Thank you, Jennifer.
Nicely written and enjoyable.
but.....and this is not a big thing...........You write about being 60 as though it's a big deal. Maybe for a 40 year old.
5
Thank you, Ms. Boylan. I have dealt with similar issues with my children, and to a lesser degree, myself when I was younger. The fundamental message of the Gospel, the "good news", isn't about talking donkeys, burning bushes, or parting waters. It's about loving one another, recognizing that perfection and humanity don't always coexist, and that working towards that singular goal, be it in a pew or a vacation home, is simply what's were put here for. Happy Easter to you.
9
I realize that there's no escaping messages like this, since Easter is almost upon us, but I'll be happy when this is over for a few months. Why is "faith" a synonym for Christianity? (Any article with "faith" in the title is bound to be about Christianity.") It's tiresome for non-Christians, though we are accustomed to enduring it.
26
Not to be a cynic, but this time of year brings it out in me.
File under: isn't it pretty to think so?
5
I do not really grasp what Jesus means to western people. I see many symbols of Christ in church which are so grotesque and make me wonder how children would feel when brought up constantly surrounded by these symbols. Are they not distorted psychologically? (By contrast serene scenes from Catholic churches are soothing and understandable.)
I accept and admire the concepts which prompted the French revolution and were developed since then. (Having no social scientific achievements while sticking with the idea of the oldest lineage in Japan chagrins me.) So why do you pay so much attention and time to an old religion than burnishing the idea precious and apparently universal to human beings?
12
I would like to add to this "agony" of faith. Agony of faith is when you see a couple holding their just dead toddler child who died in a 1st class hospital due to cancer, standing in shock, because at that very moment, they cannot accept what has happened. Later, no doubt, they cried out to God. We all cried out to God. That Jennifer is Agony of Faith.
7
I'm sorry, but this was just about as convincing as the response to Virginia's letter to the editor, asking about Santa Claus.
13
God doesn't exist, and that is the most liberating and beautiful knowledge you will ever need to live your life to its fullest.
22
I made my peace with Christianity many years ago. I am a somewhat religious person, although not in a traditional sense. Unless you only believe in the material world, you probably have some sort of transcendental belief system. Since the Harry Potter books got popular, beliefs in the Western occult world have become more common. Others like vampires. I'm OK with that, too. Belief always involves faith in evidence unseen. It's not about the material world, remember? I believe in a transcendental God, but he/she/it may be somewhat different from your God. And that is OK as well. The world is big enough for competing belief systems.
7
I am 81 and grew up in a mainstream Protestant family. I dropped out not because of disagreement, but mainly because I found the subject to be rather boring. Fundamentalist religion, I considered uneducated. But I recall in my youth that atheism was almost the equivalent of worshipping the devil. Nowadays, I am frank about being a non-believer. I have studied too much physics to believe in the supernatural. I respect the compassionate message of Jesus, but I can do without the virgin birth stuff. I sense that the trend is to not take religion too seriously, but I doubt if fundamentalists will ever have their Age of Enlightenment. Believing in magic is a lot easier than learning physics. I just wish they would keep it to themselves. We were NOT created as a Christian nation. You will find no mention of Jesus or the Bible in our Constitution.
32
The story that did it for me was the prophet Elijah supposedly going to "heaven" in the "fiery chariot".
Raised on Star Trek, the turning point was in 1977 when I saw "Close Encounters of a Third Kind". The story of Elijah's ascension as well as the rest of the fantastical biblical miracles suddenly made sense to me in a personal way as either elaborate Iron Age sci-fi or actual eye witness accounts of visits by advanced alien life forms from elsewhere in the galaxy. Elijah stepped into a spaceship just like Richard Dreyfuss! Of course, primitive peoples would believe he was on his way to god and his angels!
That suits me just fine. I won't force you to believe my sci-fi if you will stop trying to force me to believe your mythology.
22
One can believe in good and do good without belief in the invisible "one true god"(s).
The America Humanist Association, American Ethical Union and others will support, encourage and instill the values you hold dear without the talking snakes, sun standing still, parted seas and worldwide floods with 2 of everything in a wooden boat.
The Unitarian Universalists will also accept you as you are in an environment of tolerance, love and acceptance. Jesus would like that.
26
There is a story in the Bible where Jesus is about to heal a father's son after the disciples were unable to do it. Jesus asks the man: "Do you believe?" The man answers: "I believe. Help thou my unbelief."
