Undeception

There have been a few recent discussions in the blogosphere tangentially related to Lawrence Krauss’s recent book, A Universe from Nothing, including an off-handed post by me and a short one by Eric Reitan. Today’s episode of the Unbelievable radio show promises to be interesting. You can probably expect me to give my thoughts on it once I have a chance to listen to it at the beginning of the week. For now, here’s the episode summary:

Lawrence Krauss is a Cosmologist at Arizona State University who describes himself as an “anti-theist”.  His latest book “A Universe from Nothing“ has received both acclaim and criticism for its attempt to answer the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

Debating the issue with Krauss is Rodney Holder, Course director at the Faraday Institute, Cambridge. An astrophysicist and priest by background.

In a lively exchange they debate whether Krauss’ “nothing” is “nothing”, fine tuning and multiverses, scientific knowledge, miracles and the usefulness of theology and philosophy.

Most people are familiar with Carl Sagan’s famous declaration that “We are made of star stuff,” if only because of that song from a decade ago. It is often referenced to prove that even stereotypically stodgy, lab-coated scientists can have a sense of awe, an appreciation for intangible aesthetics like beauty, and even the occasional turtleneck sweater. The implication of our unity - solidarity sounds a little too punny – with the building blocks of our material universe on the basis of our common heritage from the Big Bang is a strangely resonating notion that science popularist Lawrence Krauss has recently capitalized on.

Krauss’s version of the motif, now a famous infographic, has gained a lot of recent attention for its having caused an Evangelical backlash against Miley Cyrus when she revealed on Twitter that she found it “Beautiful,” despite Krauss’s snarky materialistic send-up of one of the central ideas of Christianity.

There is indeed undeniable poetry in this. And one mark of a good poet is the ability to find beauty even in the sewage.

Conversely, a good satirist is able to expose a common perception of beauty as hardly more than a misidentification of sewage. To me, this comic from SMBC does a good job of approximating philosophical naturalists’ attempts to synthesize from pure matter the persistent human conviction that the universe has transcendent value, which has traditionally been explained by the belief that reality is comprised of more than merely conveniently-yet-coincidentally arranged atoms:

When I first heard a description of Dawkins’ latest book, The Magic of Reality, I thought it sounded intriguing, if not promising. However, I certainly don’t like the way this review paints the book.

…Dawkins’ volume is as accessible as it is illuminating, covering a remarkable spectrum of subjects and natural phenomena — from who the very first person was to how earthquakes work to what dark matter is — in a way that infuses reality with the kind of fascination and whimsy we’re used to finding in myth and folklore. Each chapter begins with a famous myth from one of the world’s religions or folklore traditions, which Dawkins proceeds to myth-bust by examining the actual scientific processes and phenomena that these stories try to explain.

Does Dawkins expect this book to teach children “to fight myth with science”, as that article’s subtitle asserts?

I haven’t read the book, but I hadn’t previously gotten the impression that it attempts to “replace” myth with science before this review. Now, I have all ideas that Dawkins really does want to do just that, but is that what this book intends to do? If so, for all the good this book does in promoting science among the young, it’s a poisoned well from which I’d be wary of letting my kids drink.

Please bear in mind that from here on I’m critiquing the review’s understanding of Dawkins’ book, and the view of those who agree with that interpretation.

Perhaps the most delightful aspect of Dawkins’ atheism is his a-rational, perhaps even ir-rational, curiosity about nature and his boundless enthusiasm for science (or is it his enthusiasm for his own curiosity about science?). It’s a worthy exercise to try to infuse wonder and even “whimsy” into scientific inquiry about the natural world since those things often seem to be the domain only of the intangible, in constructed narratives and philosophical/theological explanations of the abstract. But here it sounds as though Dawkins wants, at worst, to replace a healthy appreciation for mythology with a love of science or, at best, to downplay the ongoing insight of myth and narrative into the human experience that cultural anthropologists and comparative mythologists have been teaching us for decades. I have grave misgivings about claims that science can (and especially should) trump those sorts of non-scientific insights into meaning, purpose, and wonder made by people like Joseph Campbell by treating myths as nonsense stories entertaining to only people who don’t care to know better and need justifications for flying planes into buildings.

