Taking God on Faith: A Conversation (In Which I Say Too Much, Again)
Monday, December 20, 2010 at 8:45PM | by Otter A Facebook friend asked me about the meaning of "riparian church," which I answered here.
In reply, my FB friend wrote this wonderfully personable and articulate question:
Thanks for the explanation. I understand your idea about the agnostic side (I think, maybe a little?), but isn't trusting in what God says to us (whether from His word in the Bible or through the ways that He speaks to our hearts) where the faith comes in?
Before going any further with your great question, I want to point out that these are two related but different things, trusting the Bible and trusting "the ways that He speaks to our hearts."
To trust "what God says to us," we must first have some trust that it is indeed God speaking to us, whether it's through a book or our conscience or in prophetic instincts (ancient or recent) or whatever. And to trust that the Bible is "God's word" raises (or can raise) a lot of questions before we even get to the business of obedience.
Those questions begin with, "Why do you trust the Bible? How far do you trust it? What is the history of the Bible, and why do you trust it? Why sixty-six books? Why not seventy-two? Who wrote down and canonized the Bible for you?"
Obviously, not every Christian will feel obligated to answer such questions: but you can appreciate why a person who has begun to ask such questions is obligated by her intellectual honesty to get a decent answer, no matter how complex it might be or how far it might lead her from her starting place.
But that's just scratching the surface.
To take one really practical example: when we say that the Bible is "inspired," or "always true," what precisely do we mean? Is it inerrant when the Torah advises us that the best solution for male sexual jealousy is to poison the wife to see if she survives (if she does, she's innocent: see Numbers 5:11-31)? Or if that whole thing is interpreted out of existence because of Jesus, what shall we say about the nature of its inspiration? Was it inspired until Jesus reinterpreted it? Was a husband who fulfilled Numbers 5:11-31 being faithful, as you use the term here? Or immoral?
Or to take another case, is it by "faith" that we say that God commanded that a woman who grabs a man by the balls in a scuffle should lose her hand (Deuteronomy 25:11-12)? Was that fair to generations of Jewish women? In other cases, a girl could lose her life simply by failing to bleed on her wedding night (see Deuteronomy 22:20-21). A man or woman could die for a homosexual act (Leviticus 20:13).
The issue here isn't the (comparatively minor) one of different cultures: sure, the Israelites lived in another culture, and they played by the rules of that culture. (For instance, I have written elsewhere an explanation of the cultural necessity for heterosexuality for ancient rural villages.)
Rather, the issue is the rather enormous one of what we mean by saying that God "inspired" the Bible, that we can have "faith" in it.
Cut off a woman's hand for hitting below the belt in a life-and-death struggle? Really? Your God said that?
Similarly, as neuroscience and genetics are increasingly pointing out that homosexuality is an inborn disposition if not an inborn trait, do we hold it "inspired" (with Paul in Romans 1 and 2) that it's rather a mark of utter rebellion against God?
Deep waters, these.
I mean, nobody can scientifically prove that God exists, but isn't that having faith? I think that there are some things (several things, actually) that man is just not capable of understanding. I think God made us to only understand "enough" and the rest must come through faith. Who knows?
I think it's very clear that you're right that human capacities to understand are limited. No argument there. And you're especially right when it comes to the very existence of a personal (or supra-personal) god.
But the devil (and the god) are in the details: it's one thing to object to something because "I cannot understand it" and quite another to object that "It makes no sense" or that "It is immoral." It isn't that I can't understand the stoning of girls who don't bleed on their wedding nights. I get it. I really do.
I just think it's totally immoral, and if God inspired those words, I want nothing to do with him.
To take one other example more or less at random: Yahweh in the Old Testament commands the Israelites to wipe out the Midianites. Not just the military, but the women (even the pregnant ones... so much for the pro-life argument from the sanctity of unborn life) and children.
Today we have a word for this: it's genocide.
It seems to me that a Christian of good conscience is obligated to say, "No, no god worth worshiping would or did command any of that." Which immediately puts that Christian in an awkward relationship with (for instance) 2 Timothy 3:16 ("All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness").
And you'll appreciate how, with just a few very honest, logical, important questions, a Pandora's Box flies open.
Fortunately for Christianity, not all of its forms rely so exclusively on the text of the Bible and therefore are not terribly put out by such questions: but the more emphasis one places on the inspiration of scripture, the more urgent such questions become.
