Living with Hope in the Shadow of Easter: Faith, Fears, and a Way Forward

In the last post, I very briefly discussed some of the historical and scientific reasons I have for believing in God. My primary intention in doing so wasn't to put forth a full rational defense of Christianity. Of course, I would be thrilled if one or two people read that post and are inspired to do some deep thinking about the existence of the Christian God. Mainly, though, I wanted to use my writing to reflect on the role that those arguments played in my recent crisis of faith. At the height of that struggle a few months ago, I reached a point where I nearly convinced myself that I would never have enough certainty to legitimately believe in God without sacrificing my intellect and engaging in a large, psychologically-driven leap of faith. I felt that if I didn't have scientific or historical proof, then I would never be able to believe in God as I once had. 

Within the framework of those hyper-critical criteria that I was imposing upon myself, faith was something that took over when real evidence was insufficient. This definition of faith as “blind,” as shirking evidence or even being antithetical to it, continues to be the prevailing one in the minds of many close-minded Christians. I think it is also the definition that is most frequently assumed by opponents of religion. But the more I thought about it and exposed myself to various contemporary conceptions of faith, the more I came to find the following succinct definition to be what it can and perhaps should mean for believers: “Faith is trusting, holding to, and acting on what one has good reason to believe is true in the face of difficulties.” (Philosopher Tim McGrew, during a debate on my favorite podcast, Unbelievable) 

Implicit in McGrew's definition is the fact that there will always be a gap between strong probability and absolute intellectual certainty when it comes to belief in God. But we can have good reasons to trust that a loving god exists, and those reasons can hold their own against the difficulties posed by the impossibility of “proving” God. Faith does not need to be blind, and leaps of faith can be narrowed by exploring the claims of Christianity via scientific, historical, and philosophical inquiry. While I think caution must be exercised in evaluating experiential evidence, believers should also be open to the inner dimensions of spirituality, of the ways in which God may be working for good in their lives and those of others. 

Although faith is based on evidence, this does not mean that conversations can't be had over the nature and validity of the evidence that theists offer as justification for their faith. For some people, only things that can be hypothesized, tested, and proved have any business being a part of how we structure our lives. But life is about more than cold, hard science. It is about emotion as much as “objective” observation; about art and language and creative expression as much as scientific discoveries. Some of the most important aspects of life simply cannot be known with absolute certainty; nor do they need to be. (Note:  From my extremely limited knowledge of it, it seems to me that the pursuit of science itself belies its popular perception as "cold" and objective, and that it often shares elements of uncertainty and speculation, particularly in matters of quantum theory.) We don't need absolute proof to know that our families and close friends love us and want the best for us. We may choose to trust one person rather than another due to evidence, but what it really comes down to is having faith in those people in spite of the risks and possibilities of disappointment that relationships often entail. At its best, my faith in God is not a set of heady doctrines or rules or worship practices. It is a relationship with someone who, despite His non-corporeality, I think I have good reason to have belief and confidence in.

In spite of my new conception of faith, part of me continues to fear that a healthy skepticism and desire for evidence will grow to the point where I will need absolute proof to believe in anything. I'm afraid that I will continue to agonize over the existence of the Christian God. And perhaps most of all, I'm afraid that a life of faith and hope will be a baseless one. I'm afraid that I'm wrong, that I'm fooling myself, that there actually is no transcendent purpose or meaning, that we're here for this brief roller coaster of life and then simply gone. There is no loving god, no risen Christ, no rescue mission, no future redemption of our bodies and of the world.

These fears helped to make clear for me that doubt, like faith, can have a very strong emotional component. In my case, intense negative emotions were creeping below the surface of what I thought was an intellectual struggle, and were at times succeeding in convincing me that lack of evidence for the claims of Jesus' resurrection was the main reason for my doubts about God. I of course recognized the fact that my only crisis of doubt as an adult Christian took place in the months proceeding my mom's death. But as recently as my composition of the second post in this series, I didn't see how intertwined my search for certainty and evidence were with the devastation I felt from my personal loss.

