Patience: The Difference Between Faith and Atheism?

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A staple of this blog is that many people, believers and non-believers, struggle with faith.

Like non-believers, many believers have doubts and questions. Some have spent lifetimes of struggle with questions about God. For various reasons, believers have come down on the side of faith. Many of us, like the psalmist says, simply “cling to him/her in love.”

Today’s believers can’t bank on the artificial props of the past, however. They can’t depend on God as an answer to questions about the natural world, or assume that most people (including family members) are like-minded or attend church regularly. And modern society, with all its advantages in prosperity (in many parts of the world) and advances in technology, has brought an unprecedented amount of anxiety, stress and “busyness,” all obstacles in the search for God.

Many believers also share with atheists and agnostics the desire to be truthful, to see things as they really are. But it’s easy to confuse your own thoughts with those of the popular culture. Though it may be well below the surface, today’s apparent indifference about God beckons us to unbelief. It leans toward the idea that human life is meaningless and ends in nothingness. So, distract yourself today, the day after, and the day after that. That’s the best you can do; the most you can hope for.   

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know I’ve often quoted Tomas Halik, a Czech priest, philosopher and sociologist who this year won the Templeton Prize. I’ve just started reading a second book by him called Patience with God: The Story of Zacchaeus Continuing in Us. Zacchaeus – the famous tax collector from Luke’s gospel who happened across Jesus – stood on the sideline, “curious but non-committal,” says the book’s promo.

Being “vertically challenged,” Zacchaeus climbed a tree to get a better look, and probably would have stayed there for some time had Jesus not called to him and, risking association with a “known sinner,” asked to stay in his house.

The world is full of Zacchaeuses, says Halik – people who may be curious about faith, feel some attraction to it but haven’t been able to commit. One of their most frequent questions (with which this blog has dealt frequently) is, “Where is this God of yours?”

“Hardly anything points toward God and calls as urgently for God as the experience of his absence,” says Halik. His prescription for such God searchers: Patience.  

Tomas Halik
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“Yes, patience is what I consider to be the main difference between faith and atheism,” he writes. “What atheism, religious fundamentalism, and the enthusiasm of a too-facile faith have in common is how quickly they can ride roughshod over the mystery we call God – and that is why I find all three approaches equally unacceptable.

“One must never consider mystery “over and done with.” Mystery, unlike a mere dilemma, cannot be overcome; one must wait patiently at its threshold and persevere in it – must carry it in one’s heart  … and allow it to mature there and lead one in turn to maturity.

“If the signs of God’s presence lay within easy reach on the surface of the world as some religious zealots like to think,” he adds, “there would be no need for real faith.

“But I’m convinced that maturing in one’s faith also entails accepting enduring moments – and sometimes even lengthy periods – when God seems remote or remains concealed. What is obvious and demonstrable doesn’t require faith. We don’t need faith when confronted with unshakable certainties accessible to our powers of reason, imagination, or sensory experience. We need faith precisely at those twilight moments when our lives and the world are full of uncertainty, during the cold night of God’s silence. And its function is not to allay our thirst for certainty and safety, but to teach us to live with mystery. Faith and hope are expressions of our patience at just such moments – and so is love.”

Unlike the prescriptions handed out by self-help gurus, Halik focuses on factors that are at least vaguely familiar to all of us: faith, hope and love, traditionally called the “theological virtues” – “(from Greek theos for “God”) because they come from, and are directed to, God. (Months ago, I started on a post about “hope,” sometimes seemingly a better way to describe my own faith. But I haven’t yet been able to finish it.)

Although faith, hope and love may have become little more than clichés, Halik insists they are the only route to God, offering a distinctly different path from either atheism or ‘facile belief.’

A question I’ve asked before in this blog: Why does God require faith? If he/she exists, why not plainly show him/herself? And as I’ve written before in answer to my own question, the only honest answer is that we don’t know.

We can speculate, however, that if he/she were “on the surface” of the world, we would have zip for freedom. How would we be free to reject him/her? And like any good parent, God evidently doesn’t consider coercion a good basis for a relationship.

So, how to live with uncertainty? Patience, friend, patience!