“Peace,” she replies. “Or perhaps joy.”

After a moment she asks him, “What about your own word for life?”

“You wouldn’t want to hear it.”

No, she probably wouldn’t.  The word he is thinking of is “futility.”

Josh, you may remember, is the ex-Christian with whom I correspond from time to time. He admits that a certain amount of happiness is found in life, as well as a certain amount of pain and sorrow.  But at the end, he concludes, it all means nothing.

While he has lost the sense of any meaning to life, Josh has found purpose in his current crusade against Christianity. He has become what we might call a dysvangelist (or more etymologically correct, a “dysangelist”), one who proclaims, not Good News, but bad or disordered news. His co-religionists include the band of in-your-face “new atheists” whose books are hot sellers these days. Josh is less eloquent than they, but no less fervent.

Josh’s mission, however, appears to give him no joy. It is one thing to spend a Saturday afternoon in what we consider meaningless activity. It is quite another to live a life of futility. Something deep in us insists that life has meaning, and the refusal of this basic instinct has the effect of throwing our minds and hearts out of kilter – of untuning, so to speak, the strings of life.

Here are two quotations, one reflecting a psychological approach to meaning, and the other a uniquely Christian insight:

As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy … through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.
Once an individual’s search for a meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capability to cope with suffering.

Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy

Every Eucharist is a celebration of our trust that in Christ meaning will triumph in ways that we cannot guess or anticipate. Vaclav Havel, playwright and previous President of the Czech Republic, defined it thus: ‘Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.’”

Timothy Radcliffe, OP, What Is the Point of Being a Christian? (New York: Burns and Oates, 2006), 17.

For the enemy has pursued me,
crushing my life to the ground,
making me sit in darkness like those long dead.

Therefore my spirit faints within me;
my heart within me is appalled.

Answer me quickly, O Lord;
my spirit fails.
Do not hide your face from me,
or I shall be like those who go down to the Pit.

Let me hear of your steadfast love in the morning,
for in you I put my trust.

Teach me the way I should go,
for to you I lift up my soul.

(Psalm 143:3-4, 7-8)

“Would your religious background make you rigid?”

Disregarding the fact that this was not only an improper question, but probably also an illegal one in a job interview, I replied,

“No, I believe that my religious background makes me less rigid.”

But yes, some Christians are indeed rigid, and, beyond rigid, even harsh toward those who disagree with them. This is a puzzle to me, for the spiritual journey leads us nowhere if not into the broad graciousness of God.  Consequently the most deeply spiritual people I know are also some of the most open-minded, loving, and welcoming of heart.

On the other hand, I have encountered unbelievers who, while priding themselves on being open-minded, seem to be closed to anything pointing toward the reality of God.

“Josh,” the ex-Christian with whom I have been having an on-again, off-again e-mail correspondence (see “Answered Prayer” and “Heroic Faith“), provides an illustration.  A recent message sent out to his mailing list concerns the end of brain activity, bringing about, as he sees it, the end of human awareness and existence. He concludes by expressing sorrow for us poor benighted Christians who need to believe in life after death. But with a magnanimous flourish he adds:

If they need it, then I suppose it doesn’t hurt for them to believe it. It is like children who need to believe in the Easter Bunny. It does give them a certain amount of comfort.

I decide to overlook the condescension.  I write back:

On the question of the difference between brain activity and mind activity, you might want to read The Spiritual Brain by the neuroscientist Mario Beauregard.

Josh responds,

I suppose the author believes in the spiritual, so what he writes is influenced by that.

Never one to give up a good argument easily, I reply:

If you reject the intelligence and knowledge of everyone who believes in God, your sources of information will be very limited. I wouldn’t refuse a knowledgeable resource just because the author is an atheist.

Now granted, I would not rely on a confirmed atheist for wisdom concerning experience of God, any more than I would rely on someone who had never been out of Florida to describe for me the experience of walking through fresh snow. But I do respect the knowledge of anyone who is an expert in his or her field.