And the longer you ask questions, the less willing you'll be to swallow the bullshit answers of the sorts that are all too common in Christian circles.
(Just to take one example, I've read recently that the stoning of non-virgins on their wedding nights was to emphasize how "serious God is about sin." Keep in mind that teenaged girls died simply for not having intact hymens. That's a hell of an object lesson, and I do not accept that a few girls' lives was an acceptable price so Yahweh could make a point. You might beat a child to make a point; but if you kill him so his siblings will toe the line, you're just immoral. God is not exempt from that.)
i'm not a real intelligent person, but i pray to God for wisdom and understanding and I am very comfortable with my relationship with Him.
I can't speak to either your intelligence (you seem plenty smart to me!) or your relationship with God. That's totally personal, and if God made you capable of accepting all of this on faith, then I'm not the one to tell you that you should do otherwise.
Do understand this, though:
"Faith" in scripture is not merely "belief in something that makes no sense."
It has rather the sense of "fidelity, faithfulness to something." Those who ask questions are frequently not in a hostile relationship to faith. They are inquiring into the nature of their belief, and whether they are faithful to something worth being faithful to!
I've met plenty of people who say, "God said it, I believe it, that settles it for me." I want to point out to them that if God said, "Kill your enemies tonight in the park," you might well consider whether you're being faithful to a god worth being faithful to.
For so the God of the Old Testament spoke. And as a thinking person, I think you have to ask yourself, "What then are the things that I am faithful to, and why? What commands of God do I have? To love my neighbor and my enemy alike, and God? Well and good. But what about all the rest of the Bible? Is that love? How is it love? And where does it put me in relation to the things I believe in?"
Or you can NOT open that box... it's better to do well than to think well. But I've dealt with too much spiritual wreckage not to say, "Respect those who are wondering. They might save your faith one day when you have doubts of your own."
i hope this isn't coming off as "holier than thou", haha! i'm not saying that at all, just wanting to tell you a little about my views. :) that's one problem with communicating by typing, you can't show any emotion, or feeling, or anything :)
I think you did pretty amazingly well, and nope: you didn't sound even slightly holier than thou! I think you just find faith simple. That's quite a gift.
The people I object (loudly and often) to are those who make those of more complex faith or thought feel as though they are lacking in faith. This confuses "simplicity" with "fidelity," assuming that simplicity is somehow more faithful. It isn't, or needn't be. And it brutalizes those who have been gifted with a need to find deeper layers of truth. And that, I think, is a bit of a sin against one's friends.
Reader Comments (13)
Fear of the label "heretic" or worse keeps many people from stating such thoughts out loud, or writing/typing them out of the internal spaces into external existence. I applaud your courage.
I think many people ask such questions, but the fundamentalist movement and its influence on the religious landscape keeps most of us silent about the bigger questions. It would be frowned upon very much to say something like, "Clearly something happened to a guy named Moses, and the top ten he claims were written by the hand of God have stood the test of time. The rest? Not so much. Could it be that the Bible is a collection of stories about PEOPLE whose lives have been touched by the Divine, and that as those PEOPLE recounted their experiences (and in the case of Mosaic law, their beginning attempts at governing an instant nation) their words became deified by other PEOPLE looking absolutes?" To even ask such questions is considered blasphemous by modern American evangelical Christianity.
And yet. I ask them. And I know Jesus. My life has been touched by the Divine. At times, certain portions of scripture have come alive to me in a spiritual sense and nourished my heart. I called on Jesus and he answered me; that pretty much sums up my faith.
Yet the whole Bible, every word written by the finger of God? No. It is so clearly a human recounting of ancient life, custom and in many instances, supernatural mysteries invading the life of individuals. I wish we could read it for what it is, ask real questions, and be free to come to different conclusions, while worshiping that which has touched our own lives in sincerity and humility.
I love that your song transposes the worship of Lord Krishna with the Lord Jesus. I recently marvelled at how a Krishna devotee's explanation of the object of her worship was so like the Lord Jesus in character...
Peace and good will, SS
Awesome comments, Shadowspring. Really spot on.
But that's not my song (alas: it's one of the many songs I wish I'd written)... it's Chris Rosser's. Available at iTunes. I've been wearing out my iPod on it. Terrific tune.
