This came up on a
friend's page, who asked the question, much as one might ask, "Why do
you eat goose rather than turkey on Christmas Day?" I am taking the
question in the spirit in which it was offered. That is, she was not
inviting me to convert her to eating goose, something I would not
presume to do, nor is she trying to persuade me to eat turkey. It was a
question asked in wonderment, and it is something I will answer with
wonderment.
But, first, some ground clearing. I don't normally explain my religious views. I take very seriously Jesus' recommendation that people pray in their closets. I think that piety too often becomes a performance, a kind of card one plays in a cynical moment (I could name various Presidential candidates, but I will refrain). I don't normally explain my eating habits, either. But, when friends ask, I answer. I take this as that kind of conversation.
Second, I don't believe in Hell. I do believe that God is not me. I mean, really, really NOT me. Nothing like me. I believe in an omniscient and omnipotent God; that is, a God who is wildly other from me. Since I don't know where my keys are, and I can't make my students staple their papers, I can't even imagined what it would be like to know everything and be all powerful. Therefore, I have NO clue what God's intentions are. I don't know that God requires faith in him as your savior (and I will argue into the ground anyone who presents texts they think mean that); I know very little about what God wants of other people--I'm plenty busy trying to figure out what God wants from me, and I assume God will do God's job a lot better than I. So, I don't believe that any explanation of my faith is a demonstration of why I am saved and you are not. Determining who is saved and who is not is God's job, not mine. When I can manage to take attendance on a regular basis, and get my Works Cited pages correct, and various other aspects of my job I screw up on a regular basis, I'll consider taking on God's job. Till then, any explanation of my faith is just that and nothing more.
God has that whole omniscient and omnipotent thing going, and I don't. I think most religious quarrels start from people forgetting that--they are not God; they can't even imagine what it is like to be God. Let God do God's job, and let's do (as competently as we are capable) the jobs we were given.
And here I go back to Ayer. There is a kind of knowledge that is falsifiable. Let's call that science. There is a kind that is not. Let's call that faith.That's like saying there are two horses, or two cars, or two fruits. Or whatever. That isn't to say that one is better than another, although under some circumstances one might be better than the other. If I want to get a load of dirt, a mini Cooper sucks, but if I just want to drive back and forth on a city street, it's awesome. Pretending that one only needs a pickup seems to me just as silly as pretending that one only needs a Cooper. Faith has different purposes from science.
Finally, I'll say that there seems to me an analogy about teaching writing. I often meet people who had terrible writing teachers, who seemed to think that their job was smacking students who made comma errors. And so people who think "teaching writing" means "smacking students who make comma errors" will tell me all the reasons that "teaching writing" sucks. And, really, I think they're right, if that's what "teaching writing" means. But that isn't all it means. But it's a confusing conversation to have because, really, there are people out there (a lot of them) who have this bigoted narrow AWFUL idea about teaching writing. So, I can't say, "But that isn't what 'teaching writing' means, because they know that's what it means--that's what almost every writing teacher has meant to them!The people who are the most devout atheist, in my experience, are people who think--for really, really, really good reason--that "having faith" means being aggressively stupid and actively hateful (like smacking students who make comma errors). And they're absolutely correct that that version of "having faith" is just awful. It makes a virtue of blind obedience and the most jaw-dropping versions of bigotry and ignorance and ... well, all that. They're right. That isn't bad.But, that isn't "having faith" is having faith anymore than smacking comma errors is "teaching writing."
So, having faith, for me, means having faith in the sublimity of God's creation, it is faith that I do not know the answers to much of anything right now, but that God will lead me there if, with patience, study, and humility, I keep asking the questions. I know that God asks that I be compassionate (especially toward those less fortunate), patient, and persistent. And I know that I completely and totally fail to do any of those things, and that God continues to ask me to do what I have never managed to do for more than moments at a time. I have no reason to think that God's will for me and the world is any different from one what gets to via good science (in fact, at the moments that the church has diverted most from God it has also invoked bad science). I believe that this is what Jesus said, and Jesus helps me on this path. If other people get by without this faith, good for them. If they have no faith or a different faith or ... well, whatever... good for them. If they are hateful and claim to speak for Jesus, I will bitch to high heaven. If they claim to speak for me, then I will get ugly. Perhaps I should be more compassionate to them; I honestly don't know how to manage that. But I do know that atheists and agnostics worry me a whole lot less than people who think they have God on their side.
