What It Means to Believe

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 answer we do have lies in understanding the manner in which God manifests himself in our lives and in our world.

“Unlike most everything else that’s trying to get our attention, God never tries to overwhelm us. God, more than anyone else, respects our freedom. For this reason, God lies everywhere, inside us and around us, almost unfelt, largely unnoticed, and easily ignored, a quiet, gentle nudge; but, if drawn upon, the ultimate stream of love and energy.”

Fully satisfying, it’s not. I like, and agree with, his statement, but his is a lifetime emerged in belief and in theological studies with which few people today can relate.

Plenty in Life

Faith, in my view, assumes uncertainty, of which there is plenty in life as well as in questions about God. Faith is described as “a gift,” but it’s one which requires the response of an open mind and willingness to do the sometimes-hard work of study and prayer.

In our current social and political climate, in which cynicism and bitter division is rampant, it seems harder than ever to believe in a benevolent God and in his/her presence in other people.

But I like the description of faith provided by Tomas Halik, the Czech theologian whom I often quote in these blogs. He describes faith as “the possibility of re-interpreting what seemed so cut and dried from ‘the world’s’ point of view.’”

Many people today adopt a pseudo-scientific approach to faith, dismissing it because there is no scientific proof of God’s existence or for the benefits of belief.

Mine is the approach taken by Elizabeth A. Johnson, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Theology at Fordham University In her book, Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love:

“A scientist cannot properly introduce God to account for a phenomenon that is not yet understood. In that sense, scientific method is properly atheistic.”

Not Answered by Science

Scientists who apply that “atheism” to the question of God, however, are not basing their view on science because that question is not answered by science. There is no scientific evidence for God, it’s true, but neither is there scientific evidence that there is no God.

“No, these scientists have adopted a philosophy, often called “materialism or evolutionary naturalism, the belief that ‘matter’ is the ultimate origin and destiny of all that is,” says Johnson. “Notice that this is a ‘belief,’ because lacking the ability to measure it, scientists assume it is the only reality that exists.

“Religion,” writes Johnson, “offers grounding reasons why the world which science investigates is such an orderly, beautiful, coherent totality, so very comprehensible.”

Bob, Tony and I, I believe, would agree to that.