A piece of what I’m writing at Ghost Ranch this week for a book called The Other Jesus, which will be out in 2011. In the midst of the Christmas season (and I remind everyone, Christmas is a season, not a day), I thought these might be words of peace. More later:
On my son Chandler’s last visit to Austin, he spent part of one day visiting old friends, and when I went to pick him up, I had a long conversation with his friend’s father, who is, in typically Austin fashion, not a Christian. He does, in fact have images of Hindu gods and goddesses placed around the house, so I’m assuming he leans in that direction. As Chandler was putting his shoes on, the father was asking me what I was writing, and so I told him about this book.
“I’m trying to write a book about what it might mean to be a faithful and thoughtful follower of Christ in the 21st Century,” I told him. “Someone with a thirst for justice.” He nodded, once, twice, three times. I asked about his work as a healer, we were talking about the stock trading he has been trying as a day job, and then Chandler’s shows were tied and jacket on, and so we parted with a handshake.
In the car, Chandler’s first question was, “Were you uncomfortable?”
“Why?” I asked. I have been uncomfortable over the years around some of the more granola/patchouli/free love denizens of Austin, but I have always liked this family, and the father, who is a gentle soul.
“Well,” he said, “I just thought you might be uncomfortable because you’re a really big Christian, and they don’t believe like we do.” I nodded thoughtfully, because I know that a lot of people who are Christian might be uncomfortable around blue-skinned gods. People of any strong belief, actually, have at least a tendency to want to be around others who confirm those beliefs. But I think, slowly, I’m getting to the point where I don’t require everyone to share my beliefs. I have been to a couple of Jewish seders, own a hundred-year-old Buddha statue from Thailand, and have a translated Koran on my bookshelf. They are not the way to God for me, but they may be for others.
“No,” I replied. “We had a really good talk.” And I smiled. “And he’s a good person. Who am I to tell him what to believe?”
This last comment would be received as heresy by many Christians. What? You’re going to allow someone to persist in error? You’re going to behave with acceptance toward someone who doesn’t believe as we do about the Creator of the Universe? You know what’s true, and you’re going to damn someone to hell by not correcting him?
It’s exactly these ideas, whether voiced, acted on, or held in seething silence, that account for many of the attacks on religion from those outside it. The New Atheists argue that religion is dangerous in its truth claims because we live in a world where the results of the worst of religion can now be so damaging. “I honestly believe that religion is detrimental to the progress of humanity,” Bill Maher says in his 2008 documentary film Religulous, echoing a strain of rational criticism found in many of the attacks on faith that have cropped up since 9-11, since those attacks seemingly pitted Muslims against Christians. Religion that cannot tolerate any difference, that insists that everyone needs to believe as it does, is leading the world toward that Armageddon that we discussed in our last chapter. Because so many religious zealots anticipate the end of the world with joy, Maher argues, it may actually cause the end of the world. (“If there’s one thing I hate more than prophecy,” he says at the outset of the film, “it’s self-fulfilling prophecy.”)
At their heart, these critics of religion are saying that because religious people seem unable to turn loose of our truth claims, unsubstantiated by rational evidence as they may be, but still tend to want others to acknowledge the truth as we see it, religion can only be a force for ignorance, uncritical belief, and violent attempts at conversion. As Sam Harris writes in The End of Faith, “It is no accident that religious doctrine and honest inquiry are so rarely juxtaposed in this world.” [1]
This book has attempted to pose an alternative both to uncritical belief and to critical arguments against belief by suggesting that a thoughtful Christianity can amend many of the problems we discover in our faith and be a joyous and meaningful path to God. Certainly we are called to thought, not simply uncritical belief, as William Sloane Coffin said: “There is nothing anti-intellectual in the leap of faith, for faith is not believing without proof, but trusting without reservation. Faith is no substitute for thinking. On the contrary, it is what makes good thinking possible.” [2] The medieval theologian and thinker Anselm, whose motto was fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding, believed that his faith actually allowed him to get closer to the core of life’s important questions.
But, as hard as it might be for the champions of rationality both within the Church and outside the walls to acknowledge, human imperfection means that our knowledge will always be imperfect. My understanding of God’s revelation is the best I have now, but it does not mean it is perfect, nor that is it the only understanding possible. So it is that Coffin, the champion of Christian intellect, also recognizes its limitations, and places love and compassion above it:
It is bad religion to deify doctrines and creeds. While indispensable to religious life, doctrines and creeds are only so as signposts. Love alone is the hitching post. Doctrines, let’s not forget, supported slavery and apartheid; some still support keeping women in their places and gays and lesbians in limbo. Moreover, doctrines can divide while compassion can only unite.” [3]
Absolute certainty leads to thinking that if I am right, you must be wrong. Absolute certainty leads people to marginalize, hate, or attack those who believe differently. Absolute certainty leads people to fly planes into buildings, to blow themselves up on buses, and to launch wars—literal or figurative—against other faiths because they believe God wills it. This absolute certainty is the first of the marks Charles Kimball has recognized as when religion becomes evil; when you and your fellow believers—and you only—have the absolute truth, he says, other things will necessarily follow in succession—blind obedience without asking the hard questions, the end justifying the means, and ultimately, “holy war.” [4]
During Chandler’s recent visit, we also saw a not-very-good animated kid’s film, and desperate afterward to try and get some value for my fifteen dollars, I asked him if the film taught us any lessons. Chandler thought for a second, and shrugged, since it is not a lesson he necessarily needs: “We shouldn’t be afraid of people who are different from us.”
“That’s a pretty good lesson,” I told him. “Sometimes people end up killing each other because they haven’t learned it.” Certainly the contemporary world contains plenty of examples of how difference leads to difficulty; Robert McAfee Brown wrote that “New ideas often frighten us and make us more rigid than we need or ought to be.” [5] So learning not to be afraid is important, and one of the ways we learn this is by being in dialogue with those we think of somehow as other. Think about your own developing understanding of the world—actually coming face to face with people you have only heard about (people from another race, another belief system, a different sexual orientation, maybe) can force us to recognize our common humanity. One of the most positive things about interfaith dialogues springing up after the attack on the Twin Towers is it allowed Christians and Muslims to look across the room at each other instead of across a chasm of faith and cultural differences. It allowed them to listen to each other instead of talking at each other. And in some cases, it convinced those on both sides that one could faithfully worship God in a different way—which has always been a hard thing to acknowledge.
[1] Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York: Norton, 2005), 105.
[2] William Sloane Coffin, Credo (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004), 8.
[3] Ibid, 9.
[4] Charles Kimball, When Religion Becomes Evil: Five Warning Signs (New York: Harper SanFrancisco, 2002) passim.
[5] Robert McAfee Brown, Speaking of Christianity: Practical Compassion, Social Justice, and Other Wonders (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997), 120.
Leave a Reply