For those who believe, no proof is necessary.
For those who do not believe, no proof is possible.
This quotation has been in my mind lately, and I am wondering where it is from. I did an internet search and found it attributed variously to Stuart Chase, Ignatius of Loyola, the Talmud, Edgar Cayce, Benjamin Disraeli, Franz Werfel, G. K. Chesterton, William James, a medium named Derek Acorah, and others of whom I had never heard. Elsewhere it is called a “traditional saying.”
I suspect the citation is so widely attributed because it is so widely quoted; and that it is so widely quoted because it rings true in the minds of so many people.
I have myself had some recent indications of its validity:
While preparing a talk called “No More Weeping,” I ran across a book by James L. Hallenbeck called Palliative Care Perspectives. In Chapter 7 he deals with the topic of altered states of consciousness preceding death, or pre-death visions. “Most commonly seen,” he says, “are deceased relatives.” Sometimes, though, it is angels who appear, and these are usually welcomed by the dying person. However, he adds, “George, a devout atheist patient of mine, was an exception to this rule. When angels appeared in his room, he screamed, ‘Get out of here, there is no God!’”
For those who believe , no proof is necessary.
For those who do not believe, no proof is possible.
Another reminder has been my year-and-a-half-long e-mail dialogue with a former Christian, encountered first through my accidental posting on an ex-christian website. (To learn how I could accidentally post to a forum, see “Being Scorned.” See also “In God’s Grip” for more about the dialogue.)
Josh (not his real name) is obsessed with the Bible. In spite of everything, he is still a fundamentalist in his approach; and taking every word literally, he perceives only a human book filled with violence, contradictions, and errors. For him, it would be hypocrisy at best and idiocy at worst to revere the Bible as containing God’s word while at the same time declining to accept every law in the book of Leviticus as mandatory for Christians. He speaks of “God’s alleged love.”
For those who believe, no proof is necessary.
For those who do not believe, no proof is possible.
Heroic Faith
Nevertheless, it seems to me that in practice the distinction between those who believe and those who do not is often far more ambiguous than our quotation would lead us to believe. Faith and doubt can coexist in the same person. Like the father of the epileptic child whom Jesus healed, we may cry out, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24 ).
The question is perhaps less whether or not I have faith, as whether or not I live out of faith. Do I live from the faith dwelling in me or from the unbelief which also resides in me?
If our lives do flow from faith, it does not mean that we will never feel bereft of God. There may be days or weeks or months when we wonder why we ever believed in the first place; when life strips away our hope; when we seem to be spiritually naked, with no defense against the cold forces of despair or cynicism.
It is easy to think of heroic faith in terms of those who never doubt, who go to their martyrdom singing hymns and praising God with a full and joyful heart. I suspect, however, that heroic faith belongs more properly to those who, when their heart is empty, choose to take the next step – whether that step is to the cross or simply out of bed in the morning. They mine the resources to take that step from the remnant of faith and hope remaining. Or if not even a remnant seems to be left, then they find that faith remembered or faith longed-for must be the mustard-seed that suffices.
For I am longing to see you so that I may share with you some spiritual gift to strengthen you—or rather so that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine. (Romans 1:11-12)