An essay about belief, doubt, and why I am not a Christian,
by Ryan Sherman
Preface: a transcript of a long-ago internal dialogue
Am I Christian? What is Christian?
Someone who has a personal relationship with God.
Do I have such a relationship with God?
Well, I don’t really know.
But doesn’t it seem like the kind of thing one would know if one had?
Yes. So, if I don’t really know if I have a personal relationship with God, then I probably don’t.
Am I sincere? Do I pursue God? Do I pray?
Yes. I do. I think I do.
What about other people? What makes them sure about their relationship with God?
They feel his presence. They are filled with his joy when worshiping, and his righteous anger when faced with evil. They feel truth in his words in the Bible.
Have I felt these things?
Yes, I have.
Why do I question these experiences?
Because it seems that whether or not Christianity is true, we would still have these experiences. Because people from other religions seem to also have these experiences, to a much greater degree in some cases. Because no matter the religion, these experiences infuse our lives with a certainty and purpose that calms our fears and doubts and confirms to them that their lives are valid. And these universal characteristics among religions seem speak to the possibility that they fulfill common needs and play similar roles.
Like what? What kinds of needs and roles would religion play?
Like needing to feel that the suffering and unfairness in the world is somehow reconciled in the light of eternity. To pacify the smallness and helplessness one feels when confronted with mortality. To fill a gap left from childhood when we were utterly helpless and found safety in our caregivers whom we experienced as all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful. To project into eternity what we already believe, that being kind and loving is better than being selfish and exploiting people. To comfort us when we feel completely misunderstood and alone, like no one knows us or loves us. To help us build good families and lives and communities. To reaffirm us when we feel unlovable or like no one would want us if they knew what we really were like.
CONTINUE READING
Ryan, I enjoyed reading this dialogue for its brevity and clarity. There is a ripple on the surface of this discourse though... Namely the rational (or axial) approach to faith is absurd. Faith is the conviction of things not seen (Heb 11:1-3). Specifically 'what is seen was not made out of what was visible.' This fundamentally Christian ideation turns sign-signifier rationalism on its head. In other words, faith is a dialogue by which the world is spoken into existence. The framing of your arguement (as a dialogue) shouldn't be overlooked. For example, much of the Psalms is written this way. I'm thinking now of Psalm 139. One distinction is this: not matter how we search, we are not the seeker, we are the sought. Emmanuel Levinas makes this distinction even more significant when he talks about Being defined only as an ethical response to the Other.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteHi. Sorry for the long delay in response, which I explain in a comment below.
DeleteThis is a fine definition, but I do not see how the word faith, used in this way, is particularly religious. If we are talking about believing in things unseen on the basis of evidence, then faith would seem to be a good word for reasoning to the existence of black holes, the curvature of time space, the belief that life has developed by a natural process including gene duplication, mutation, and selection, and so forth. I personally would not call this faith. I would not really even call it belief. But it seems like it fits the description of belief upon evidence of things not seen.
I'm afraid I didn't follow the rest of the comment however. To the notion that we are not seeking but being sought, it strikes me as a retrospective religious construction. It is believable only by those who interpret all discourse, the world, and everything in it, in terms of a narrative in which the universe itself was a venture created by a deity whose eternal reason is inscrutable now to us, but who's relationship with us in time is one in which we are the pursued, in denial of our true purpose, subject to a fallen nature inherited, one which we use to choose to reject God and his love.
I am only trying to be descriptive so far. I was honest in my essay, however insofar as I think i understand what you mean, even my essay must have been rooted in this dialogue-theology in which I am the pursued, not the pursuer. My description of my experiences are perhaps then misguided, I do not understand them, and my true motives are hidden from me? Or perhaps this is, as i said in my essay, quoting Romans, that this is the difference between those chosen for glory and those chosen in advance for destruction.
I’m not sure if it is worth adding another point I also made in my essay, that the chasm between the Christian and nonbeliever is an eternal one across which little can be intelligibly understood.
