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The title of this article is a question that William F. Buckley, Jr., initially posed to the British essayist Malcolm Muggeridge, in one of the best programs ever produced in the PBS television series Firing Line. Muggeridge answered the question by noting that his religious faith grew as a consequence of his being a journalist and social commentator for some fifty years. His personal experience at seeing the devastation following World War II, the effects of communism, and the decline of Christianity in Europe led him to seek out a truth higher than what mankind could by itself discover. It is the gradual unfolding of human tragedies that taught Muggeridge that there must be more to the great drama of human life than what reason can explain. Throughout his professional working life, Muggeridge wrote essays and social commentaries that included Christian teachings, but he did it somewhat from the perspective of an outsider looking in at the Church. At the time of his interview, Muggeridge was a Christian though not a member of any denomination. Buckley described Muggeridge as the foremost lay apostle of Christianity, and he is perhaps best remembered as the journalist who introduced Mother Theresa of Calcutta to the world. The transcript of Bill Buckley's interview with Malcolm Muggeridge has been read and re-read many times, because Muggeridge articulated some enduring truths during that interview. In the United Kingdom of 1981, where Muggeridge's interview took place, or in the USA today, most people who at one time identified themselves as Christians no longer attend weekly Sunday services, often because they were not spiritually fed. Others consider it illogical or superstitious to believe in God. Where Chesterton once remarked, "You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it," G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Orthodox (reprinted 1963); most people would respond that faith without reason is no faith at all. So whether starting from a background of having practiced a religion and then fallen away, or whether pursuing the search for faith for the first time, the question becomes why should a person take the time to read and learn about God? There are more than one hundred reasons for having faith and pursuing a spiritual journey, but the chief motivating factor could be that it brings the person peace, understanding, and the grace to overcome the sorrows that afflict that person during his life on earth. Faith is the internal energy that feeds our souls and keeps mankind operating. In the same way that automobiles run on gasoline (or one day hydrogen fuel cells), religious inquiry is the fuel that gives us direction in life. People can operate or live their lives without faith, but they are going through the motions of living and merely surviving each new day without achieving anything of lasting value, i.e., they have no purpose or direction in their lives. Those who claim to be happy without any religious faith have fallen into the trap of material and hedonistic pleasures. "We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory. Another primary motivating factor for having faith is the pursuit of truth. "If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be; if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all." C. S. Lewis - Essay, Man or Rabbit. We have inquisitive minds that thirst for knowledge and understanding. Why would we arbitrarily limit or truncate our intellectual pursuits when they cross beyond the realm of proof into matters such as the meaning of life, the purpose for each one of us, and whether it would be more rational to believe in God or not to believe in Him. As soon as one ponders the really deep questions and transcendental truths we can discern, the obvious limitations of the scientific method become self-evident. The first step in finding faith is considering the possibility that there are transcendental truths waiting to be discovered, but the method of discovery will extend beyond the limits of scientific inquiry and man's finite grasp of the world. We no sooner grasp the outlines of the Christian faith then we immediately discover it will not be an easy to follow; the primary symbol of the Christian religion is a crucifix, which is a painful form of death, and we, the members of that Body of Christ, are meant to bear our own crosses as well. Christianity involves sacrifice, even more sacrifice than what we are prepared to endure or sometimes could understand on earth. Chesterton summed up this Christian call to sacrifice in one of his most famous quotations: "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." G. K. Chesterton - Chapter 5, What's Wrong With The World, 1910. In order to find faith, one must resolve to feed that faith little by little each day. It is an absurd twisting of Christian scripture to pretend that someone is "saved," and then from that day forward he or she is a Christian no matter how little time he or she spends in prayer, or how few of the Christian ideals and virtues become goals in his or her life. Christ gave us clear guidance in the Beatitudes as to what attributes we would expect to find in someone practicing the Christian faith: the disciple of Christ is someone who remains poor in spirit, hungers for justice, is persecuted or criticized for practicing his or her faith, etc. Yet even people who nurture their faith on a daily basis will feel spiritual dry spells from time to time. These spiritual dry spells, where people lose their desire to pray and even grow weary with hearing about religion in general, are a natural consequence of forming a hierarchical system of beliefs without conclusive proof or that contain propositions beyond the limitations