I’m not even speaking here as a Christian, but as someone who values the role myths play in human society. I’m doing my best to instill in my children an appreciation for the mythologies of other cultures, and I don’t find it necessary to give them an appreciation for science by myth-busting the cosmology of the Sumerians or (still less) by denigrating non-industrialized societies’ methods of grappling with bigger questions of the universe. I just don’t think it’s a great idea to make a campaign of “debunking” or subjugating myths to a pursuit of scientific understanding as though it were the apex of human achievement. It’s not, and shouldn’t be. I live my life for much more than that.

As for science’s ability to inspire wonder, whimsy, and mystery, let me just say that those atheists who believe that they know for relatively certain that nothing exists outside of what’s already known about the universe (its physicality, etc.) are guilty of “established science of the gaps” thinking, which can’t help but cordon off a whole realm of inquiry that has been part and parcel of humanity’s descent from the trees and, if you’ll pardon the triumphalist teleology, its subsequent ascent up the evolutionary tree, ending up as organisms that can do science. My point is that dyed-in-the-wool materialists have decidedly less opportunity for wonder than those a little less confident about the prevailing scientific understanding of the universe. If I see a face on the surface of Mars, there is undoubtedly more wonder and room for curiosity in, “What could that be? Might it really be an artifact of alien life?” than in, “Well, aliens probably don’t exist, so it’s got to be a natural formation of some kind.”

My biggest beef is this: if someone wants to substitute reductive materialism for all alternative forms of meaning, wonder, etc., well and good for them. But do we want self-laudatory science’s “materialism of the gaps ” taught to our kids? I sincerely hope this book is not trying to make claims about how much qualitatively better hard science is than cultural metanarratives, religion, and probably even philosophy itself (Dawkins always, a little too contently, refuses the label “philosopher”, perhaps for this reason). “Kids, you can read and even permit yourself to enjoy your silly little fabricated stories, but if it’s not actual science, it’s not reality and hence a waste of your time and potential as a human being.”

Hogwash.

Over a year ago I started a closed, hidden Facebook group for a few of my friends and me so that we could share links and discuss issues swirling around our rejection of inerrancy. It was an experience of much empathy and encouragement that most all of us really appreciated.

Then around the time my blogging slacked off in the late summer of last year, I also began frequenting the group less and less. I was recently asked by a dear friend from the group to explain what was going on with me. He was specifically referring to my less frequent interaction with the group, but as it’s related to my coincident lull in blogging, I thought I’d put more words into explaining what I think lies behind it all.

I do often miss the “good Christian fellowship” of those days. At times I also miss the probing discussions we had, but to a markedly lesser extent. This isn’t because they weren’t good discussions: it’s just that I’m not as much in that stage of my journey right now. I don’t know…I suppose I’m just tired of all the over-thinking, the second-guessing. After studying and reading and hashing and rehashing, the simple fact is that when it comes to the most fundamental questions (regarding the existence of God, the problem of evil, soteriology, etc.), one of two situations obtain: I know what I believe on the subject and I know enough about why I should and shouldn’t believe it to last me for some time, or at least I am content to abide in hopeful uncertainty. My faith is a choice, a step out into the unknown, not because, as Evangelicals do, I’ve convinced myself that I’m sure I’m headed the right way or that what I’m stepping onto is secure, but because my deepest hunches and most profound philosophical speculations lie in that direction alone. But I don’t pretend to know it’s true. So I stand here shrouded in uncertainty where I have ventured. The fruitless effort of obsessing about these questions about which we can never have full certainty has once again brought me into a forced humility. My consequent unwillingness to trumpet my tenuous conclusions around as the solution to everyone else’s searches is one part of the equation that has led to my being much quieter of late.