Are you advising your friend to find definitive answers to all the really big questions of faith BEFORE beginning the business of obedience? I gotta tell you: definitive answers are in short supply here on planet Earth. You don’t have any, I don’t have any, and we've been walking along our chosen paths for quite some time nonetheless. If your friend has enough trust to begin with, why can't s/he get on with it: commit to discipleship and see what happens. I’d argue that strategy can be—and in this case, is—a surer way to discover the truth than hanging back and requiring all the answers before making a beginning. There will be a multitude of questions along the road, and there is no need at all to “leave the box closed” and not think about them.
I think obedience is overrated as a necessity to spiritual growth. But if you're sure that committing to some program requiring obedience is the way to go, then... yeah, I damn sure am gonna be asking some big questions of the Designer of the Program, and all the people who purport to speak for him, before I swear any kind of eternal, "to death and beyond" obedience to it. What if I swear my fidelity (i.e. take a step of faith) through obedience to discipleship and only afterwards find out that I really have no respect for it or the Big Guy I'm being taught to obey? Then I'm caught between choosing to be forsworn or duty-bound hypocrisy. When I am convinced of the integrity of the God being worshipped, then the details of how that worship manifests are less about obedience and more about the natural response to the Divine Communion.
Certainly, definitive answers are not the currency of the spiritual realm; even more certainly, answers that are definitive to our limited human ability to understand. And I agree that waiting to have ALL the answers is an excuse for not being willing to commit to something. But the answers to the Really Big Questions ought to be fairly clear before one takes the step of faith.
Imagine that you've read a few great books by some famous author--your favorite author, you adored the books--and loads of your friends say they know this author; he is in fact looking to be married and they think you should marry him. Would you, on the basis of the books he's written and the word of your friends and maybe the paparazzi news stories, commit yourself to a marriage to this man? Particularly a marriage in which you commit to love, honor and obey, 'till death do you part? I doubt it. You'd want to get to know the guy personally. But what if your friends say, he doesn't really like to communicate except through his writing and besides we can tell you anything you want to know. Really, just ask us.
Nope, pretty sure I'm gonna do my own due diligence on this guy before I married him and I bet you would, too. Arranged marriages have a tendency not to work out so well, even in countries where they are still frequent. And where they fail the most is in the area of building that deep personal relationship that I so value. Same for me with God, I'm gonna want to check out God for myself, not take the teachings of any spiritual director or discipleship guru (or whatever the Protestants call them these days) instead.
Sandra, good points and a nice analogy.
I would just say that for Christianity, I think that obedience to the Holy Spirit is essential. I think obedience to the text is a lot more complex in theory and a lot easier in principle... you always know whether somebody is obeying a text. But the gospel of Christianity isn't that they have a book. It's that they have the Holy Spirit.
Determining what THAT means is a very good question I hope to get into soon.
Otter,
Well, yes, but it was kind of a rhetorical question setting up my (non-rhetorical) question—the one asking why your friend has been assigned the task of finding definitive answers when there are none to be found.
Sandra, the marriage analogy is a great one, but I experience it from another angle. Like this: I find myself married to a guy, we’ve had our ups and downs, I have my doubts about the whole thing even decades into the relationship, and lots of things are still quite confusing, but the bottom line is that I’m thriving and trust and love are growing. But then there’s a gallery of people who keep saying he’s not who I think he is—they’ve read the book he wrote, and it seems to cast some serious doubt on his character. They’ve even talked to some folks who testify that he’s done them wrong, and they all talk like I must be blinded by love, or caught in some kind of sick dependency. They’re telling everyone that to keep their distance from this dangerous guy until it’s all straightened out. So from where I sit, can you see why it seems like they’re the ones pooh-pooh-ing the “building of the deep, personal relationship” you value so highly? Don't I, as a prospective bride, need to determine for myself what kind of questions need to be asked and answered to my own satisfaction before committing, rather than answering all the questions of those around me to their satisfaction?
They might be scary. But they are there.
If she is disturbed by the immorality of Deuteronomy or Numbers, and her theology insists that they are just, good, books, she must either change her morality or her definition of justice or (hopefully) her view of what scripture is.
She must grow, and change, if she aims to ask questions and be honest and true with the answers.