I find it kind of funny that the closer my relationship with Jesus gets the more I am aware of just how weak I am. There is nothing that I nor anyone can do(works) to get into a "good" standing with Christ. I find myself filled with pride when I walk the straight line. But wait, pride is wrong. So then I walk in confusion for a bit. For me it has very little to do with feeling and a whole lot of everything to do with, the hope that in this life I will do what I can to allow Jesus to use me. So then how the crap do you let God use you. Does this mean that I am subject to a life of servitude? Well yes, but if I have to choose anything that I would want to serve, I tried porn, it blows, I tried money, its hopeless, I tried women, it was futile, I tried friends, it was hard. So after years of searching for hope in this world I went back to the place I thought I'd already tried, religion. I only got angry. I gave up... It was then that through reading a bunch of books and yes the bible too, that I realized the only hope I can truly rely on is the hope that the creator of the universe everything and even me, is true to his word. Actually God tells us to put our hope in him. Its not religion and never will be, its God choosing me to have a relationship with Him. He is all knowing, (well I can neither prove nor disprove this) he is all present (I sure feel him a lot lately, and its not a warm fuzzy) Its in my soul. And the hardest for me to accept, he is all loving.
ReplyDeleteIf you can find me something or someone else better for me to put my hope in then please show me. After realizing this and delving into the bible I started seeing an over all theme of what it means to be a christian. It is to separate yourself from this Earth and recognize that you are no longer subject to the sin of this Earth but to the Creator of all. He wanted me the whole time (even before this Earth was created) and it took me opening my eyes and resting my hope in him. I know what is right and what is wrong. I always have. When I do something that causes another to be in pain, to be sad or to have a negative emotion, that is bad. I have not read once in the bible a single place in which we are called to subject a negative emotion on anyone else. In fact, I am for the first time asked to love everyone. Knowing that I am not the only Christian out there gives me hope that the love I have I can share with everyone, whether or not your a believer or not I will always love everyone. And when I fail, which I will and have done a lot, I am loved still, and forgiven.
So, knowing that I am capable and called to love everyone, I am free of the shackles of pride and hate and resentment, even though it is human nature and I still have a little pride and a little hate in my heart, I am free through forgiveness, so when I fall and let one of these faults in, I hold onto the truth that I am FORGIVEN, even while undeserving, so I pick up myself and I continue to love. It came down to realizing and believing that the sin in my life was wrong and I was going nowhere really fast, all I had to do was try and believe. Then came feeling sorry for the sin I had committed, then as I asked for forgiveness my heart became aware of an all new sense of reality. I know truth and there is nothing that can redefine it. It really is cliche in saying this but it wasn't the bible story bedtime with the parents type of sorry that I felt. It was the real disgusting reality of the shame and rot I had let consume me. I was lying down in a bed of shit and trying to convince myself this is what I wanted. Life is meant to be lived in reality. Its our nature to seek out reality, not redefine it.
Sorry for taking so long to respond to this. I had spent so long on the essay, I just needed to not think about it for a few months.
DeleteI agree that porn and women and money and popularity make a poor stratum on which to base a fulfilling life.
I think the abandoning of these is also a description of a person growing up, and realizing what is really important in life. And I do not think Christian people would suddenly stop caring for their families, and stop loving people, and give up their community so they could wank all morning, get drunk in the afternoon, and spend the evening trying to get laid. Or else be successful in business or other ways of getting money.
But this has very little to do with a rabbi 2000 years ago, who, according to gospel books written about him much later, claimed to be sent by the God believed in by the Jewish people to a mostly uncivilized and illiterate desert for the purpose of eternal vicarious redemption and forgiveness of sins.
But like I said in my essay, no amount of seeking or sincerity, evidence or reasoning, prayer or questioning, no body of facts, can compare to the privileged position of a person who holds a private relationship with an all-knowing, all-powerful, deity.