And in his own way, Josh has taught me a great deal:

• about the failure of Christians to witness adequately to the beauty and love of Christ
• about how mysterious faith is: why do some believe and not others?
• about the hold religion can have on a person, as it does on Josh, even when it has been renounced.

Whether or not he has learned anything from me, I can’t say. But I remember the words of Jesus:

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. (Matthew 7:1)

…and of Paul:

Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.  (Romans 15:7)

So I pray to be led with the saints into God’s broad graciousness.

. . . . . . . . . .

P.S. During the interview mentioned above, the dean posed another unusual question.

“Looking at my office,” he said, “what do you notice about me?”

I paused for a moment.

“That you are organizationally challenged,” I answered.

He laughed.  I got the job.

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)

Many years ago, a colleague of my father’s found an abandoned baby buzzard (a turkey vulture, to be exact), took him home, and named him Oscar. Cared for with tenderness, Oscar grew up and learned to fly. During the day he would go out and socialize with other buzzards, but he would always come home again every afternoon.

Bereft of a mother, however, Oscar had never learned an essential trick of buzzardhood — to lock his wings in a dihedral angle so as to soar on the warm air currents. While the other turkey vultures were lazily gliding, poor Oscar was flapping and flapping, working hard to stay aloft. By the time he returned home, he was exhausted.

This went on for some time, Oscar going out every day, flap-flapping to keep up with the others, and coming home worn out, until one day — he got it. Oscar finally learned what most of his vulture companions had known from youth, to fix his wings at the proper angle and simply soar. He was so ecstatic at this discovery that he stayed out for hours, soaring and gliding, catching the updrafts of the earth-warmed air.

Like Oscar, we often work unnecessarily hard just to keep aloft. We battle to succeed, we strain to make people like us, and in the realm of faith we struggle to lift ourselves to God. In the long run what we really need to do is learn to be still and rest on the currents of God’s love.

Someone who knew this was Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), a remarkable woman, an artist, scientist, musician, writer, and composer. If anyone could rely on her own resources, it would seem to have been Hildegard. Nevertheless, she was aware that it was not her own flapping that would allow her to soar, and she described herself as “a feather on the breath of God.”

Our own efforts amount to nothing unless we are borne by the Spirit of God who breathes in us, surrounds us, supports us, and raises us up.

I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a child quieted at its mother’s breast;
like a child that is quieted is my soul.
(Psalm 131:2 RSV)

Today the temperature has been in the 30s and low 40s all day — cold for North Florida — with a dismal gray sky. Occasionally, though, the clouds break open, and each time this happens, I am startled. I have to remind myself that I am looking at the same scene. The neighbor’s roof is dappled with sunlight, the white geese on the pond are radiant, and all the colors in the neighborhood are enhanced.

Sitting in my new chair in front of the window on this chilly day, I am reading an essay by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese (“A Conversion Story,” The Best Christian Writing 2001, ed. John Wilson, HarperCollins), in which she refers to André Amar, who once taught her philosophy, and who had spoken of religion as “a realm unto itself, irreducible to any other.” I have been reflecting on what it is like to live and move in the realm of religion, or the realm of faith.

It seems to me that in the land of faith, while everything is the same as elsewhere, it is also different, like our neighborhood when the sun comes out: the same trees and houses and geese, but with the colors enhanced, so that we can see more clearly into the reality of things. Ordinary objects and events take on a deeper significance, leading us beyond the surface of themselves and calling us to transcend ourselves.

(I should probably interject here that doubt can accompany us in the realm of faith — the two are not mutually exclusive.)

The three Wise Men of Matthew’s gospel moved in this realm. Both the star and the baby meant something very different to the hearts of the Magi than they did to Herod. These travelers were able to look at a night sky and see a promise, to look at a child and see a king. Dwelling in the realm of faith allows us, too, to behold — an infant, yes — but also a cross — and to recognize Love.

‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’ (Genesis 28:17)