LOST IN THE MYSTERY - HOPE IN THE UNKNOWN

For most of my adult life I have struggled with my faith, traveling a path that has taken me from an outsider to an active church member and Sunday School teacher, to a man of absolute faith, to a skeptic, to an atheist, and eventually an agnostic. Seeds of doubt and skepticism have accompanied me through all of these stages.

My skepticism begins with the most obvious challenges to my sense of reason: an immaculate conception and the resurrection of Christ.  In spite of my efforts, I simply cannot suspend my belief in the laws on nature and accept this narrative that is the foundation of Christianity.

For the same reason, I cannot accept the Bible as the word of God.  I believe it to be a collection of writings and stories written by men in their attempt to understand life, and the world around them, and by men inspired by their contacts with the remarkable teachings of the historical Jesus.

When I consider all that we know about the cosmos, our own planet, and the intricacies of all living things, from the physical to the physiological, and try to imagine a God who could create it all, or a “grand designer” who could set it in motion, I ask myself, why would such an amazing being, capable of doing all of this, decide the only way to reach some of his creations would be to send a man, born of a virgin mother, to preach in one part of this world, ignoring the rest of the worlds population? And then have him killed to save all men and women? It makes no sense, and for me, God has to make sense.

I have been asked, isn’t it possible that there exist things that are beyond our capacity to understand?   The only answer is yes, that is always possible.  But if you take that line of reasoning, it is also possible that somewhere there are pigs that can fly.  The question is not only is something is possible, but is it probable.

I can accept the possibility of some impersonal being or force – a grand designer or God – being responsible for setting everything in motion.  The result of which is the world we live in, a world full of contradictions, where love and hate, and good and evil, exist side by side. Humans have the capacity to create and destroy, and to nurture and injure.   We also have the capacity to imagine something better, and to create for ourselves a god to explain what we cannot explain.  I cannot accept the possibility of God as an objective reality, certainly not the God of Abraham, as described in the Old and New Testaments.  If there is a God who loves us, he has a strange way of showing it.

Unfortunately, I need God, I really do, and that is a difficult predicament for me to be in. It would be nice to have an unwavering faith to lean on in difficult times – and in good times also.  There is considerable comfort in the idea of a grand divinity that cares for us and will listen to our whining, pleading, and praises.  I’ve tried to find that faith, chasing after it for too many years.  Once I thought I had, but it was not meant to be.

Unfortunately hard science, in which I place a great deal of trust, is unable to explain all that I have experienced.  For the past 40 years the foundation of my life has been my trust in all things numinous: instinct, intuition, and a devotion to a spiritual center within me.  I have embraced this mysterious center as my soul and am not troubled by its conflict with the scientific.  One would think that this is only a simple step away from God, and that may be.  But I have not been able to make that step, so I have found contentment in this unknowing, while I attempt to understand the width and breadth of the human spirit.  If there is a God, this is where he will be found.

I have absolutely no doubt about the power of faith and the belief in a caring and loving God.  History tells us the remarkable stories of men and women who have accomplished incredible feats in His name.  In my opinion, faith in a higher power mobilizes forces within our selves, rather than divine intervention from above.  But what if the only way to access that inner power is by believing it comes from beyond our selves?

No matter how I look at this, and I have been doing so for all of my adult life, I end up in the same place…a spiritual life grounded in mystery… the mysterious unknowing.