I've been thinking a lot lately about God, faith, and the lack thereof. It started with an episode of Glee last week, in which Kurt - even though he is pressured to do so by his "friends" - refuses to profess in his belief in any sort of higher power:
"The reason I don't go to church is because most churches don't think very much of gay people...or women...or science...I think God is kind of like Santa Claus for adults. Otherwise, God's kind of a jerk, isn't he? Well, he makes me gay and then he has his followers going around and telling me that it's something I chose. As if someone would chose to be mocked every single day of their life....You can't prove that there's a magic teapot floating around on the dark side of the moon with a dwarf inside of it that reads romance novels and shoots lightening out of its boobs, but it seems pretty unlikely, doesn't it?"
Fair point, Kurt. Troubling, but a fair point.
At the episode's close, Kurt decides that his "sacred thing," is not singing songs in a cold, unfamiliar building, but his family (specifically, his father).
I then noticed facebook status updates and blog postings by many of my friends throughout the week pertaining to the subject. Some were outraged - i.e. how dare Kurt's friends try to make him believe in something. Others were upset by the episode's portrayal of religion: "We're not all crazy zealots!" My own emotions fluctuated wildly before settling somewhere in between after a somewhat unorthodox idea popped into my head:
I really think God likes atheists. Perhaps, even more so than some of his/her so-called "followers."
Think about it. What is an atheist's supposed sin? A lack of faith in something he/she cannot see, touch, or validate. Most of the folks I know who are atheists are sticklers on this point. They want facts, figures, and statistics. They want a logical explanation for things. They want PROOF.
...Why is that somehow wrong?
Granted, I hear the word "atheism" something in my heart just starts hurting - but that is only because of how I have re-discovered my own faith in a new way. Not that long ago, I - in essence - used to be one. Or, was agnostic at the very least. When I was attending Florida Southern College, I went through a serious "faith" crisis. I learned a lot of things that they didn't exactly teach us in fundie Sunday school:
"What? The Bible isn't inerrant? Hell could be a metaphor? The NIV (along with many other "versions" of the Bible) is a gender biased translation that, due to its many errors, has allowed countless women to be marginalized? WHAT?"
These issues, along with many others, deeply unsettled me. I didn't know how I could believe in a God that rationalized sexism, genocide, gay-bashing, intolerance, and endless other unspeakable horrors that I - in good conscience - could not reconcile myself to (and indeed, NO human being should reconcile him/herself to these things). For a period of several years, I walked away from anything resembling the Christian faith in its entirety. I relate very strongly to atheists for this very reason. I was so riddled by doubt and distrust in organized religion that I didn't think I could ever believe in God again.
Then, I met a boy.
A boy who I would eventually get engaged to, a boy who - unbeknownst to me at the time - would start abusing me, quietly. There are no words that can possibly describe what this boy - because I cannot use the word man - did to me. Suffice to say, towards the end of my relationship with him, things had escalted to a point where - had I not gotten help and gotten out when I did - I, quite literally, might not be here today.
There was one particularly bad episode, one in which he was screaming at me as he drove us down the road. Being stuck inside a moving vehicle, there was no way for me to get out. I remember sitting there, tears pouring down my face, as he screamed that I was a "whore" and and a "liar" and any other name he could think of to hurt me. Hoping that he wouldn't lose it and do something worse than scream.
I knew what would come later, as they always did: the "I'm sorry's" and the "it will never happen again's." But he wasn't. And it would. And it was as I was thinking on the fact that it was never going to stop - the endless cycle of heartbreak and coerced reconcilation - that it came to me. I hadn't been to church - Christian or otherwise - in over three years at this point. I couldn't tell you the last time I had read any sort of "scripture" or prayed a prayer. But as I sat in the cushioned seat of that haunted, dark blue Trailblazer, the words of an old Bible verse quietly came to me:
"Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks."
It's Luke 6:45, though I couldn't have told you that at the time (indeed, I had to look it up again before attempting to write this blog. My Bible-thumping, scripture memorizing days are long gone). But there it was, clear as a bell inside my brain: "Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks." In otherwords, the truth of what a person really thinks, feels, and believes comes out when they are most passionate/emotional.
And in that moment, as I sat in that car and listend to my then-fiance verbally ripping me to shreds, I realized that this - the screaming, the name calling, the degredation, the lack of respect and love - was the truth of how he felt for me. Not the apologies. Not the empty promises of change I had clung to. This moment, this darkness, this was the truth and reality. And it was this realization that gave me the courage to find the strength to leave my abuser and get help.
This instance, this moment when truth returned and led me to freedom, is why I believe in God - the very embodiment of Truth. And why when I hear the words "I am the way, the truth, and life," I tend to think that Christ was talking less about a "ritual" and a "religion" and more about reality. A way of living. Of being.
Truth is my "sacred thing."
We've all been to a football game or some other similar event where we've seen some person holding up the iconic "God is love" sign. But God is more than that: "God" is every good and noble thing. "God" is what is right in the world. "God" is "truth"...and truth can free all of us.
Many years ago, Wheaton philsopher Arthur Holmes wrote a book, one that would prove to become a great source of theological/philisophical contention for those who came after him. On page eight of this book, Holmes makes the statement that "all truth is God's truth, wherever it be found," and I find myself deeply liking that idea.
This means that if something is true - if it's real, genuine, factual, verifiable - that it is God's. Because Truth is God. This means that whether it's physics, evolution, philosophy, family, music, art, or theology (and not just Christian theology) that serves as the medium, if there is something "true" to be found within it, then God is there as well. And He/She/It is loving it.
It also means that the more difficult truths - like the fact that it's ridiculous to hate someone like Kurt because God made them differently, or that all our "holy books" have errors, and that no one has the corner market on "enlightenment" - are God as well. And I think that - when we counter these lies that are propogated as truth, when we beat back the darkness in our own hearts and chase what is real (as opposed to what others "tell" us is real), when we find what is honest and sincere no matter how controversial and earth shattering it may be, that God - that Truth personified - rejoices in it.
Which, I think, is why God/Truth loves atheists, because there is no group of people in the world as dedicated to pushing past the hocus-pocus and flim-flam of whatever idols that we, as human beings, have established in order to get TO the truth. Atheists are some of the most avid truth seekers I know. Which also means that, through their doubts and questioning, they are also some of the ones that are closest to God (no matter how much they might balk at such an idea). :)
At the end of the gospel of John, we are introduced to Thomas - the great, proverbial, doubting Thomas - who refuses to simply accept his friends' word that Jesus had risen from the dead: "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my fingers where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it."
Christ said that those who believed without seeing were "blessed." Christ admittedly conveyed his admiration for those who had the heart to believe without evidence, but this blind faith is not - in the end - what provides deliverance. The real deliverer, the real redeemer, the real "savior" is Truth. Truth is the freedom-bringer. And, when Thomas was confronted with the Truth, he embraced it and found joy in it. It was Truth, not blind faith, that set him free and made him whole.
And it did the same for me.
So I applaud Kurt, Thomas - and any others - who need to see the nail marks, who need the data and the hard evidence. It is out there, waiting for you. Keep hunting. And when you find it, when you can reach down and dig your fingers into it, when you finally clasp it and let it forever change your reality into something authentic, when you find your "sacred thing," don't you dare let it go.
Truth is calling. Answer.
