Wonder, Awe, and Doubt

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Every year at this time I’m astonished again at the beauty of creation. You would think that at my age, all the wonder and awe would have disappeared. But to me, every spring is a miracle.

I walk around my neighborhood viewing carpets of green that were a cheerless brown a few weeks ago. Trees and shrubs are exuberant in showing off their blooms and new leaves. Tulips and morning glories rise in splendor. The sun warms everything, including human hearts.

“How could there not be a God?” I ask myself.

I know, however, that people who don’t believe in God may have similar experiences in “intuiting” God’s non-existence. Where is he/she? Isn’t it strange that in all these centuries God has not revealed him/herself (assuming that you dismiss the Hebrew and Christian Bibles and the witness of thousands of generations of people of faith)? Isn’t it just wishful thinking combined with humans’ inexhaustible capacity for self-deceit that leads us to believe in God?

The sensation I get from observing the beauty and usefulness of the world, and that God must have in some way authored it for humans’ sake, is certainly not scientific. But neither is the intuition of the non-believer. I can’t use science to support my belief in God nor can others use science to support the contrary position.

So where does that leave us?

First, we must acknowledge that the scientific method isn’t the only way of knowing. Art, music and reflection on the natural world are also ways of knowing. In my view, so is the human instinct that makes us want to believe in God – the proclivity toward faith, which is also a way of knowing.

A few years ago some social scientists were saying the human brain is “hardwired” for faith in God. Now some scientists say no such thing exists; others that it does exist, providing an evolutionary advantage for survival.

These are mere speculations, of course, perhaps with a smattering of scientific research behind them. Traditional Christian theology says that faith is a gift from God, which seems hard to align with the doctrine that God wants everyone “to be saved.” Doesn’t he/she withhold this gift from some?

Traditional Christian theology holds that God offers the gift to everyone, but not necessarily in the same way. As I mentioned in a recent blog, the Christian gospel makes it clear that there are degrees as well as varieties of faith, even when faith isn’t called by that name.

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“For those who do not believe in God,” says Daniel Gallagher, paraphrasing Pope Francis, “their task is to obey their consciences. Even those who do not believe … “sin” whenever they go against their consciences. Everyone, without exclusion, is held to the obligation of listening to and obeying their consciences….”

Traditional theology also teaches that we must form our consciences well. That requires an openness to God and to traditional as well as modern views on ethics and doctrine. We in contemporary society may think we’ve recently discovered ethics, but the vast majority of moral dilemmas are centuries old and require application of the same moral principles, though the circumstances surrounding the issues may be new.

So faith comes in a variety of forms, and people have different ideas about what faith means. The various views have much in common, however, especially for believers in the Judeo-Christian tradition. For most Jews and Christians, faith is both new and old.

In a commentary on a speech the pope made in Brazil last year, Gallagher writes, “Faith is a journey; it is a history. God did not reveal himself by dictating abstract truths but by acting in human history. The response of faith, in turn, is historical, meaning that it must be renewed and refreshed again and again.”

Pope Francis also suggests, says Gallagher, that faith is not genuine unless it is tinged with a trace of doubt.

“The great leaders of God’s people, like Moses, always left room for doubt,” he quotes the pope as saying. “We must always leave room for the Lord and not for our own certainties. We must be humble. Every true discernment includes an element of uncertainty….”

The pope believes “we must be willing to ‘enter into a process’ if we wish to undertake the journey of faith,” Gallagher writes. “God reveals himself within and through time and is present in the unfolding of events. Faith requires patience and a willingness to wait.”

Finally, Gallagher notes the “…importance of the community for receiving, keeping, and handing on the faith,” which is the obvious way God reaches out to us. For people searching for God, the history of that community – its customs, literature, music and liturgy – can be crucial in finding him/her.