Another part of disentangling myself from the world of biblio- and theoblogging is something I’ve just finally worked out in my mind. Although I had managed to avoid these feelings for quite some time, in the last year I finally succumbed to a constant state of annoyance and even disgust at the constant self-justification, drummed-up confidence, and especially the rarely restrained personal vitriol and arrogance on the part of one group of people I had long counted among my closest allies: atheists. Not all of them are like this, I’m obliged by fairness to qualify, but these attitudes generally correlate directly with the degree of satisfaction they get in proclaiming their unbelief; sad to say, the distribution of atheists on the Internet is a rather lopsided (and I hope, unrepresentative) ratio in favor of this genus of atheist. It’s gotten to the point that if I find out someone’s an atheist within five or ten minutes of encountering him, I can depend on his being obnoxious on the subject.

Around the time I started recognizing that the New Atheist “civility” was spreading among even more mainstream non-theists, I noticed the disease showing up among many of those even closer to my ilk, i.e. post-Evangelical and otherwise “liberal” Christians: the ones who seem to take every opportunity to belittle and shame conservative Evangelicals, a group of believers whom I also consider to be sorely in need of correction. By all appearances, it’s not enough to be convinced that Evangelicals and other theologically conservative Christians are wrong: they’re obviously [blankety-blank] morons, due no more attempts at civil, intellectual interaction than the clinically insane. Ridicule is the medicine prescribed to those who believe that the Bible is inerrant, the world was created in 6 days, and that conservative American politics are the direct reflex of biblical morality. Frankly, the eternal obsession with bawling about the idiotic, hypocritical foibles of Evangelical Christianity has gotten really, really old.

But on further reflection, this exposed in me something I didn’t like: God forgive me, I also had been letting my disgust for things like inerrancy, creationism, and penal substitution displace my loving concern for those who believed those things.

My dissatisfaction with this state of affairs led to a number of posts on my blog (this one included) targeting a different audience than was originally intended for it. I had always focused on “challeng[ing] unquestioned Evangelical assumptions about Scripture, theology, the creation/evolution debate, and biblical studies.” My efforts were for them, but in reality it was no less for me as well, as I hammered out the wrong things I thought important not to believe. But at the bottom of the slippery slope, having stripped away many if not most of the beliefs that conservative Christians hold as sine qua non‘s of Christianity, the loss of which were the last straws for ex-Christians I have encountered in my journeys, somehow I found my faith afresh. The tide turned from finding thing after thing to disbelieve towards finding new ways to act on things I found worth believing. I’m sure I’ll never really stop thinking about these things and finding new things to question and/or critique, but at some point you’ve just got to live it and hope for the best.

Look, I know it’s hard dealing with some of these conservative Christians when it comes to theology. OK, most of them. And I know there are some pretty harmful consequences to some of their beliefs that we need to stand up and counter. I’m certainly not calling for détente, or for burying our heads in the sand while the victims of bad theology pile up. And I realize that sometimes there’s no better way to show someone an idea is wrong than to show them how silly the idea is. But trying to force people to laugh at themselves as hard as you’re laughing at them is simply not realistic. Yes, in many cases we’ve got to shake them, raise our voices, and tell them to snap out of it — but always after examining our motives and our methods to ensure we are speaking the truth in love.

The temptation of Internet exchanges to be entirely immune to the checks of face-to-face interaction has fairly well saturated the church, I fear. I’ve gotten much further convincing my Evangelical friends to soberly reanalyze the harmful behavior driven by their bad theology by engaging them in confrontational yet personal conversation than I have with exasperated, sarcastic, snarky retorts thrown at them in disembodied e-text. I’m ready for these people to come around, and I don’t think shaming and gleefully castigating them is cutting it; in fact, it alienates them yet further by giving them a martyr complex as they understandably suspect that their positions are more righteous due to the manifest unrighteousness of the anger being hurled at them in response.

Although we might like to think of our diatribes as humorous constructive criticism, by examining my own heart I can see that much of what is passed off as well-intentioned criticism serves another, ulterior purpose: like a teenage girl desperately trying to be popular by disowning her annoying, dorky brother in front of her friends, we want to show everyone that we’re not as unreasonable as those other people so no one lumps us in together. My friends, Jesus didn’t seem to suffer from this form of pride.

