Skeptical Faith

Google Image The following is from a recent display, called “Funny Notes from Little Kids,” on the MSN home page: Dear tooth fareis: My tooth whent down the drane. It was an accident. Will you take this eyelash insted? From Emerson An arrow points to a circle Emerson made with his pencil. Presumably, he had placed an eyelash - or part of one – there. We can smile because a child wrote it. If an adult had written it, it certainly wouldn’t have made it onto a nationwide stage unless it was part of a news story on adults who believe in tooth ferries and who had been denied an education, and we wouldn’t smile. We adults try not to be childish or juvenile - except when it comes to God and religion. This is especially evident at Christmas time. We get caught up in the childish accidentals and miss the substance. Many of us also have childish or juvenile reasons for believing, and just as childish or juvenile reasons for not believing. How many of us believers have m...

Google Image During his first week in college, Michael Conway’s grandmother - a great cook who always shared what she made – died, and after the funeral, Conway got into a conversation with the guy who worked at his dorm’s front desk. Seeing his stress, the guy invited Michael to join a group called Labre, which seeks out homeless people in downtown Chicago, offering them hot dogs, granola bars and occasional toiletries. The guy obviously knew that Michael needed to “get out of himself,” specifically by “paying forward” his grandmother’s generosity. Fortunately, it worked for Michael, who took the risk to become a regular member of Labre during his four years in college. I recently read about him and the account of his “calling” in America magazine, making me think of how searchers for God, in a variety of unlikely ways, “find” him/her. Many people today think that searching for God is anything but risky, that it’s an accommodation to the status quo. But is it, really? I’v...

   Photo by Beatriz Botero Tom Pfeffer, my sister’s brother-in-law, was an extraordinary priest who was pastor of a mostly Hispanic parish before he died in April of 2004. Before that, he was pastor of a rural Iowa parish where he noticed on frequent funeral trips to the cemetery a lone grave outside the official Catholic cemetery. After some research he found that a man who had committed suicide years before was buried there. According to Catholic rules at the time, the man couldn’t be buried in a Catholic cemetery, considered to be consecrated ground. Tom made it known that he wanted to be buried next to the man, also outside the official cemetery. It reportedly caused a stir among some who didn’t want their beloved Tom to be buried in “unholy” ground. But Tom won. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he didn’t view suicide as a cowardly act resulting from despair. For him, compassion trumped passing judgment. He understood that people can be so down on the...

Google Image Years ago, I was at a party where an acquaintance, when asked his profession, said with a straight face that he was “an economist.” He never worked in that field. He had an undergraduate degree in economics. My credentials as a psychologist or sociologist are even flimsier, but I’m interested in what makes people happy or not. And when I say “happy,” I’m not talking about how you feel right now, or even how you feel today or this week. I’m talking about an inner joy, an optimism about life that some people have and others don’t. Happy people make people around them happier, of course, and unhappy people do the opposite. This subject is important when discussing faith because although I believe joy results from faith (and this may be reflected in the many studies showing that people of faith are happier), being optimistic and upbeat also help searchers find God, and him/her to find us. Finding God by looking into ourselves and by seeing him/her in others, as spir...