Do I believe in God? Yes. Thats the short answer. Why? I find myself to be in communion with what seems immeasurable. I may notice this only in my more contemplative moments, but once noticed that communion hovers in the background of everything else I think and do. That communion seems more interpersonal than subpersonal or impersonal, although it is not literally a conversation with another person like you and me. Its immeasurably more intimate and more encompassing than talking with a friend, real or imagined. For me, and for many other believers in God, communion with what seems both immeasurable and immeasurably interpersonal is simply what believing in God means. Abraham, Moses, Second Isaiah, Jesus, Paul, Philo of Alexandria, Augustine, Muhammad, Maimonides, Ibn Rushd, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Julian of Norwich, Hildegarde of Bingen, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Friedrich Schleiermacher, C. S. Lewis, Martin Buber, Abraham Heschel, Thomas Merton, Paul Tillich and Seyyed Hossein Nasr could all agree on at least that much. They would disagree over lots of other opinions, but not this central point. (If you want your opinions about God to be taken at all seriously, you need to know who most of these people are and some of what they thought. Its not enough to base views of God only on the views of your parents or your local minister or your friends or some television evangelist, not if you want to be taken seriously.) Nothing I have learned from physics, chemistry, biology, or neurology convinces me that this communion is an illusion. Instead (with process thinkers, among others), I dare to regard physical, chemical, biological, and neurological relationships as different cross-sections, not replacements, of communion with what seems immeasurable. I dont think its healthy to believe in God for any other reasons, at least not any other reasons Ive heard. Wanting to please others, to keep from facing mortality, to make things easier, to explain why disconcerting or devastating things happen —to believe in God for reasons like these is to set yourself up for disappointment. If people criticize or make fun of you for depending on these as reasons to believe, theyre actually doing you a service. You need a healthier reason. The only healthy reason to believe in God that I know of is finding yourself to be in communion with what seems both immeasurable and immeasurably interpersonal. When you find yourself in such communion, youre no longer that concerned with pleasing others, no longer that concerned with what happens at death, no longer that concerned with making things easier, no longer that concerned with finding some grand master plan for every disconcerting or devastating thing that happens. All those concerns become less urgent, because you find that your life here and now is already overflowing with more meaning than you will ever fathom. You may still legitimately want to explore all sorts of questions about why things turn out the way they do, or about what happens at death, and you may still legitimately want to please others when you can do so out of devotion to what seems truest. But these are all secondary matters, once you find yourself to be in communion with what seems both immeasurable and immeasurably interpersonal. What if you just dont find yourself to be in such communion? I can only say what Paul Tillich says of grace: It happens; or it does not happen. And certainly it does NOT happen if we try to force it upon ourselves, just as it shall not happen if we think ... that we have no need of it (religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=378&C=84). All you can do is be honest with yourself and pay attention to all that your life here and now seems to involve. Nobody has the right to ask more of you or me than that. Im just reporting what I continue to find.
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 12:02:01 +0000
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