Bogosity

In my darkest moments, I revert to atheism. It comes about as I question my faith and I can’t make everything add up. God doesn’t act the way that I think God should. I always have to ask myself if it’s all just self delusion. I no longer believe in the God I used to believe in. This latest bout of existential doubt comes in the context of the Religion Reports science fatwah series in which they interviewed some atheists, Br William’s recent blog post why i believe and a question in chapter four of Called or Collared which I have been working through: What kind of God do you believe in? What kind of God does your life reflect to your friends, family and enemies?.

It’s the time of year for reviews and looking back as we head into the New Year. It’s resolution time and consolidation time. So it makes sense for me to maybe review where I’ve come to this year in my faith.

I concluded this year that there is no escaping pure faith when it comes to God. We can’t reason our way into it, sometimes we choose what to believe and other times we can’t help what we believe. For me, I am hardwired to believe in God. And this very basic belief is that I’m created and that I have a place in the Universe. Perhaps I am more of a Jedi than a Christian in this regards as I have a kind of belief in “the Force”. I’m a bit of a panantheist: God is everywhere, in all of us and in everything but God is not confined to the universe. What this means for me is that I feel that my relationship with the world, with objects, people and animals is part of a relationship with God.

The atheism comes in when I try to think of God in a more personal sense. If God exists and is involved in creation, then why doesn’t God make his/her/it’s presence more explicitly known. The idea of a God who wants us to know it and then plays hide and seek is ridiculous and fills me with doubt. This is an age old problem closely related to the why does God allow suffering meme but I’ve never heard a satisfactory answer, just that it is a mystery.

My way of answering this in the past is to conclude that God doesn’t want to relate to us in a personal sense the way that we would relate to another person. I allow for the possibility of an interventionist God, a God who answers prayer on occasion and even plays tricks on us. Perhaps some people have a voice in their head that is really God. Those things are outside of my experience. My experience of God is one of unknowability, alien yet wonderful and infinitely deep.

So what about Jesus? I think Jesus was a real incarnation of God. I’m not sure that we’ve understood Jesus correctly or that we’ve really got it all right, but I think we have enough to reasonably say that Jesus’ claims about himself are true. Sure this is another faith thing but for me it makes sense that a God who is unknowable would make himself knowable by becoming human, it is in keeping with my general ‘vibe’ about God that Jesus was who he was.

This is probably my last blog post before Christmas so I suppose I should put a Christmas message in here. So here’s my bit. Christmas is a celebration of God’s incarnation as a human, as a crying, gulping, sucking, helpless baby. The message of Christmas is that God is with us. The unknowable alien has come to dwell amongst us and become one of us. The ‘good news’ is that we are loved and that we have a future – beyond what is now and that God is with us in that future now.

God does relate to us personally but not in a conscious human way. Our relationship with God happens at a level that we are seldom aware of. The point of Christianity and faith in my understanding is that we learn to hear this dialogue that God is having with us and from this we can learn how to live in peace and find our eternal home.

Merry Christmas all.