But, first, some ground clearing. I don't normally explain my religious views. I take very seriously Jesus' recommendation that people pray in their closets. I think that piety too often becomes a performance, a kind of card one plays in a cynical moment (I could name various Presidential candidates, but I will refrain). I don't normally explain my eating habits, either. But, when friends ask, I answer. I take this as that kind of conversation.
Second, I don't believe in Hell. I do believe that God is not me. I mean, really, really NOT me. Nothing like me. I believe in an omniscient and omnipotent God; that is, a God who is wildly other from me. Since I don't know where my keys are, and I can't make my students staple their papers, I can't even imagined what it would be like to know everything and be all powerful. Therefore, I have NO clue what God's intentions are. I don't know that God requires faith in him as your savior (and I will argue into the ground anyone who presents texts they think mean that); I know very little about what God wants of other people--I'm plenty busy trying to figure out what God wants from me, and I assume God will do God's job a lot better than I. So, I don't believe that any explanation of my faith is a demonstration of why I am saved and you are not. Determining who is saved and who is not is God's job, not mine. When I can manage to take attendance on a regular basis, and get my Works Cited pages correct, and various other aspects of my job I screw up on a regular basis, I'll consider taking on God's job. Till then, any explanation of my faith is just that and nothing more.
God has that whole omniscient and omnipotent thing going, and I don't. I think most religious quarrels start from people forgetting that--they are not God; they can't even imagine what it is like to be God. Let God do God's job, and let's do (as competently as we are capable) the jobs we were given.
And here I go back to Ayer. There is a kind of knowledge that is falsifiable. Let's call that science. There is a kind that is not. Let's call that faith.That's like saying there are two horses, or two cars, or two fruits. Or whatever. That isn't to say that one is better than another, although under some circumstances one might be better than the other. If I want to get a load of dirt, a mini Cooper sucks, but if I just want to drive back and forth on a city street, it's awesome. Pretending that one only needs a pickup seems to me just as silly as pretending that one only needs a Cooper. Faith has different purposes from science.
Finally, I'll say that there seems to me an analogy about teaching writing. I often meet people who had terrible writing teachers, who seemed to think that their job was smacking students who made comma errors. And so people who think "teaching writing" means "smacking students who make comma errors" will tell me all the reasons that "teaching writing" sucks. And, really, I think they're right, if that's what "teaching writing" means. But that isn't all it means. But it's a confusing conversation to have because, really, there are people out there (a lot of them) who have this bigoted narrow AWFUL idea about teaching writing. So, I can't say, "But that isn't what 'teaching writing' means, because they know that's what it means--that's what almost every writing teacher has meant to them!The people who are the most devout atheist, in my experience, are people who think--for really, really, really good reason--that "having faith" means being aggressively stupid and actively hateful (like smacking students who make comma errors). And they're absolutely correct that that version of "having faith" is just awful. It makes a virtue of blind obedience and the most jaw-dropping versions of bigotry and ignorance and ... well, all that. They're right. That isn't bad.But, that isn't "having faith" is having faith anymore than smacking comma errors is "teaching writing."
So, having faith, for me, means having faith in the sublimity of God's creation, it is faith that I do not know the answers to much of anything right now, but that God will lead me there if, with patience, study, and humility, I keep asking the questions. I know that God asks that I be compassionate (especially toward those less fortunate), patient, and persistent. And I know that I completely and totally fail to do any of those things, and that God continues to ask me to do what I have never managed to do for more than moments at a time. I have no reason to think that God's will for me and the world is any different from one what gets to via good science (in fact, at the moments that the church has diverted most from God it has also invoked bad science). I believe that this is what Jesus said, and Jesus helps me on this path. If other people get by without this faith, good for them. If they have no faith or a different faith or ... well, whatever... good for them. If they are hateful and claim to speak for Jesus, I will bitch to high heaven. If they claim to speak for me, then I will get ugly. Perhaps I should be more compassionate to them; I honestly don't know how to manage that. But I do know that atheists and agnostics worry me a whole lot less than people who think they have God on their side.
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