No Atheists in Foxholes?
(Part of this blog includes material from Skeptical Faith blogs from 2014 and 2024.)
According to an old maxim, “There are no atheists in foxholes.”
As you may recall, much of World War I and some of World War II was fought in foxholes – holes dug by soldiers to protect themselves from incoming fire. The idea of the maxim is that, when in a situation so horrifying like that of a soldier in a foxhole, non-believers are so overcome with fear they may lose or suspend doubt in the desperate hope that God exits and will save them.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer commented on this idea in his Letters from Prison, a book I highly recommend. A Lutheran minister and theologian executed by the Nazis in 1945, he lamented the quality of conversions among his fellow prisoners who feared punishment and execution. Bonhoeffer worried that those kinds of conversions lacked the conviction and sincerity necessary to sustain faith.
Cheap Grace
Bonhoeffer also wrote a book called The Cost of Discipleship,” which argued that many people seek the “cheap grace” of religion. “Grace” is one of those churchy words that you hardly hear anymore even in many churches. But most Christian religions see it, in general, as God’s influence in the lives of Christians, enabling us to be faithful followers of Christ.
Cheap grace, according to Bonhoeffer, “is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.”
I thought of all this when reminded that many of us are uncomfortable with faith because it places us squarely on the horns of a dilemma. We feel the need to be intellectually honest, to face up to the fact that what humans want to believe is not necessarily how things are. Faith seems to be a surrender to irrationality, a betrayal of our rational selves.
Not Really How Things Are?
Isn’t it possible, however, that the rational approach alone doesn’t really show us how things are, that it’s a matter of detecting the layer of reality that religions like Christianity proclaim? And if God is the ultimate cause of the universe, somehow foreseeing and shaping human development, doesn’t God want us to use the mind he gave us to try to figure it out?
Personally, I believe there’s enough evidence pointing to the existence of God, but according to Christian theology, it’s not just a matter of “figuring things out.” And that’s where the churchy word “grace” comes in. According to this theology, God sends his spirit, allowing people who seek faith and are open to it, to believe despite doubts. Cheap grace, in Bonhoeffer’s view, is sought by people who are inconvenienced by doubt.
I once read an article entitled, “Seven Interesting Reasons Why People Don’t Go to Church.” Among them: “They feel that legitimate doubt is prohibited.”
I don’t believe this is currently the case because many religious leaders now better understand the role doubt plays in faith. And while I don’t believe doubt is something to be sought after, it’s also, in general, not an obstacle to faith.
A Muddle of Doubt
I came across a 2022 article in America magazine entitled, “What If Doubt is Actually Good for Your Faith?” It’s written by Kevin Clarke, an America correspondent.
“My faith … resides anxiously in a muddle of doubt. Even as I write these words, I feel it a faint, fleeting thing. So, I go to Mass, and I doubt; I pray, and I doubt. I seek consolation in my doubt. I raise my children in the faith, and I frankly try most of the time to hide my doubt.”
Said Pope Francis in a 2016 general audience: “We do not need to be afraid of questions and doubts because they are the beginning of a path of knowledge and going deeper. One who does not ask questions cannot progress either in knowledge or in faith.”