Reading a book by Gary Habermas (strangely enough, the scholar on the resurrection mentioned in the previous post) about spiritual doubt was eye-opening for me because he and CS Lewis were able to express the connection so simply and practically. Habermas, quoting CS Lewis:  "Our faith in Christ wavers not so much when real arguments come against it as when it looks improbable--when the whole world takes on that desolate look which really tells us much more about the state of our passions...than about reality." As I believe was true in my case, Lewis further points out the masking of emotional doubt under the guise of a rational exercise:  "But everyone must have experienced days in which we are caught up in a great wave of confidence or down into a trough of anxiety though there are no new grounds either for the one or the other. Of course, once the mood is on us, we find reasons soon enough. We say that we've been 'thinking it over': but it is pretty plain that the mood has created the reasons and not vice versa."

This is not to say that doubt can't be based primarily on a perceived lack of evidence, that there are no sound arguments against the existence of the Christian God, or that Christians should conceive of rational inquiry as inherently harmful to faith. But as the weeks passed and I continued to agonize and seek higher and higher degrees of certainty, I realized that this crisis of faith was fundamentally different than my usual excited resolve to study and think about reality and spiritual truth. This was panicked and hurried, a desperate search for unequivocal assurance that seemed to demand greater proof the more evidence for God that I encountered. And I knew I couldn't go on that way, that I had to choose between a life of hope and one of futility.

Over the last several weeks, I have come to propose a plan for myself that actively considers in equal measure proof and trust, “hard” evidence and experiential, rationality and emotion. It is a middle way between the extremes of evidentialism and fideism, between only allowing evidence as justification for belief on the one hand, and on the other maintaining that spiritual faith and revelation are independent of and superior to reason when it comes to discerning the truth. It is a way forward to someone for whom a strict dichotomy between head and heart has never been an option when making decisions about life. It is a way that rejects claims that the only valid epistemology (the study of how we know things) is one that complements a reductionist view of spirituality, morality, the search for meaning and purpose, and emotions like compassion and love, as products of indifferent processes of physics, biology, and chemistry. It is love for God and for others that I hope will drive me throughout my life, a love that will form the new center of my personal epistemology, a love supported by reason but that also allows me to believe without having seen God with my own two eyes.

In the coming months, I will attempt to embrace this love and this plan with all I have, abiding by this mantra that I formulated for myself:  "If you believe, then believe. Let it transform the way you think and feel. Live in God's hope, and allow His love to be your armor, your shield, and your sword." At the same time, I will continue to be receptive to arguments against God's existence, and to seek out the truth the best I can. But there will be no more wavering, no more agonizing and intense conflict. If after those months, I have no choice but to conclude that I had been engaging in cognitive dissonance, and that reality decisively points toward the lack of a supreme being, then I like to think I will have the courage to abandon my spiritual beliefs. 

But I pray this won't happen, nor do I think it will. For me, a life without God is one devoid of hope and meaning. It is one in which I can't imagine waking up in the morning with any sense of purpose, since anything I do will ultimately be for nothing. And a world without God means that there is no chance that I will ever see my mom again, that all I will ever have of her are fleeting memories, and that the same will eventually apply to more of my friends and family. (I'm aware of how grim a vision this is, but I think it's an accurate forecast of what a godless future would be like for me.) If I live as if God exists, then life will be frustrating and even tragic at times. Bad things will occasionally happen to me and to the people I care about. But meaning and love and hope that all good things can be restored will underlie it all. And I can believe that my mom is out there somewhere, resting with God, truly happy besides her concern for those of us whom she left behind. For myself, for my own happiness, I have no other option than to give a continued relationship with God a chance, to immerse myself in that hopeful perspective of life and share it with others. Is it possible that one day I will determine that hope and love are just a lie? Sure, it's possible. But I doubt it.

I wrote this series of posts on my faith crisis, as opposed to keeping my fears in and resigning myself to unbelief, because I feel deep down that God isn't going to let me out of His grasp. I wrote this to reassure myself that I can rationally believe in Him and the miracle of His Son's life, resurrection, and second coming. I wrote it to remind myself and others of the kind of life that I can have with Him, and of the experiences we've already shared together. Finally, I wrote it to let my readers know that they are not alone when the events in their lives seem to contradict the existence of a loving god. In spite of the difficulties and emotional turmoil, we can hold onto hope. We can hold onto the faith that changed our lives for the better, though we shouldn't be afraid of that faith maturing and developing by challenging it. While I may have periods of struggling with issues of science and philosophy and history, part of me knows that Christ will never leave me. I'm invested in him. I'm all in. And I think I have good reason to be.

Just as I was writing the last paragraph of this post,

a beautiful sun shower began. Of course, I had to take a shot of it.