Susan, your rebuttal was the only thing I could think of that would be a reasonable counter to my analogy. And it is true that generally people aren't always who you thought they were when you married. On the other hand, I assume that you, as I did, got to know your guy well enough to look past the immediate actions that are the points of complaint for your friends and see a more nuanced (is that the word I want here? not sure) view. I think that is where I'm going with the God-and-questions thing too. By asking questions, questioning the "friends' opinions" or the expert/traditional interpretations of dogma, I am looking for the broad view of God before I jump into bed with him.
And then this:
"Don't I, as a prospective bride, need to determine for myself what kind of questions need to be asked and answered to my own satisfaction before committing, rather than answering all the questions of those around me to their satisfaction?"
Exactly. Just as you shouldn't be expected to take anyone else's word on the answers, only you can determine what the questions are that constitute your due diligence on God. What each person requires before taking the rest "on faith" will differ and I shouldn't judge you on the questions that you need answered or that you don't need answered. I think generally, though, the same sorts of questions come up eventually for everyone.
I think where this whole discussion has wound round is that it is the process of questioning that needs to be okay, knowing that our questions and our answers are going to differ from other peoples Q&A and may take us far afield from the traditionally defined answers. To "take it on faith" too soon short circuits the process of questioning. When that happens, growth stops.
Otter--
Maybe it is the word *obedience* that yanks my chain. To me, the word calls up lots of authoritarian, duty-filled, "take out the trash because I said so" kinds of feelings. Like, here is some list of rules you have to follow to be a Christian that sets up God as primarily a great Cosmic Judge. I guess technically I have to agree with the basic truth of what I just described but it seems like the wrong way to look at it. Being in communion with the Divine sparks an inescapable inner transformation that what one could consider obedience is rather a simple unconscious natural result--the Fruit, not the work. To talk of *obedience* makes it feel like a works, to talk of *communion and transformation* makes it feel like grace.
Sandra, I hear you. Especially if you've been "religiously abused," "obedience" is often code for "doing things my way." (That's a lot of quotation marks for one sentence...)
Of course, I'll obey my mother until the day I die when it comes to things like brushing my teeth. Sometimes good habits and grace are identical.
But I'm just having a mild attempt at rehabilitating the word "obedience," here. Your word "grace" is as good a word as any, and your idea of communion with the divine as changing authoritarianism into a love relationship certainly makes perfect sense to me.
Otter:
Only for fundamentalists. ;) The rest of us mortals just have to pay our money and take our chance.
I cannot explain or “explain away” the things that disturb you in Numbers and Deuteronomy (understatement? oh, yes!); I don't understand them myself. But as for the tension between justice, morality, and authority, I believe all three are rooted in the person and character of Christ (which is to say, the character of His Father and the Spirit also). He is a well-spring of justice, mercy, and love, and I believe more in Him than I do in any abstract concept or standard of morality by which I might attempt to judge Him.
Sandra, language makes a huge, huge difference, doesn’t it? One of the (many) things about my current local church that drew me in is the life-giving language they speak.
For a lot of us, I think, words like “obedience” and “self-discipline” become synonymous with deep, painful feelings of shame and guilt, and thus can become literally intolerable. But when sin and failure are simply named for what they are, and then are met with grace and forgiveness in the community of God, powerful things start to happen: Shame and guilt actually start to lose their stranglehold. Freedom and obedience stop acting like mortal enemies and start getting cozy with each other. And I am more hopeful about certain things in my life than I have been for decades—in some cases, more hopeful than I’ve been in my entire life.
Geez. Remind me not to stop keeping up with this blog again, for any amount of time.
Sandra: I've always had issues with the obedience as well, especially coming from a grade school whose "religion" classes consisted mostly of "Don't do that because God says so." But in high school when we actaully had good classes, one teacher said that the Latin root for "obedience" is "oboedire", which means to listen, so true obedience requires you to understand what is going on and why, which is a lot less obnoxious than the crap most people shove in your face.
Also, the following is a summary of a deep philosophical conversation between a hardcore Catholic friend and me that took place in the dorm game room:
Katie asked, "If you could prove that God existed and was omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, would it still be possible to have faith?"
"Well, that depends. Define 'faith'."
"Faith is taking someone's word of honor and believing that they'll keep to it."
"Then, yeah, you can have faith. You can prove that God exists, but you can't prove His intentions. Being Christian would still require faith in his intentions and the fact that he will take care of things. BUT there is a very important difference between faith and blind faith. You're still required to gather as much information as you can and know exactly what it is that you have faith in."