We all want to battle dangerous forms of ignorance and lessen its influence in those groups (such as many conservative forms of Christianity) that seem to defend it the most confidently. And I don’t doubt that you can lampoon, mock, and marginalize a group of people into oblivion. But it’s wrong: we have to remember that conservative Christians are not just perpetrators but also victims of bad theology, and my religion tells me not to hope for the physical, spiritual, or emotional destruction of those who are wrong but their deliverance. Granted, if you’re one who doesn’t believe there’s anything transcendent that stands as the basis for ethics or morality, I can understand wishing for the former, even as I shrink back in horror from such a world as yours. But I should be able to count on other (theologically) progressive Christians to show more patience, sympathy, and love for others — in short, living in the way the founders of our faith told us should be our hallmark. The authors of the New Testament consistently advised believers to nurture one another and shore up unity within their community of faith, so much so that many scholars have expressed doubt that the first Christians cared for anyone outside of their community at all. Rather, I think the sensible plan was always “Jerusalem first, then Judea, then the uttermost parts of the earth,” a strong, healthy core with influence rippling outwards in concentric rings. Make sure your own house is in order first — and that means tidying up the messy rooms rather than demolishing them. One of the many sound critiques of Evangelical culture is that they tend to “shoot their wounded,” which is something sensitive and responsible “progressive” Christians have disavowed. Yeah, well, I’m just not seeing it, folks, and neither is the watching world: liberals hardly less than conservatives round up the ones who we think hold us back and/or make us look stupid, bind them to piles of sticks and dry grass, light the match, and hold a public spectacle of the whole affair.

I realize I’m laying it down pretty hard on my own allies here; I don’t really mean to bust anyone’s chops – how hypocritical would that be! – and as I alluded earlier, I think this problem is in large part attributable and endemic to the medium of online interactions, which tends to desiccate interpersonal exchanges into impersonal ones. It’s just that I care for everyone involved in these debates and want to insist that tough love can be shown without it looking indistinguishable from a drive-by shooting. I emphatically agree that we need to make taking care of the oppressed, marginalized, and suffering in this world our chief priority as Christians, and that Evangelicalism doesn’t seem to have the tools or even the motivation to help us, but it’s really not too much to ask to insist that we treat them with concern as well. In actuality, we are harming our world if we let our disgust poison the portion of it that sits in conservative churches. “Love your enemies” applies even if those enemies are family. And honestly it looks a lot different than what I’ve been seeing.

I expect to be dismissed by many as preaching sentimentalism and maybe even, despite my protestations above, a non-violence that enables more violence: “Easy for you to say, Steve: you’ve never suffered gender discrimination for church office or been kicked out of Christianity for being gay.” But I’m not saying we shouldn’t address those issues: I’m reevaluating how we’re going about it. If you haven’t noticed, our results in getting these people to both a) change their minds and b) not become disillusioned, bitter atheists are pretty abysmal.

I write this for those in whom the all-inclusive heart of God is being cultivated. It’s not easy to show patience and speak the truth in love in this environment, and those of us earnestly attempting it really need all the help we can get. I’m just asking that you consider how inadvertently destructive your publicly posted incendiary content might be. Meanwhile, if I decide that I can be of some use by continuing to keep up this blog, I’ll try to refocus on exemplifying the kind of engagement that I have advocated above. Engage them, get to know them and love them, bring them alongside. As we tell the Calvinists who insist that God’s “justice” trumps His love, there is no justice without love.

From no dark came I, but the depths of light;
From the sun-heart I came, of love a spark;
What should I do but love with all my might?
To die of love severe and pure and stark,
Were scarcely loss; to lord a loveless height–
That were a living death, damnation’s positive night.

- G. MacDonald

Berenbaum: “Everything about insects is fascinating. They are truly remarkable creatures. So beautiful and so honest.”

Mulder: “‘Honest’?”

