The Christian faith is rife with difficulties. Save your life to lose it? Be born again? The Father is greater than I, but I and the Father are one? This bread is my flesh? “What on earth is he talking about?” said everybody from Nicodemus to the mob in Jerusalem to the crowd at Capernaum.
Indeed, the crowd at Capernaum didn’t even stay for an answer (John 6). They stalked off, leaving only a few disciples behind. The faith has more or less continued to make people’s brains hurt ever since.
That’s because the Gospel proposes to reveal reality to us, and reality is strange. Reality shows us patterns (two arms, two eyes, two legs, two nostrils, two lungs, two lobes of the brain, two kidneys), but then quietly veers from what you expect and gives you one heart.
We think we have things figured out by Newton, but then light turns out to be a particle and a wave at the same time, and space turns out to be curved, matter turns out to be energy, and time turns out to expand and compress depending on how fast you are going.
In a world like that, it’s hardly a surprise that the One God turns out to be three Persons and that one of the Persons should have assumed a human nature, died and risen from the dead. Reality is weird. But because it is weird, it is only natural that difficulties will arise. The question is: What will we do when that happens?
Jesus’ first piece of counsel to those having difficulties and doubts was: Do what he says, and you will find out whether he speaks from his Father. Here’s a second piece of advice: Instead of stalking off and saying, “This is a hard saying! Who can hear it?” (John 6:60), try remaining with Peter, who says, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).
In other words, stay with Jesus and interrogate your doubts. Don’t just go limp when the devil says, “The faith looks weird, so the whole thing must be a trick!” Find out if the weirdness reflects reality.
The problem with many folks who fall into doubt is not that they have rigorous questions the faith can’t handle; it’s that they aren’t rigorous enough in asking their questions. The devil, as we have seen, has only suggestion to inspire doubt, since the truth is dead against him. So he gives us half-truths and part of the picture in order to suggest that God does not exist or is evil, that Christ is a fraud or that the whole thing is a sham.
This means that when people cave in to doubt and lose their faith it is not because they have discovered some shocking new truth. Rather, it’s usually because they’ve chosen to believe that the devil’s shoddy tissue of suggestions constitutes a good argument against Christ.
It is not because they have been intellectually rigorous, but because they have gotten tired of using their intellects. They haven’t “asked the hard questions”: They’ve given up asking hard questions and instead settled for easy answers. This explains the sort of ex-Christian who rejects the possibility of God’s existence by declaring, “It’s 2011! No thinking person today believes such things” — a reply as silly as “God can’t exist because it’s Tuesday!”
It’s the sort of thing said by people who have stopped using their intellect and begun worshipping it.
The Catholic model for all those who want answers to difficulties is not “Don’t ask questions,” but ask questions in faith and then use — not worship — your intellect.
St. Thomas Aquinas basically said, “Difficulties? Bring it!” and spent his life showing that, as Blessed Cardinal Newman observed, “Ten thousand difficulties do not amount to a single doubt.”
Mark Shea blogs at NCRegister.com.
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Is there remedy for doubt? We doubt because we can’t explain. We can’t explain because reality is complex. Reality is complex because it is composed of truth and untruth. Very weird because you would think whatever is real is true. But in fact you are always in presence of the opposite. And you have to decide which one to choose by going into the nature of what you believe is in your favor. It’s a life process. And you may be wrong as you may be right depending on where you are at the end. By this time you have already chosen and there is no time or possibility for remedy. We all have a desire for truth. Truth is certainty and knowledge which is the complete opposite of untruth which is by its nature uncertainty and ignorance. Why then during the entire course of our lives are we tormented by the search for truth? We should question instead what’s in us really wants truth? If God is Truth it’s really Him calling us to share what He is.
“This means that when people cave in to doubt and lose their faith it is not because they have discovered some shocking new truth. Rather, it’s usually because they’ve chosen to believe that the devil’s shoddy tissue of suggestions constitutes a good argument against Christ. “
Well in my case I was raised in the RCC but never had any “faith” to start with (RCC schooling took care of that by the end of 2nd grade - thanks Sister Dennis!)- the devil had nothing to do with it. It was the simply the complete lack of evidence for gods and the supernatural. The christian myth is simply too small to explain the universe (no gods required to pump out stars and galaxies). I don’t need a magic god to get I ma a little bunch of atoms temporary arranged as me that will get rearranged again into other stuff. I don’t fear not existing - it is just the way it is.
Christ may have existed as a man leadig others that would have bothered the Romans enough to kill him (seems complely plausible) I just don’t buy the godly parts (why should I - there is simply zero data to support the existence of any gods or supernatural beings). I like the RCC theology for its internal consistency, and depth. I’m more “christina in acts and beahvior than many christians I encounter. It is that simple.
Thank you, DCH, for illustrating Mark’s point so well!
Great post Mark! So true.
DCH,
Having been where you are for some years of my life, after receiving a doctorate in chemistry from MIT four decades ago, I understand exactly what you believe, and why you believe it. Unfortunately, I can’t assure you that the Catholic faith has scientifically provable answers to what you would call the “hard question,” which is, “Why invoke the existence of God, when the assumption of randomness distributed over eternity seems to lead to the same conclusion?”
So, faith is required. You do, right this minute, have faith. It is faith the the physical laws explain natural events, or if they don’t currently, they will once enough experiments are performed. However, in going through life, I had to acknowledge it is very hard, in fact impossible for me, to reconcile the observed symmetry of the natural order with spontaneous, random creation - ie - why does all physics require a given set of assumptions about what the natural law entails? And that symmetry will keep colliding with your scientific career until you say “Enough, I don’t know why You are, but You must be!” Now, that doesn’t get you to Catholicism, either. The steps required for that are a study of religions, and how they relate to the condition of man. For me, and many, many far more important scientists,before and after me, Catholicism represents the best explanation, although it doesn’t provide me with the scientifically rigorous answers I crave. It is then you begin the additionally impossible attempt to understand mystery, and the more you search for that understanding, the mysteriously more clear it becomes, all the while remaining murky and scientifically unsatisfying.
I am not arrogant enough to believe that a personal anecdote will convert you. Instead, this verbose ramble is issued in the hope and trust that if you honestly pursue your faith in atheism, God will reveal himself to you in that pursuit, and you will respond to His call. The key word is honestly. As a scientist, you should remember that experimental objectivity demands an open mind to the result, whatever the result may be. Each of us has been gifted with the experiment of life, and I pray that you remain open to its result. I am confident, because of my faith, that if you remain intellectually honest, you will be.
An excellent article, reminding all of us that our search for truth must have both honesty and rigor. As one of my teachers remarked, the only reason to believe in anything is because of its truthfulness, not for how it makes us feel. But only sincere searches will lead us to that point.
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