their faces, their shelters, their journeys, their crimes, their corpses; where they’ve come from, where they’re going, what they’re doing, why they’ve come. Simultaneously, we are told about ourselves; how we’ve met them, how we’ve blocked them, how we’ve helped them, how we’ve turned them away. Preachers and politicians and broadcasters have spilled oceans of ink to tell us why we should welcome them, why we should hate them, why we should help them, why we should stop them.

The Christian response has been, at best, mixed.  I was made aware of an article written by someone in America who considers themselves to be Christian. He was writing on why God approves of building walls and turning away refugees. All I can say in response is that his god is not my God. It smacks of using religion to justify what you’ve already decided to do, rather than to instruct you on what you ought to be doing. As the quote goes, if your god hates all the same people as you, they’re probably made up.

The Pope has recently spoken out to urge countries to take in more asylum seekers, and condemned the populist rhetoric and self-centredness of some countries towards those in desperate need of help. Other churches and church leaders have said much the same things.

Other have warned of the consequences of taking in large numbers of asylum seekers from Muslim-majority countries. On top of the supposed economic perils, they warn of the dangers of accepting thousands of people with views and beliefs purportedly inimical to our own. ‘Islamification’, ‘cultural dilution’, ‘racial displacement’, even ‘cultural suicide’. We are told that we are a Christian culture, and that therefore these Muslims are not and should not be welcome.

These concerns are not wholly without justification. I admit that. I would, however, make two points. The first is to ask whether a culture that leaves men, women and children in the camps, on the streets, on the beaches, or at the bottom of the sea is a culture worth saving? It certainly doesn’t sound like the sort of culture I’d have any interest in rescuing or maintaining. The second is to point out, especially to those who’d try and use Christianity, either personal or cultural, as an excuse, that these concerns don’t matter. Not a bit. Even if they’re justified and genuine, they don’t matter.

Others may argue that the example given in the Bible justifies us in excluding or turning away refugees. I would merely remind them that we have been instructed otherwise. God Himself has told us directly, and in no uncertain terms; welcome the stranger, feed the starving, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless. Most importantly though, and most pertinently to this situation, is that he told us ‘to love one another as I have loved you’. Do you want an example of God to follow? There it is. Christ loved unto death. You might almost say he committed suicide.

What God really requires of us though, in this case, is not love. We need to love yes, but much, much more importantly, we need to have faith. C. S. Lewis is always a rich source of quotations, and the character Puddleglum from The Silver Chair is one of his finest channels of wisdom. I won’t quote the line, but rather paraphrase; ‘God has given us our instructions.  He hasn’t told us what will happen if we follow them, only what we must do.’ We need to believe that God knows what He’s doing, and I think that might be the hardest kind of belief. It may bear further examination, but for now, we need to believe that He does indeed know what He’s doing, and follow Him accordingly.

If it helps, I don’t believe for a second that it will be anything like cultural suicide. My hope is that it will be a cultural rejuvenation. Just imagine if every person who claimed to be Christian, and every person who carps on about us being a Christian culture, actually went out and welcomed the stranger, fed the starving, sheltered the homeless, loved with a love that glows and shines and can be seen from orbit. If that happened, do you suppose a single one of the people who came here could do anything but respond to it in kind?

It’s a faint hope, and I am a pure hypocrite. I am not anything like the being I describe above, but it gives me something to aim for. In the meantime, I will put my faith in God, try and do what He tells me, and let Him look after the consequences.

Different Kinds of Faith

Last Sunday, I attended an extremely thought-provoking service. One of the best features of Methodism is that we get lots of different preachers coming through, and last Sunday’s preacher was one that I hadn’t heard before. I say I found the service thought-provoking. It was. It just wasn’t enjoyable.

Part of the problem for me (and the following is nothing but my own narrow view, coloured by my prejudices and preconceptions) was that her faith seemed so incredibly sure. It was solid, towering. It was in fact not faith but certainty. You could have bounced rocks off it. (I may have been tempted to…) Perhaps it’s something retiring, humble and excessively British within me, but I react badly to such overt certainty, such sure knowledge that God’s on side and will do what’s needed. I raised an eyebrow when at one point she suggested that we should ‘tell God to go ahead of you this week’. In my universe, God is asked, not told.

She was able to assure us that although she is a trained local preacher, she is nonetheless (and presumably to our great surprise and relief), a ‘sinner just like you’. I’m sure she meant it in an encouraging and genuinely humble way, but it possibly lacked in the execution.

The other major hurdle to my enjoyment of the service was that she came wielding a guitar. Past traumas mean that the sight of a preacher picking up a stringed-instrument bring me out in shudders and flashbacks. The only thing worse are the words ‘Now this next hymn comes with actions’, which are to me as salt is to a slug. Her brash, forceful, noisy, solid, certain Christianity struck me as uncomfortable and distasteful.  Realising this reaction within myself is what prodded my thinking apparatus into movement.

The service was thought-provoking in that it forced me to consider my own case. I am aware that my faith is occasionally lukewarm, shy and intermittent, and often (if not usually) fails to take centre stage within my own life. However, although I am not necessarily satisfied with the confidence of my faith, I am entirely happy with the style. I don’t pretend to be charismatic in any sense of the word; I am not one of the great evangelists. The closest I get is the inherently passive activity of writing this blog. As a result, I look askance at anyone who is, and suspect that they are ‘doing Christianity wrong’ in that they are doing it differently to me.

As Christians, we find ourselves in the odd position of being told that our faith ought to be solid and sure, unfailing, unflinching, at the same time as hearing that ‘certainty, not doubt, is not the enemy of faith’. Our faith should be absolute, but stop short of knowledge. Shouldn’t it?

The Church is a broad, deep, wide beast, with plenty of room in it for all kinds of people. If I pride myself on my retiring, unassuming faith (if that’s not a ludicrous contradiction to start with), I can hardly look at others and think they are not doing things as well as myself. There is also the unpleasantly strong suspicion that my own dislike is born out of jealousy for the strong, confident faith that this women displayed. I have written in the past about my own internal struggles with whether or not to ask people not to blaspheme in my presence. On Sunday this woman proudly stated that she did not permit blasphemy in her office. My own quiet, unassuming belief, steady though it is, must surely be shown up in contrast to such a confident, public Christianity.

It is not the strength of my faith that concerns me so much as the manner in which it is shown. I don’t necessarily wish to emulate the style with which she evinces her religion. I’ve already said that I find it a little distasteful. It is the confidence, perhaps even the unshakeable certainty that I am envious of. At the same time, I wouldn’t wish to replace my faith with knowledge. I’m not sure if this contradiction makes me deep and complex, or just irrational.

I comfort myself with the idea that the body has many parts. No doubt the foot thinks the eye is a very poor foot; the hand must seem to discerning spleens like a very poor spleen; the tongue a most inefficient ear to ears everywhere. Last Sunday’s preacher might well be (or at least believe themselves to be) the voice-box or hand of the church, but there must be room for less visible organs too. If that makes me the gall-bladder or the left buttock, then that’s fine. The body needs those just as much as a voice box or a hand.