However, the experience of feeling the presence of a nonpresent being is common, and often not warm and fuzzy, as you say. It is experienced with extraordinary intensity by many people, to the point of even insane and fatal actions of self-sacrifice and pain and death inflicted on others. In its modern inflection anyway, Christianity is certainly preferable for actions taken on part of its god experiences. Children are a good example, feeling as they do the presence of ghosts or Santa Clause in the house. But the best example I have is my beloved Grandma. When my grandfather died, she said many times she would feel his presence around the house, watching her, ministering to her. Most people would agree that we probably do not revisit our spouses after passing, but this does not make the experience of the presence meaningless or wrong, of course. And it is easily understandable why someone would have this sort of phantom limb experience of the presence of a dead loved one in life. Among the plausible explanations though is not that the dead person really has returned in a non-physical but objectively real way. In fact the only thing this interpretation has going for it, is that sometimes we would give anything just for it to be true.
You have given a good explanation for why people are compelled to believe in Christianity, and the ways in which this religion, proposing personal communion with its god as its essential characteristic, fulfills many needs and wishes too. And if Christianity is really is the only way to stop behaviors that are self-destructive and hurt people, then in this way it is good. But I think this is probably not the case. I do not think that without Christianity, people stop caring for families, loving people, protecting the defenseless, and hoping for a more just and happy world.
Religious doubt often parallels a return to unhealthy and damaging life patterns. This is unfortunate. I think religion does harm here in that it facilitates these kinds of patterns, instigating a falling/redemptive cycle. When a person bases all their values in a religion which can be doubted on the basis of whether or not a person "feels" God's presence, it is much easier to quickly slip into behaviors classified as "non-godly." But it's a false dichotomy of course. I think most people would be better off in the end if they objectively considered which relationships and elements of their life are worthy of being protected and sacrificing for, and what other behaviors were counterproductive and damaging. The sort of recriminations and guilt of porn use specifically, contrasted with the release redemption, is particularly unhealthy and only reinforces the pattern while causing a lot of unconstructive pain and guilt in the meantime.
I loved reading this. I personally feel many of my friendships on earth take a similar fashion as your description with your partial relationship with God.
ReplyDeleteI would reply with something a math professor told me,
"I'm not concerned with the final answer of your problem, so please stop boxing your answers. I am ultimately more concerned with the journey you took to get there." ~ Dr.Wills.
As a christian, you are to strive towards a relationship with god, and living a pure life; yet I feel it nearly impossible to achieve this high point. The entire experience is striving to get to the top, but I don't think we can actually get to this top. Essentially, this is where "Jesus" came in, to be the bridge of the gap. This makes a fair choice for everyone, which is if they will take the bridge across the gap they could never reach on their own.
I love you Ryan, and we should hang out sometime soon :)
~
Michael S.
Dad. I've just read your comment. Sorry it took so long to respond. I needed some distance from my essay, emotionally and blogsphericallly speaking for a while.
DeleteI'm not sure how anyone could read my essay and think that I had described a partial relationship with a god... I’m sure it must be difficult to accept what is made so clear in the Bible: that people who do not believe will spend an eternity in a self-made hell in rejection of love in preference for themselves. It is an absurd claim, and I think that is why so many intelligent people like you, spend so much time qualifying it and redefining certain terms. To be fair, the Bible is ambiguous too about what all this really means, allowing it to be reinterpreted and relearned for millennia. This is where feeling and sensing God’s will makes all the difference I guess.
Anyway, the image of a savior saving people who cannot save themselves is powerful one, and is not lost on me, as you described well. But our life journey could be looked at another way. Using CS Lewis's description of progressive men, when two men set out on the wrong path, the one who turns back first is the most progressive man. Christianity is such a wrong path in terms of being true, and of being ethically sound.