Berenbaum: “Eat, sleep, defecate, procreate. That’s all they do. That’s all we do, but at least insects don’t kid themselves that it’s anything more than that.”

from “War of the Coprophages”, episode 3×12 of The X-Files

This exchange (penned by the brilliant Darin Morgan), may be less eloquent but is certainly no less “honest” than Dawkins’ famous conclusion that the universe has “at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”

In fact, it’s quite arguably more honest than those who share Dawkins’ assessment but go on to declare that we can go on living lives of meaning and purpose without the constant awareness that such constructs are anything other than protracted exercises in kidding ourselves. Every value and guiding principle we expect one another to live by – everything we do and believe in - pertains somehow to eating, sleeping, defecating, or procreating and not a whit more, because there is nothing else. What you call “loving” your significant other is purely driven by your animal instinct to preserve society and ensure the survival of your community’s gene pool. Sure, it feels like more, thank heavens, so that we at least can enjoy going about our ultimately pointless activities and following our arbitrary ethical guidelines. Societally constrained hedonism is the only real reason to go on living life.

If you believe this, suspending this realization is just an understandably desperate act of self-delusion. I mean, who wants to live like organic robots? If there is no fundamental principle of meaning and value other than our own derivative ones, pretending that what we believe and do in our lifetimes has any importance is merely playing out the actions of Deckard and Rachel at the end of Blade Runner (I’m trying to avoid spoiling anyone).

I don’t think the typically negative reactions to such reductionistic understandings of the universe are merely the result of human minds working overtime to avoid acknowledging a depressing reality; there’s also the fact that these lines of thought quickly take us to conclusions that are disturbingly, I would say suggestively, counter-intuitive. Killing deformed or retarded babies for fun is not just inconvenient to the survival of our species (in fact, it probably isn’t even that); it’s wrong. Isn’t it? That is, maybe things appear to have absolute meaning, value, and purpose because…they do.

Regardless, since I disagree with Dawkins that everything in the physical universe eliminates any evidence for a deeper purpose or meaning behind it all, I’ve chosen to live under the assumption that there is such greater significance to my life. Lacking conclusive evidence either way, to choose that possible understanding of the universe despite a realization of its conjectural nature is not a bit more of a delusion than the atheists’ willful suspension of disbelief in choosing their values and guiding principles.

In fact, when those who deny all but contrived, artificial meaning in the universe live as though there were any absolute importance or significance to how we live our lives, they are doing so in blatant contradiction to what they believe they know, consciously carrying on with their eyes closed. When we who believe in a deeper meaning for the universe live out our convictions based on that belief, we’re at least doing something that we truly do not believe contradicts reality. Personally, I’d rather be accidentally mistaken than knowingly embrace what I recognize are mistakes.

Christians may turn out to have been deluded, but at least we’re not the ones kidding ourselves.

Becoming an atheist is not in the cards for me at this point. But if ever I find myself an atheist, here’s my pledge to you.

I will not set up websites or troll others’ websites trying to get people to see why I lost my faith or why they should as well. I probably won’t even waste my time frequenting other skeptic/atheist blogs, either to shore up my non-belief, or to help me cope with my loss of faith, or to poke fun at those who still believe. If I step into the void of a godless universe, I’ll know exactly what I’m getting into (which, not coincidentally, is one reason it’s unlikely to happen any time soon).

If anything, I will spend my time trying to bridge the great divide and getting people to stop demonizing one another long enough to understand the positive aspects of the other side — and to exhort the true believer and the disillusioned alike to recognize that there are indeed positive aspects on both sides that we would all do well to cultivate. From what I’ve seen, you can remedy most of the bad aspects of the other guy’s belief system by helping to inform his beliefs more easily than embittering him by forcing your system onto his or trying to make him your clone.

I’m just so blasted tired of the bitterness and the negativity. Whether the God of love exists or theism is pure hogwash, I simply won’t live my life like that. Whatever ad hoc meaning I can contrive out of a purposeless universe will not include debunking the purpose currently bringing about good in other people’s lives. Yes, I can see myself delicately augmenting their current purpose with concepts of open-mindedness and goodwill, perhaps, but not popping their balloons just because mine got popped and I’ve convinced myself I’m happier without it.

