I received an actual stranger comment on one of my old posts - and one that's not trying to sell me counterfeit pharmaceuticals or infect my computer with a virus. It references a post on "Atheism and the City" addressing the failure of traditional theism to properly address the problem of evil. I wrote a response to that post that I thought might be good to share.
I found this piece because of a comment on my blog post about never having been born.
I appreciate the valid critique this post gives to a certain theistic perspective on evil, although I do tend to see some flaws in the analogy. First, the bag of money - the notion that there is an end or reward, while very common in religious circles, isn't something I'd associate with the teachings of Jesus (my only real frame of reference, religiously speaking). At the very least, I'd argue he says the means are the end - whatever "reward" or "goal" is in the process, not the conclusion. Therefore the gifting of a bag on money, in this sense, doesn't really represent my understanding of how the world works. I do grant that it's a very common religious (and especially Christian) perspective - but I have just as many problems with it, as someone trying to take Jesus and the Bible seriously, as you do as an atheist. This is the kind of critique of which we need more.
I'd also point you toward theist philosopher Thomas Jay Oord, who's recently been writing a lot about the problem of evil, especially as it comes to determinism. He works with principles of Open and Process Theology to challenge the notion of God's omnibenevolence. I can't say I'm totally on board with the direction of his work, but I do agree with him (and you, apparently) that those "omni" claims are more problematic for Christianity and theism than most people want to admit.
My personal views are that we're too quick to individualize everything in the modern western world. While I do recognize the place, worth, and value of individuals, I tend to see existence itself as more of a coherent whole and advocate the necessity of evaluating individual participation in the whole through that context.
I don't find as much need for addressing the problem of evil as many others - it just doesn't keep me up at night in the same way - I tend to see evil as a reality in the world and I just don't have much impetus to ask why. I do tend to ask "what should I/we do about it," and my answer is generally "love."
I don't think it's a complete answer, but I do find a certain beauty in redemption (the reconciliation of warring or aggrieved parties) that simple isn't possible without pain. I know there's a sometimes-distinction made between pain and evil (cheating on your wife vs genocide, for example), but I'm less inclined to believe in it. I feel like a poor philosopher saying it so simply, but I find great peace in the notion that pain breeds pain and love breeds love. I have great hope that the latter can eventually defeat the former - or that, if I'm wrong, a life lived with that expectation is worthwhile even if it's ultimately futile.
As we develop, the way we understand and interact with the universe changes. The next step in religious evolution is our understanding the difference between a religion and the truth is claims to mediate. When I say "truth" I'm merely referring to our baseline definition of the universe and how it functions. This might take the form of a traditional religion; it might be science or astrology or attachment to family or any other thing we use to give meaning to the world around us. Religion is the practice of living out those truth claims.
We are truly evolving a new understanding whereby we dissociate the medium of religion from the message it's designed to carry. This comes with some assumption that there is a "truth" out there, some meaning or ground of being that we stand some chance of grasping. All but the most nihilistic of us hold to the reality of this idea. The self-analysis, though, is truly a profound development for religion, because it means forming a religion that hold religion at distance in hopes of embracing a broader, perhaps more mysterious truth.
This is not something we can logic out or rationally capture. It defies the traditional means of modern understanding. That's dangerous for the status quo. This is why you see the rise of fundamentalism parallel almost completely with the rise of post-modern thought. We think of fundamentalism as age-old because it's focus is the fundamental, which we associate with beginning. Ultimately, though, fundamentalism is a recent phenomenon, built specifically (although perhaps reflexively rather than intentionally) to head off this evolution of thinking by inextricably combining medium and message. As people attempt to differentiate religion from its underlying truth, fundamentalism seeks to make those two things inseparable.
It is, at it's core, a power play. Those who control the religion want to continue to control the truth.
As our thought moves beyond this link, I'm afraid the emphasis on fundamentalism will, instead of connecting medium and message, force us to discard one or the other altogether. My big fear is that we'll lose the really vital and important contributions of religious history. While I am in favor of dissecting the difference between medium and message, we must not throw either one away in pursuit of truth. The two must be held together, but held with the proper perspective and tension.