Is it morally sound to believe that your sins and mine, can be forgiven by the punishment of another person? No. Even in an act of love that would say to the condemned at a firing squad, 'excuse me, but there will be slight change in cast today,' even then it does not absolve the wrongness of what the guilty did. It does not take away responsibility. What you did is wrong, and blood won’t wash it away. And this is obvious. The ethical dubiousness of Christianity’s promise of absolution is obvious too. The response of Christianity though is to condemn the whole world, to call every man and woman a participant in that first foul act and also the subsequent nailing of holy wrists into a cross. And this is the only resolution to a state so foul that even love and beauty and happiness and caring are called dirty rags before this God. Is this good? Is this morality? No. It's religion at its most poisonous. But this is the narrative right? We are insufferably evil and corrupt, coughing out these fleas and knats of black sinful insides. Only an all loving God, sending his most beloved to be slaughtered like a goat in order create a spiritual bridge over which those of us who accept such a gift will have the rest done for us by the cleaning blood of a divine scape goat.
There was no goat sent. And also good historical reason to believe that the whole tale was a fabricated one. And the real refuse that humanity has been toting is not an original sin but this learned helplessness that imprisons us all, and then portrays itself as the only one who knows the way out.
Christianity is not true, and there is no compelling reason to accept any of what it claims about the world or humanity. Like all religions that capture the imagination of mankind, it has powerful mythical images, and answers powerful wishes and fears. And as they all do, it evokes powerful emotional reactions that resonate with emotional beings and so compels strong belief.
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ReplyDeletesorry, I think I had published twice.
DeleteVery honest and insightful essay. Thanks for the post. I enjoyed the reading, both of the emotional turmoil a human being goes through when questioning his family and friend’s beliefs, but more importantly his own ; and also of the amazing facts and thought experiments described here that invariably lead you to question a religion, no matter what religion. Do we absolutely need a specific religion to be a good human being?. I don’t think so either. But it’s a individual choice and I respect it as such.
ReplyDeleteIf what matters is to be truthful to yourself (which may be the hardest part, I think) and to others and to be a good human being , why should it matter if you believe or not on God(the right God)?, for a start. Wouldn’t be better to be willing to be a good human being not for fear of breaking the rules, or fear of punishment of God but rather because of a conscious understanding that everybody in the World depends on each other’s actions, that our actions, good or bad, affect others and that their response will affect us , for one example?.
I respect the search of religion at the individual level, as it is a way to put some order in what it seems otherwise an internal or external chaos. However, I have to say that I actually worry that religion as an institution, as a group of power, can do more harm than good to humankind, for it can divide more than unite people efforts to a common welfare cause(it did it in the past, it does it today). In general, religion as an institution membership, shouldn’t matter to qualify a human being at his best, I don't think it's determinant to his quality, and I am afraid that in many cases it may lead to double standards in doing so. And well, I won’t mention here all the misconceptions it creates concerning some science and other ethic themes, you have very well discussed on that as well.
However, to be fair to both believers and non-believers, to become a believer or non-believer in God must, in any case , be a mature, independent, individual decision, not a group decision. I just heard of this story, this 7 year old boy that was attending for the first time to a Catholic school in Spain came back home to ask his parents, “so… do you believe in God?”. The parents both listened and then answered: “We don’t. But you know? With time this is a decision you’ll have to make on your own”. Parents offered to take him to a church and all. Child is 13 now and may have made up his mind or not , the thing is that there is no pressure on him, he feels love and freedom to decide on his own, and whatever he decides on this matter would not change his promise and value as a human being.
I hope it’s true that you feel better now that you ‘named’ it. I am convinced that those who truly love you will love you the same. Those who believe in a God and those who don’t, both, may still feel that the other should reconsider their beliefs. However in the end, as frustrating as it can be, as scary as it can be for both sides, there is nothing else to do than honoring the individual freedom to decide.I also hope that this somehow encourages open discussions of ideas and beliefs on whatever subject, religious or non religious, welcoming absolutely everybody, knowing in advance that even if we didn’t get to an agreement at the end of the session, we have done our best to keep truth to ourselves, to keep open to new ideas, and thus offered the best of ourselves; .. and then..what better expression of love than that? . (..But then again, things get complicated when scaled up to groups, institutions, corporations and so on... quite more complicated at those levels, sorry.. :$