I guess you could say that I’ll continue to serve, worship, and even proselytize for what Christianity has identified as good, right, and lovely, even if I abandon my faith in the Ultimate Basis for those concepts. So in a very real way, I can pretty much promise you that even if I lose my faith in God, I’ll never really lose my religion.

And hence, I pledge to you that my religion won’t ever grant me permission to be a jerk, a troll, or an evangelist for self-made and self-defined purpose.

What in the world am I trying to do with this site? Who am I writing for? Who do I expect to come away with something of value?

I ask myself these questions periodically. Am I a “faith” blogger or a “skeptic” blogger? The posts I write criticizing aspects of evangelicalism are the most popular, and are quite common given that those beliefs are most often the object of my own undeception; on the other hand, I make no bones about my own abiding faith. Yet in observing those who encounter difficulties with the Bible, especially in the blogosphere, it seems things too often go in two diametrically opposed directions:

• The Disillusioned: The Bible is acknowledged to have deep flaws. Discussion develops around criticizing the Bible’s flaws and sneering at the inanities of Christians who deny them.
• The Defenders: The Bible is perfect. Any discussion of alleged flaws in it is stolidly defensive; more often, it is outsourced to apologists.

From there both camps trudge along their separate, well-worn paths. Typically the more bitter of the Disillusioned become the Deconverted. I come across many deconversion blogs, which isn’t surprising considering that disillusionment and deconversion are so emotionally repercussive. Their communities and survivors’ groups form very easily, commenting and linking to one another as a form of mutual support.

There are plenty of blogs by those militantly confident in their Christianity as well; the Defenders remain happy where they are…at all costs, seemingly.

Comparing the content of the blogs from those groups to mine, you’d see many more affinities between me and the Disillusioned. Indeed, because I spend so much time discussing the deep flaws in the Bible and in the forms of Christianity championed by the Defenders, my blog attracts mostly the Disillusioned and the Deconverted. But I do not count myself among either group. Rather, I am a part of an increasing number of believers no longer confident in either the pat answers of the apologists or the knee-jerk reactions of the self-styled enemies of Christianity. Even upon realization that our pursuit of God and His truth does not terminate in Scripture or systematic theologies, we do not find enough grounds to repudiate that pursuit.

I know that both the Defenders and the Disillusioned/Deconverted would consider me and the growing numbers of people like me to be living in an untenable state of cognitive dissonance. They would say I am the unreasonable, illusioned defender, denying the fruits of the doubts and disbelief I have uncovered and at times trumpeted. Their premise is that without an inerrant Bible that tells us exactly what to believe we have no good reason to believe in anything resembling the God of the Bible. I reject this premise as reactionary as I rest hopeful in a conviction that a good God, and one that bears more than a coincidental and passing resemblance to the God the Christians have always worshiped, actually exists. Why is this?

Please do not think that I offer the following as any sort of philosophical treatise, but as a statement of my current stance given my own analysis, based on my own experience, constantly and repeatedly judged against the various philosophical ideas I encounter in my reading. Crucially, none of it is proof: in a universe in which proof is impossible, we are all, to a person, left choosing what to believe.

I believe in God because I believe in goodness; I believe in God because I believe in beauty; I believe in God because I believe in justice; I believe in God because I believe in non-arbitrary meaning. I choose to believe in these absolutes not because of proof, of which there is none, or because of overwhelming evidence, of which there is precious little; I realize that it could just as well be that there is evil, ugliness, injustice, and/or chaos at the bottom of the universe. But I will not worship those things, even as far as to grant their absolute existence or entertain the notion that they will have the final victory. I will worship what is good and right and lovely, and grant it all the honor of believing in and even worshiping its absolute existence as the Ultimate. We are disappointed to have seen those ideal virtues violated or at least imperfectly modeled in other people; it makes sense that this is in part because there is actually a Person in whom those virtues are embodied perfectly. I find that the God of Christianity coincides with these expectations to my satisfaction.