of human thought. At times, the organized beliefs may seem like a house of cards, which collapses when a card is withdrawn: some event calls one or more beliefs into question. "There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition." Blaise Pascal, Pensees #430. Ironically, I encountered periodic dry spells while writing this book about faith. Dry spells in prayer life can last from a few weeks to an entire lifetime. Unfortunately, the longer the dry spell persists, the harder it will tend to be for that person to rediscover his or her faith. In the same way that faith-filled habits have to be developed over time, so do the old habits of not practicing faith have to be broken over time. Unfortunately, it often takes a tragedy for us to recognize our reliance on God and our need for faith. "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." C. S. Lewis - The Problem of Pain. For agnostics, it may take the death of a loved one before they realize their desperate need for hope in something more than existence on earth: the hope for an eternal life. As strange as this concept may seem when applied to the study of theology and religious faith, humans use a man-made concept, cost-benefit analysis, when choosing their level of participation in any religion. The more that the benefits outweigh the costs, the more people will choose to participate in practicing their faith. The word "participate" here comprises both active signs of faith, e.g., visiting someone in a nursing home, caring for someone in need, as well as contemplative signs of faith, i.e., reserving time for prayer and attending church services. Each aspect of a religious life involves a cost-benefit calculation. The decision to get up, get dressed, and go to Sunday morning mass has its own costs and benefits. Reserving thirty minutes or an hour for contemplative prayer yields its own cost-benefit equation based largely on opportunity costs for other activities that could have been pursued in the time spent on contemplative prayer. And that explains why even people who no longer attend organized religious services may still thirst for books on spirituality or religious themes: the benefits outweigh the costs for reading these books and learning about the mysteries of faith. People in the midst of spiritual dry spells have lost the motivation to continue on their journey of faith. Dry spells, which are experienced by both the clergy and the laity, arise from many different circumstances, but the most common circumstance seems to be a long and consistent pattern of having prayers unanswered. When prayers go unanswered over time, the person offering the prayers will question why he or she is spending time and energy on prayer with so few tangible results. At that point the costs of prayer (time, energy, hopes and desires placed with the prayers) seem to outweigh the benefits, and so the prayer life eventually halts. A lack of prayer life leads to lack of church attendance, because Christian worship services are essentially a long prayer. As the prayer life suffers, the struggling Christian may feel anger towards his denomination, followed by disinterest and indifference to religion in general. It has always struck me as too simplistic an answer to state that the unanswered prayers are in reality being answered "No." First, any person with a sincere heart would count as an "answer," not merely getting the object of the prayer, but also some other consolation such as the ability and grace to overcome not receiving that object of prayer. When people feel their prayers are unanswered, it is because they were left with nothing. This fact led one of the great saints, perhaps it was St. Theresa, to say in devotion "I can see why You don't have many friends, when You treat the ones You have this way." What an open and honest assessment of religious faith! Having faith is not easy; maintaining faith is a challenge in the absence of any sign or consolation that the person is on the right track. But a person of faith usually is focused on life in the hereafter, not life on earth. We look to store up treasures in heaven, not here on earth. Otherwise, we would all become materialists and try to find satisfaction in the creature comforts of life as we know it. But we are made to serve God's purpose for us on earth so that we can earn a share in the rewards for a life well spent. "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." C. S. Lewis - Mere Christianity. Yearning to return to our heavenly home leads us to become detached from things of this world, and that would seem to be the first step in finding faith. We have this intrinsic hope to know our Creator one day in the afterlife as well as He knows us now. "[T]hen shall I know even as also I am known." I Corinthians 13:12 Second, the simplistic nature of the response that "God said 'No'" to unanswered prayer raises an inconsistency that an all-loving and all-powerful God could somehow refuse to grant even the most minor as well as the major requests asked of Him through prayer. Some of those religious who are quick to point out a lack of faith in others and decry their questioning that prayers were answered with a "No," often are at a loss to explain how a loving God could consistently deny requests for minor assistance. It turns out there are twenty or so questions that have no answers, and we have just encountered one of them. Why would a loving and powerful God consistently leave people who pray to him with no assistance and no consolation? As soon as a person's prayer life starts to decline, then the incentive to follow other religious practices will wane. Soon the person may consider himself a "lapsed" or a "fallen away," but these labels are not so important to God, who can see directly into our