This is the yin and yang of faith. There is a little faith in our doubt. There is a little doubt in our faith.
I believe that God is Love. I believe that Jesus came to be the human incarnation of Divine Love and taught us compassion and the Golden Rule that breaks down barriers. The Other is ourselves, and we are they. I believe that after torture and death, there is the hope of resurrection, of new life, of a Love that transcends death.
19
Thank you so much for this: "I thought that doubt (also known as “common sense”) was my roadblock to a spiritual life. Now, .. I have come to believe that doubt is, in fact, the drive wheel of faith, not its obstacle."
I was raised Catholic and love the teachings of Jesus. As a young adult, my thing was metaphysics ala Emmet Fox and, for a while, Course in Miracles (until someone used that to manipulate me). Later, meditation and being present. In the last decade, turned off by distaste for hypocrisy and blind faith. I've been consumed by doubt and yet, occasionally, I have just the type of guiding experience you do. I believe in God. Of religions, I believe they are all partially true and partially false, and most all are misused and misconstrued to serve the human agenda.
8
"... doubt is, in fact, the drive wheel of faith."
Well said, Ms. Boylan.
As for your unplanned visit to the New York church: the sermon was about "The Sermon on the Mount." Isn't that short section of the Bible the best of what Christianity has to offer? The pinnacle of Christian thinking and doing?
12
Certain comments below claim that it's irrational to be a Christian or adhere to no matter what kind of religion/faith.
I never understood how you can believe that this kind of claim itself can be called "rational".
Monotheistic religions propose the notion of one single god, and their holy texts "reveal" what kind of god that is, and how to worship him. They are full of stories of people who have witnessed the existence of such a god.
More than those (non verifiable) witnesses, we don't have, indeed - and that's the weakest and least reliable form of proof. That's why you cannot possibly expect to convince people through scientific evidence that such a god exists.
But on the one hand, those religions don't claim to have found scientific evidence for the existence of god, and one the other hand, every scientist knows that absence of proof is not the same thing as proof of absence.
So IF you want to call "rational beliefs" only those beliefs which have been scientifically proven to be true, you cannot possibly call rejecting/ridiculizing religions "rational", as there's no scientific evidence AT ALL that proves the statement "god doesn't exist".
That means that the only rational stance here is agnosticism: to acknowledge that we don't know. From there, each one of us has to decide which "leap of faith" we'll take: to believe in god's existence, or to live a life that is based on the presumption of his non existence
And "leap of faith" inevitably means doubt...
8
Yes, our form of logic makes it difficult to prove a negative. But that is weak gruel, indeed. One may say that you can’t prove the non existence of a god, and I can counter that you cannot prove that the god is not Wotan, who by the way, was much more pragmatic and rational than the god found in the Bible.The Norse end of days, Ragnarok, marks a rebirth of a better world.
7
Way I see it, its rather pointless to speculate on something that, by its very nature, is unknowable. May as well speculate on what color underwear Jennifer Lawrence likes to wear. You stand a better chance of finding THAT out than whether God's up there or not.
3
Jesus was a wonderful philosopher and although I am a non-believer, I can still try to be be compassionate and charitable to others. His message doesn’t need the padding of virgin birth, walking on water, etc., which I consider nonsense. I am likewise in awe of the wisdom and intellect of Newton, Einstein and others. Jesus was a wonderful human being.
10
"...What greater miracle could there be than friendships that last a lifetime...
Narratives borne of friendship and family that transcend lifetimes...
These messages are wonderful and divine...
The messengers - sometimes less so...
The message is nuanced...
Sitting in that Church, you likely felt a connection to the person sitting three pews back...
Three Sundays ago...
PS
About the doubt and faith thing - already all kinds of sophisticated advice, over here in the right-hand side of the page...
So here's a simple-minded thought...
The reason humans stand up faith - spiritual or secular - only to doubt it...
If we stare too deeply and long into the abyss that is reality - trying to fathom its actual nature...
We go mad...
3
There are some beautiful sentiments in this column Jennifer. I'm a sucker for a story about friends staying connected in spite of changes and distance.
However, there is nothing in your article that required god. Friendships can be strengthened and relationships deepended, with or without god. In fact, I would argue that most relationships involving anything out of the ordinary, would be impeded by religion which still seems more worried about who you have relationships with than the quality of those relationships.
