Skeptical Faith

Google Image I’m a bit of a hoarder. Not in the usual sense, because I’m almost anal in keeping things neat and clean. No, I hoard books, articles and bits and pieces of each, and thanks to a computer, I can do so without anyone noticing. Several years ago, I squirreled away quotes from Diarmuid Martin, the Catholic archbishop of Dublin, who gave an interesting and informative speech at Fordham University in 2013, mostly about the changes in religious belief and practices in Ireland. I used some of the quotes in a blog in 2018, but taking another look at my notes, I found useful ideas about the nature of faith. Martin’s insights are relevant, specifically, to the idea among many, including many who have given up on God and/or religion, that faith means conformity to someone else’s idea of spirituality, that it involves a check on freedom, preventing us from doing what we want. Going Beyond Oneself In a sense, that’s true, because faith is a slap at our culture’s worship of i...

Google Image Dealing with the pandemic and all the closures of entertainment venues, the main story in the weekly entertainment section of our local newspaper was entitled, “100 Things to Do While inside Due to a Pandemic.”  But what about people searching for God, for us believers and people who aspire to belief? What can we do to use this time wisely? Both groups, I would bet, are procrastinators when it comes to drawing closer to God. We’re always too busy. Something else always seems more important. The need to “make a living” and taking care of our families always intervene. Pursuing spiritual goals sometimes even takes a back seat to sports, exercise, playing with the kids, walking the dog, watching TV.  Now is the time, even if we’re working from home, when we should have a few extra minutes to think about the things that count, to pray, to read the Bible – in short, time for God. It’s an opportunity. The words of a psalm come to mind: “If today you should h...

Google Image My friend, Lori Chesser, an immigration lawyer, writes about the complexities of the immigration system (which many say is no system at all) in a recent issue of Living City, the magazine of the Focolare Movement. For those unfamiliar with Focolare, its three main goals, according to its web site, are “ the art of loving, community and dialogue.” Lori is a long-time member. She asks a series of questions at the end of her article. The final question is, “Does faith inform our immigration policy?” And, “should it?” I’ve written many times in these blogs about church-going Christians who attempt to live as if they had no faith, hiding it from the world by silence and by their action or lack of action. They live as if God did not exist, and for them, God might as well not. Their attitudes toward public issues are formed more by their “tribe,” their political party or their “upbringing” than by their faith. Incongruity And I believe this incongruity between profess...

Google Image Dear God, Instead of letting people die and having to make new ones, why don't you just keep the ones you have now?  Jane An excellent question, you might say, expressing a sentiment to which we can all relate.  Found on the Internet, it’s among the funny letters from children to God. It’s a hard question to answer unless placed in the context of how human beings were created through evolution and exist within the animal world. And as empathetic as we are to Jane, the question reveals a child’s simplistic view of God. And it begs the question about our own view of God and where it comes from. You could say from our parents or grandparents, from church or synagogue or our superficially religious culture. For those whose heritage is Christianity or Judaism, it ultimately comes from the Bible. In a Way That Suites Us And the Bible is hard to understand, not only because it is of another age but because of the differences among its 72 books, its ancie...