Christianity needs its historic tradition, but it also needs to view that historic tradition with a critical eye to how our knowledge and understanding have changed over time. As the world globalizes, we have to be willing to hold loosely (although not entirely let go of) the reality that Christian tradition is largely a narrow, western-influenced stream of development. It's not that pre-creedal (or a-creedal) developments must be uniformally embraced, but we have to have some recognition that the historic development of various traditions are not necessarily equivalent to the truth of Jesus Christ, but are culturally conditioned (generally in good faith) means of living into that truth.
At the same time, we must guard against the opposite reaction, which ends with each person developing their own medium, their own religion, and by which we lose any real relational connection to each other. We become automatons, living out the truth as we see it and working tirelessly not to step on anyone's toes. We must walk the tightrope between "I'm okay; you're okay" and "I alone understand truth."
I'd argue, in fact, that whatever the real "truth" might happen to be, it cannot be understood without the necessary connection of medium and message. You might say the message is not so much about what one believe, but how one believes. In some roundabout way, instead of the fundamentalist notion of "the medium is the message," we might say the opposite is true - the message is the medium.
Now the distinction there might seem no more than semantic, but the order, in this case, is important. When the medium is the message, the medium is all important. This is traditional fundamentalism: there is one right way to embody truth. It leads to a zero-sum game in which there is only one winner (or, more properly, no winners, but a lot of losers). When the message is the medium, we're constantly forced to revise and amend the way we embody truth to account for the changes in our experience of truth. We must have the religion, the medium, and we must hold each other accountable for a good faith effort to live it out (even if we don't always agree on specifics), but what we cannot do is believe we've arrived. There is no end to that journey - because the message, the truth, is not a destination, but the journey itself.
So this where the danger comes in to play. Fundamentalism has a tendency to drive people away from the notion that medium and message, religion and truth, could possibly be connected. This is what you see in someone like the late Christopher Hitchens, who held that religion is the exact opposite of truth and the real stumbling block to finding it. He took this position, with sound reasoning, because of his experience with fundamentalism, especially how fundamentalism is, so often, the dominant way of understanding life and faith. Atheists are some of the most religious people on Earth.
Traditional atheists have often made the claim that nothing is unique to religion that can't be found without it. When viewed in this "medium is the message" light, that's entirely true. The problem is, though, that their response is to essentially create a new religion built on the same foundation; the medium is still the message, it's just missing God. It becomes its own fundamentalism.
There's a vicious cycle that's played out over time and repeated throughout history.
We've got to be careful to combat any kind of fundamentalism, whether it be Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Scientific, or Atheist with a profound embodiment of the how. The medium is not the message; the message is the medium. Our ideas are far less influential than the ways we live them out. People will be far more shaped and formed by grace and humility than knowledge and intellect. They will be more moved by openness and honesty than power and persuasion. This is just the way things work.
As we move forward in the world. As we attempt to participate in our communities and congregations, I hope we can step out of this cycle altogether and engage people not with ideas, but with imagination - embodying and exemplifying a way of belief instead of a what.
I know I've written here before about my journeys with prayer. I'm not the kind of guy who can sit still and (mentally or physically) say words as if there were a conversation happening. It's easy enough in a corporate setting, where we're composing a prayer from a group of people, we're expressing our collective thoughts and desires. It makes much more sense there. In a personal vein, though, it's always seemed strange to me.
There's the childhood question, "If God knows what we're thinking, why do we have to say it or even direct it intentionally towards God?" I'm not sure how some strong Calvinist would answer that question, but having grown up in a free-will tradition I was always told that our requests can influence God's actions. It was also sort of a warning not to ask for the wrong things since God might choose to give them to you.
I don't know if there's time or if my brain has enough capacity to properly discuss the theological problems with that particular exchange, but I'm finding myself more and more in agreement with my childhood self.
As I said, I've never been that kind of pray-er. Perhaps if I find myself in a particular difficult mental or emotional spot, that kind of prayer can be cathartic or provide enough rest and/or perspective to stabilize a person for functional life tasks. But that is ultimately was Rollins was getting at, right? He was saying people pray because they can't entirely believe God knows everything and acts lovingly all the time.
It should be said he's not at all critical of this - and neither am I. Doubt is an important part of faith and the ability to express our doubts in prayer can be vital for us. It's reaching out a hand during a scary movie, just some gesture to remind ourselves there's someone else out there. We're not in this alone.