11
Life is what you make it. Therefore it is your responsibility and there is no absolution or salvation, just the promise made by man selling afterlife insurance. It is a brilliant sales model. Sell something no one can prove or challenge, have people pay now and get repaid in the next life. Brilliant sales model, ethically and morally bankrupt though. Since it has been around for ages and there are over 1500 religions saying they have it right and the rest have it wrong and since over 5000 former religions have died out, when will mankind realise the agony of faith is abandoning reason.
7
We all know that "The unexamined life is not worth living." The same can be said about our faith. " An unexamined faith is not worth believing." Most people do not believe what the Bible teaches because they have never studied it earnestly and in depth. Try it..there is a reason it is the best selling book year after year.
7
I have always felt closest to God just a few miles south of Ventor, in Ocean City. Surrounded by family, salt in my hair, goes in the sand is my idea of heaven.
3
If the Resurrection of Jesus was merely a fanciful explanation made up by His bereaved followers, there would be other examples of bereaved followers claiming that their beloved teacher had come back from the dead. There would be, for example, an account of Socrates rising from the dead. Or Achilles. Or Hector. Or Mozart. The fact that, for almost 2000 years, thousands and thousands of millions of human beings have not only insisted that they believe this account to be true, but have themselves been willing to die for that faith, makes it something very different from a "fanciful explanation." Something happened. It still divides and upsets communities. Whatever it was that happened, it is not fading out of human appreciation. The energy and transformative power of that event had to have been enormous to leave such a powerful imprint on so many lives. In and of itself, that is an arresting detail that should give anyone pause.
17
The number of believers do not confirm the truth of what they believe.
If they did, every instance of one person being proved right in the face of massed opposition would be invalidated.
Extraordinary stories leave strong impressions. That too proves nothing about whether they are true or not.
Christianity, like all religions, was founded on a myth. That is the only thing we know with certainty about it to be true.
13
Jerry, please explain how "we" "know" that.
Myths are elements of folklore for which there is no tangible, physical truth.
The family of Jesus Christ -- the children born to His Mother's sister, who was the wife of His oldest step-brother, Simon Cleophas, Joseph's oldest son -- existed. Their descendants still exist & know who they are & are known to certain institutions of equally long standing, or longer. For example, the marriage records of the rabbinical archives of the people of Israel go back far longer than those of most modern states. The records & archives of the Vatican, that absorbed a quantity of records left over from Imperial Rome, go back that far. Pilate's archive also exists. The family of Jesus's Mother Mary, who was a daughter born into the Aaronic line of priests, was very well-known & in fact very wealthy. The fact that Jesus became a controversial figure in that community does not alter the fact that the records about His Mother are known -- even if they have been disparaged & suppressed by those who rejected His teachings. Furthermore, with human genome decoding now having advanced to the extent it has, the haplo groups of the members of this family are also known. Jesus & His Mother were not "myths": they actually existed. That makes these highly charged texts that exist about them interesting. It is no longer possible, given the way modern scholarship approaches other texts & other primary sources, to dismiss the physical traces of the existence, presence & teachings of Jesus, as "myths."
I gave up on Christianity in general, and the fundamentalist version in particular, about the time Jennifer Finney Boylan and her friends had their initial gathering. My father (an "unbeliever") had, about 5 years previously handed me a slim paperback saying, "This is the funniest book I've ever read," and little else.
The title of that volume was "Letters From the Earth," penned by Mark Twain. Up until that point, my only exposure to the works of Samuel Langhorn Clemens were his classics, "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn," both of which my devout Church of Christ mother had put in my hands while I was in the 4th or 5th grades.
Twain's hilarious interpretation and exposition of the ludicrousness of a literal belief in tales of the Bible started me on the path to, for the moment let us call it, atheism. Experiencing war up close while Boylan and friends frolicked on the Jersey shore pretty much iced the cake.
Today, married to a no-longer-practicing Catholic, church attendance has dwindled to weddings and funerals. Baptisms (the Catholic baby-sprinkling kind, not the total dunking in a man-made Iake I endured at age 14) don't make our social calendar.
There was no "agony" in abandoning faith for me. Just a quiet relief. I can have a drink of wine, Scotch or beer and not "sin." I can take a 2nd, 3rd and 4th looks at an attractive woman and hear my wife say, "Yes, she's beautiful," and not have sinned. I can curse, liberally, which is my wont, and not sin.
13
What makes you think "the Bible" is the reason to believe -- or not believe?
I don't need to like the music other people like, to love music.