hearts. People who are raised in a Christian church frequently retain Christian core values despite their varying degrees of participation in the church. Those who do not want to participate in the Sunday liturgies may benefit from finding an alternative service that quenches their "thirst" for spiritual grace. For example, some may find renewed spiritual graces from attending a noon Catholic Mass on Fridays followed by a brief Rosary service. The Friday Masses will be smaller than Sunday Masses and have fewer distractions. The clergy would never encourage people to abstain from Sunday services, but they have not fully considered the cost-benefit analysis for people who are turned off with what they receive at Sunday services. The problem does not lie with the people. We must distinguish between finding faith or a belief in God versus "practicing" faith through attending religious services. "And though I have the gift of prophesy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing." I Corinthians 13:2-3. Faith and charity go hand in hand, but the greatest of these is charity. Therefore, in trying to find faith, people must cultivate an attitude of charity towards their friends as well as their enemies. But back to the Muggeridge interview. When asked how he found God, Muggeridge laughed that he did not have any type of Damascus Road conversion, where he was a non-believer one day and a believer the next. Instead, he found God through "the unfolding of an enlightenment which is full of doubt as well as certainty. I rather believe in doubting. It's sometimes thought that it's the antithesis of faith, but I think it's connected with faith, something actually that St. Augstine said [about] reinforced concrete, and you have those strips of metal in the concrete, which make it stronger." Those who follow a journey of faith, not for the sake of gaining knowledge and trying to appear wise, but rather to understand circumstances and find truth, will discover the limitations of human thought and scientific theories. "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." I Corinthians 13:11-12. Along the way, these people will be exposed to religious explanations, which they can investigate further or reject as mere superstitions. But the longer they search, the more they will confront issues in which they believe even without evidence establishing proof for their beliefs. These beliefs need not be religious in nature. For example, people may believe that there are intelligent life forms somewhere else in the vast universe. Or they may believe there is no God, even though they cannot prove the nonexistence of God any better than those who believe in God can prove his existence. Perhaps less important than actually discovering and mastering some transcendental truth is the search for truth. Our souls and minds are drawn to search for truth (God), because we instinctively know this truth (God's love) will set us free. Muggeridge correctly stated that faith without doubt is no faith at all; it is a kind of mind-numbing acceptance of everything that is taught without any second thought or questioning. If I asked my religious friends if they have doubts about their faith, most, if not all, would immediately say "no" and some would take offense that their faith could even be subject to doubt. But that is completely the wrong answer. To have faith in God means that a person has tested and evaluated other competing theories to explain various phenomena and has come back to his or her initial beliefs. Unless a person has an open mind to hear challenges to his faith, he can never be sure that his religious beliefs are more than figments of his own indoctrination and environment. But by the term "faith," modern man means something deeper than, e.g., the mythology associated with the ancient Greeks. In Greek mythology, the sun went across the sky, because the god Apollo was driving his chariot up in the heavens. The change in seasons was supposedly due to some Greek goddess being denied visitation with her daughter. Faith in the Judeo-Christian concept of God has a firmer foundation than silly explanations for forces of nature. One way we can differentiate the Judeo-Christian foundation for religious beliefs from Greek mythology is on the longevity of those beliefs. The Christian church is almost 2,000 years old now. If a person ever wonders whether he or she is foolish for believing in God, that person can draw comfort from the fact that on down through the centuries, many very bright people (as well as an even greater number of simple and uneducated people) have all believed that God existed, and that we would have greater closeness and communion with God in the afterlife. Is it possible all those billions of people were simply wrong for two millenia? Yes, it is possible, but highly unlikely. In fact, I would even take it one step further and say God has given us signs of His existence and of the role He has for us in the afterlife. "By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity." Too much evidence exists in the form of recorded miracles to discount the most plausible explanation for the source of those miracles. The fact that we cannot know with 100% absolute certainty that these miracles come from a divine source is the true essence of faith. How does one find faith? By believing in God without having absolute proof about His nature, His purpose for each one of us, and the connection between suffering on earth and rewards in the eternal life. "He who has faith has... an inward reservoir of courage, hope, confidence, calmness, and assuring trust that all will come out well - even though to the world it may appear to come out most badly." B.C. Forbes, journalist. |
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