Why Everything Will Be OK
I regularly ask myself why I write these blogs. And one of my answers is that I hope to help people answer the question, “What does it mean to believe?” as I try to answer it for myself.
I try to keep my target audience in mind. As posted on my blog site, the blog is “a discussion of faith, belief and religion for people who have given up on God and/or religion.”
I understand that relatively few people – especially in the category of people I’m trying to reach – may be interested. But I feel compelled, and believe that helping just one person is worth it.
“I Will Not Mention Him”
On the bulletin board in front of my desk is a quote from the prophet Jeremiah: “I say to myself, I will not mention him, I will speak in his name no more. But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.”
I don’t mean to compare myself to the great prophet, and my thoughts about the blog may not be so dramatic, but I do feel this way sometimes. The prophets were promoting the nascent Jewish faith among people who were often indifferent. Many contemporary people, I believe, are missing out on an invaluable resource for living meaningful lives by ignoring God and/or religion.
I know, there’s clergy abuse, the apparent lack of relevance of religion to contemporary life, pushback on moral and doctrinal teachings, the treatment of religion in the media as profoundly “uncool.” Despite all this, religion is as valuable to people today as it ever was. And it always was.
So, what does it mean to believe? I can only write from the Judeo-Christian viewpoint, based on my experience of trying to live it.
Wrote 70 Books
One of the people who have had a great influence on my view of the meaning of belief is Thomas Merton. For those unfamiliar with him, Merton was born in France in 1915 but lived most of his life in the U.S. He entered the Trappist monastery of Gethsemane in Kentucky in 1941, the year the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He subsequently wrote around 70 books before his death in 1968.
Among them was The Seven Story Mountain, which I read in my late teens. In it, Merton reflects on his early life and his search for God. The book sold millions of copies and has remained continuously in print, translated into more than fifteen languages. It was featured in National Review‘s list of the 100 best non-fiction books of the century.
Another of his books that influenced me was Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. Says a review of the book on the web site Library Thing, it is “Thomas Merton’s response to the terror of the world around him, the world he had been raised into, and the world he sought to leave behind as a monk in the back corners of Kentucky….
More Connected
“He came to monastic life to retreat from the world,” the review continues. “He came to find quiet. And yet he remained more connected to the outside world than most people within that world … even as he wrote and compiled Conjectures itself from his secluded hermitage.”
Merton knew that faith, at least for a Christian or Jew, is much more than an intellectual assent to a collection of beliefs. And though prayer is critical for everyone searching for God, more is expected – even from monks.
Belief means living out your faith by what you do, what you know, what you say, whom you love, whom you help. In short, it means that your faith is the background and launching pad for everything.
It’s not always easy, but the rewards are worth it. Among them is the conviction that God, our father/mother, loves us and wants the best for us. It means that despite it sounding Pollyannaish, we can have a childlike trust that, ultimately, everything is, and will be, OK.
