Skeptical Faith

Google Image I recently read a review in America Magazine of the new book, My Beloved World, by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. I haven’t read the book itself, though it looks interesting. It’s about Justice Sotomayor’s childhood and the influences in her life. What I liked in the review was the line, “What distinguishes this book is that Sotomayor does not claim to be self-made.” Unlike many others who have found “success,” she recognizes that many people had a hand in making her the woman she is today. Although she obviously put in a lot of hard work and was persistent, she peddles none of this “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps” stuff. She had plenty of “failure” on the road to success, too. She contended with her own early diabetes, a drinking father and aloof mother who nonetheless provided her with lots of human resources, and a childhood in Bronx public housing. With this meager stake, she won a scholarship to Princeton, graduated with highest honors and atten...

Google Image Bastille, a British rock band, was formed only in 2010, but by the beginning of this year, it had sold over 2.07 million records in the UK alone. Maybe it’s because of lyrics like these in its hit song, Flaws, which religious people could nominate as a theme song for “original sin.” The song is presumably addressed to a girl/boyfriend, but it might easily be about the primordial yearning felt by people who search for God. All of your flaws and all of my flaws They lie there, hand in hand Ones we've inherited, ones that we learned They pass from man to man There's a hole in my soul I can't fill it, I can't fill it There's a hole in my soul Can you fill it? Can you fill it? Many of us are walking around with holes in our souls because if God isn’t in our lives, the obvious question is, “Is this all there is?” That’s true even if our lives are good, filled with family, friends and happiness. We should be grateful for these, of cours...

 Google Image Hellooo! Anybody there? That may be what we feel like saying, or may actually say, while praying. Many of us repeatedly return to the question, “Is anybody listening? Is there a God and if so, does he/she care about me and hear me?” Though non-believers may not be keen on prayer, I think both believers and non-believers ask those questions. I believe neither group likes them, however. Many believers would never acknowledge their doubt, believing that such an acknowledgement might weaken their own or someone else’s faith. Many non-believers may avoid such questions because they like to think they’re beyond them. I don’t think they are. I think doubt is the companion of most humans – doubt about their abilities, about their own value, the loyalty of others, even doubts about their doubts. I think non-believers have doubts about their agnosticism or atheism. And I think believers must acknowledge their doubts, understanding that if God exists, he/she obviou...

Google Image I’ve finished watching the first season of “Orange is the New Black,” the hit Netflix series. It’s well-acted and insightful, and I’m looking forward to seeing more. For those of you unfamiliar with it, the series follows an upper middle-class, well-educated young woman named Piper Chapman who gets caught up in a drug deal and is sentenced to 15 months in prison. There she has to deal with all manner of people, many of whom are poor and uneducated. Toward the end of the first season, the plot is more and more focused on the ongoing tension between Chapman and a prisoner named Pennsatucky, who, some would say, is a fanatical Christian. At one point, to avoid hostility from Pennsatucky and her friends, Chapman agrees to be baptized, then backs out with a speech in which she proclaims, “I believe in science; I believe in evolution. I cannot get behind a supreme being who weighs in on the Tony Awards while a million people get whacked with machetes. I don’t believ...