I cannot help being convinced that certain absolute ideal principles exist regardless of any prevailing cultural sensibilities. Loving concern for a child: always right. Torturing a child: always wrong. Looking out for the interests of women: always right. Raping a woman: always wrong. Showing honor to an honest man: always right. Slandering an honest man: always wrong. These evaluations are grounded in the existence and primacy of Goodness. Evil – what shouldn’t be – doesn’t have an independent existence, but is an often quite palpable negation of what is good – what should be. The question inevitably comes: why is there any negation of should-be? Isn’t that reason enough to doubt such a thing as a should-be?

Another attribute of the Ultimate that I did not mention is also responsible for my continuing faith: it is mystery, the consort of the Ultimate’s transcendence. It is that which does not allow me to declare with as much certainty as I would like that those ideals I place my hope in truly exist; it is what does not allow me to conclude that the existence of evil, ugliness, injustice, and chaos in this world is a defeater of my hope in goodness, beauty, justice, and meaning; worst of all, it necessitates the humility that we as humans resist to the bitter end. But unlike those other attributes, mystery is not eternal: my Christian hope is in the eventual resolution of this mystery/transcendence, the closing of the gap between heaven and earth, the eventual elimination of shouldn’t-be from the midst of should-be. And it is this hope that I lay down before the perfect object of my worship, the one of whom I have been fathered from a young age and who has given me peace and joy to spare, but more importantly, a deep-seated concern and empathy for others.

There are many who imagine that they are caught up somewhere above the mystery into the very certainty of God. Doubt, which may be thought of as an intentional filling of one’s lungs with the air of mystery, is thought by these to be a denial of the God whom they have experienced. This is how certainty is achieved for the Defenders.

There are also many who can no longer pretend that they are experiencing the certainties promised them beyond that yawning gap of mystery; these are often troubled, hurting, and angry by this revelation. It seems only natural that those in the painful throes of the transcendence of God, mistaking it for His absence, cling to the firm ground and renounce all else. This is how certainty is achieved for the Disillusioned.

And then there are some of us who seek to keep our feet planted in reality, unflinchingly seeking out truths that the Defenders disavow, but who, inhaling the mystery, strain to reach that transcendent-yet-imminent Goodness of which we catch vivid glimpses. We deny that certainty is anything but an illusion. Our faith is not about maintaining beliefs, but about fervently striving to bring the Goodness we have known closer to the waiting world. While valuing the insights into the human and divine natures the biblical authors have to offer us, and while humbly and thoroughly subjecting those insights to all of the reconstructions and deconstructions suggested by critical inquiry, we do not lean on either understanding. We trust instead in the God for whom our souls yearn and without whom all the truths on the earth would be nothing more than clanging cymbals. Our faith is realized in an ethic intended to make those virtues manifest in our own lives, for the sake of others: we demonstrate our hope for the victory of love by acting faithfully, seeking to embody goodness, beauty, justice, meaning, and above all, Love. This is what we call serving God. We are Christians because we were – and are – taught these things by Jesus.

I’m not trying to pigeon-hole every human into these few categories. There are many others: most people are happily oblivious to all these debates; others are well aware of the debates, but have become fatigued and battle-weary, wanting to hope but struggling to find the will to wade through the divide between the different dogmatic positions. I hope to have something useful to say to those in both of those categories without becoming an obnoxious crusader. Although at times my temper has no doubt flared against certain egregious examples of problematic thinking among the groups I’ve described, I do not want to demonize anyone. I write this blog to offer another way of dealing with doubts, one which has the potential to heal the often bitter and vitriolic gash separating the Defenders and the bitter Disillusioned, for the sake especially of those caught in the middle. My hope is that by sharing my search for truth on this blog, stripping away what is false and shoring up what is true, I will eventually help motivate all, whether Christian, heretic, or apostate, who share the ethic of an overcoming goodness that I call Christianity in action.