I've been mulling, though, if some of my personal peculiarities make belief an easier challenge than it is for other people. I really don't feel the need to pray - at least in the way Rollins refers to it here. I commune with God. I spend time in silence or contemplation and, from time to time, I'd eve claim God has spoken to me. I find moments of great spiritual connection that seem entirely in line with the broader view of prayer we find in scripture and Christian tradition.
I don't do a lot of praying, though, in the typical sense. I wonder if that's because I really don't have a bit of atheism in me. There's lots of things I question, things I hold at an intellectual arms length for whatever reason, but I don't doubt God.
I'm not saying this to prove some superiority. On the contrary, I'm saying this to sort of confess some of my failings.
Apparently, the typical person is very in touch with their own feelings, but struggles to translate those feelings into deep belief. This is generally the purpose of counseling or psychotherapy, to sort through the feelings and figure out what's true. Recently I've discovered I may be the (surprise, surprise) opposite, functioning on some odd plane where I reason out core beliefs, determining what's truth without feeling anything at all.
People who know me well have often joked I have Asperger's or some unspecified developmental disorder because of my intense inability to understand how other people think (and often how to relate with them). I've never been officially diagnosed or anything, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me. I do have what seems to be an uncanny ability to act based on beliefs I've worked out nowhere else besides my own head.
I believe all people are good and valuable, that everyone deserves the same treatment without priority or other attachment. It's not difficult for me to treat my family the same way I try to treat everyone or vice versa. (Now there is some difference in terms of responsibility - I have to be a parent and feed and clothe my child, I made promises to my wife - those are different than simply treating people a certain way.) Let's say my brother had some disease that would likely lead to a kidney transplant down the road, but some stranger needed one immediately; I'm pretty sure my only internal conflict would be over the social convention of prioritizing family, not the actual core rightness of the decision.
I'm not saying I can operate completely devoid of emotion, but I certainly seem a lot better at it than most people. This, of course, often makes things difficult. I make choices that seem logical and right to me, which seem to annoy or offend and definitely puzzle those around me. I've sort of gotten used to it by now. As much as it makes some things difficult, it certainly makes others much easier.
I believe God exists. I believe God is at work to bring about the redemption and fulfillment of all that exists and that God will act in perfect love to accomplish this inevitability. Even if this doesn't seem like what's happening in the world around us, I believe it indeed is happening.
Because of that, it doesn't make a lot of sense to ask God for anything. God certainly knows what bothers me. I can express frustration for injustice and impatience in seeing it rectified; I often do. Ultimately, those things will not help change much, since God is doing as much as God can or will do at all times.
I certainly believe God can, does, and will change, based on circumstances and the choices of we humans with whom God interacts. I'm not at all saying things are necessarily determined (shoot, I don't even believe the specifics of the future are knowable, by God or anyone else), I just recognize that God knows and understands the intricacies of my mind and actions regardless of whether I communicate them or not. Whatever God will take into account from me, is happening, whether I say it or not.
Ultimately, what I'm saying is what I think Peter Rollins was getting at - we pray for ourselves. I pause to pray before meals and have taught my daughter to do the same, not because God needs this, but because that pause helps us reflect on where this food comes from and all the way's we're provided for outside our own capacity to survive.
It's not that those words need to be said or that if I don't say them - or even think them - God will some how act differently towards me. I don't believe that at all. I do believe that perhaps I'll act differently towards the world, I may stop believing those things, if I don't pray. Intellectually, practically, those prayers are entirely for me.
This is why there was some joy in hearing Rollins talk this way about prayer being for atheists. It does come at the moment of our weakness, specifically for our personal formation. Prayer can change things - it changes us, based on how we do it and what we believe. If you're never thinking about a larger reality and the way you're supposed to act in the world (and how your beliefs influence those actions), then, yes, you may have a problem. Prayer might be a good thing for you. But if you are taking that time to implement practices of evaluation and formation, working to live rightly in the world, you probably shouldn't feel guilty about your lack of prayer - you may, in fact, really be praying far more than you ever suspect.
*As I was looking for the right image to put with the post above, I discovered this interesting one:
This is what I mean when I tell some of my atheist friends they might be Christian and not know it. I've got no problem with this at all - you could replace the word "Atheist" with "Christian" and be just as accurate. Life is all about what we believe to be the best way to act in the world and why.
