Skeptical Faith

Google Image Over coffee at a neighborhood Panera’s, my friend, Bob Claus, and I had one of our familiar conversations about faith and doubt, but this time, with Bob’s friend and former pastor, Tony Vis, in attendance. “About faith?” you may ask. “Apart from being boring, how can you have much of a conversation about faith? Either you believe or you don’t.” All three of us are believers, but along a spectrum. We don’t see faith as an either/or thing, but as a search for God in which we sometimes are confident and other times, not so much. We understand why some non-believers have trouble with faith. Ron Rohlheiser, a professor of theology at the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, asks possibly the most obvious question on the subject. Make Faith Easier? “Why doesn’t God show himself to us more directly and more powerfully so as to make faith easier?” he asks. “That’s a fair question for which, partly, there is no fully satisfying answer,” he acknowledges. “But the answ...

Google Image In his homily about stories in the New and Old Testament readings on a recent weekend, Fr. John Brobbey, the associate pastor at St. Francis of Assisi parish in West Des Moines, made this point. “Wealth,” said Brobbey, who is from Africa, “is like water. When it flows it’s pure and clean. When it stops flowing, it stinks.” His comments were partly about the reading from Luke’s gospel in which Jesus says, “ Get yourselves purses that do not wear out, treasure that will not fail you, in heaven where no thief can reach it and no moth destroy it. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” The liturgy readings, and Brobbey’s homily, made a recent column by Tish Harrison Warren - a priest of the Anglican Church in North America - more relevant for me. Burr in the Saddle Harrison Warren, who grew up an evangelical, quotes the periodical Christianity Today that describes one of her religious heroes, Ron Sider, as “the burr in the ethical saddle of the whit...

Google Image My lifelong friend, Fr. Gerald Waris, recently paid a visit to my wife, Amparo, and me and that got me thinking about the significance of friendship. Though most people call Gerald “Jerry,” I grew up listening to his family call him by his formal name and that stuck with me. His family moved “across the alley” from my family when we were both about four years old. We played endless games with dozens of neighborhood kids and had seldom-bitter arguments about sports rules and “facts,” in which wildly exaggerated statements like “I’ll bet you any amount of money you want to bet” could be heard. We attended primary and secondary schools together and four years each of college and graduate studies in theology. Despite separations, including my nearly four years out of the country, our friendship has thrived. While he was here, we recalled the game we played years ago with friends in the lobby of a hotel in Dublin. We told them we knew each other so well we coul...

Google Image A woman who worked in a fertility clinic was being interviewed on NPR radio. She talked about all the people she helped and how much they appreciated her work and manner. She assisted one woman who was having unusual, serious problems. “I was putting a wish out to the universe” to help this patient, she said. This form of “prayer” appears to have become more and more popular. The “universe” is contemporary culture’s favorite new god. It’s a god that requires no commitment, no faith, no love. You don’t have to join anything, go anywhere, participate in anything and most important, be responsible to anyone or anything. Cold, Impersonal Entity Never mind that the universe is a cold, impersonal entity that isn’t in the habit of hearing prayers or having anything to do with humans except provide us a tiny corner in which to live. It’s not a person, no matter how much we want to personify it. It isn’t even in the category of animals and plants. In fact, it only exists in...