3
Sin is just a special word we use for an offense against a special individual. If you hold your wife in high regard, and are occasionally rude and unfeeling, that is an small-ish offense against her. The Great King looks on the heart, not the outward appearance. He doesn't consider having a beer an offense. Holding Him in low regard is the offense.
9
"Agony" is from the ancient Greek "Agon," meaning conflict or contest. To be in agony is to be in conflict or a contested state.
But religion for the most part seems to show up to the agon forfeit. Not many preachers stand in the pulpit and say, "But in the end, we just do not know, and certainty is not in the cards for us." Much rather, the preachers -- of all faiths -- promise an escape from, not a deeper plunge into, uncertainty, the agon of doubt and belief.
We live in a material world where we believe things can be calculated, managed, controlled, down to the last penny. It is a shame modern religion has -- unwittingly perhaps -- caved in to that most modern fear -- fear of the uncertain, of the agony.
5
What a beautiful story! Thank you for sharing!
11
I don't know whether God or Gods exist, and have simply chosen to hide their existence from us. I suspect He/She doesn't.
It seems obvious to me that if he/she/they do exist, they care even less about my belief in them than I care whether ants believe in me. And I'm pretty sure that any all powerful god would not choose to reveal himself only to a nomadic desert people and to no one else in the world.
Religion has certain utility in terms of creating society and social order. But that which it helped to create it also limits; I think that we have grown beyond the limits, particularly in the realm of science, that religion would impose.
17
I know a little about science, and more than I care to about the Catholic Religion. But I do have one immutable, unshakeable belief: No creature who has ever existed on this earth-not one-has ever died and come back to life. The universe just does not work that way.
Thank God.
30
Believe whatever you want. But the fact is that no one really knows with certainty what happens after. Personally, I am soothed and comforted by this inherent mystery.
14
Your comfort is important to you, but it has nothing to do with the physical, proven reality of death.
You did not exist before you were born, and you will not exist after you are dead. There can be no stronger proof than that that there is nothing for you after.
In response to comments: Doubt or skepticism is very healthy, like curiosity, a necessary element of intellectual life and intellectual integrity. But, old as I am, I am still amazed by the contempt with which so many NYT readers (and millions of others) treat faith. As if faith were indicative of an allegiance to some organized religion. As if cosmological speculation that there is a responsible agent (for Creation) is stupid. It's tiresome. Life and our universe are so full of mystery and unanswered questions that there is plenty of room for plenty of beliefs and respect for all those points of view...
30
The antagonism is in response to the vitriolic disdain Christians, evangelicals especially, hold towards those who don't live life and have sex in accordance with their outmoded Iron-Age nomadic desert mythology. Furthermore, they've made it the overarching mission of their existence to smash the wall separating church and state while forcefully legislating their Iron Age morality for all members of society.
This all started with Christians in response to the Civil Rights movement. I was there in the 70s at a fundamentalist evangelical baptist school and subjected to hundreds of pulpit-pounding sermons dripping with savage disdain for blacks, hippies, women, gays, infidels, anyone daring to stand up to the church for their equal rights, different belief systems, and alternative ways of living.
When you show me conservative Christians exhibiting the same tolerance and respect you demand towards other points of view, then I'll be happy to share space with them. But not until then.
17
Speculation does not create truth. We have only physical reality to go by.
All else is "the stuff that dreams are made on."
5
Claiming that physics explains our entire reality is like living in a terrarium and thinking that as long as you can explain what happens inside it you have explained all of the existing world. As long as we cannot fathom the infinity of time and space there is room for some humility and the possibility realities that are beyond our human grasp.
1
Ah yes... the meaning is in the metaphor, and in knowing that comes with experiencing it. Without doubt there can be no insight.
2
Perhaps fewer people would suffer the agonies of faith if they took religion as a moral foundation of life, rather than a collection of presumably divine dictates. Other than that, the article is about a meeting with old friends, but not about the foundations of faith that might cause agony.
5
There are always mysteries in life. They lead the curious to seek out answers in many different ways. A scientist will use the scientific method and advance a realistic understanding of the universe. The deep thinker will address the why's and ought's and create moving philosophies that get inside peoples minds and make them perceive their universe in a different way. An artist will probe the mysteries using their own emotions and love of communication to create moving theater and images that express to people what is hidden within themselves. The religious will search for an authority bigger than reality to base ultimate truths on and to act as an ultimate template for human behavior. All searchers grapple with the same unknowns and find their priorities in those areas where their instincts take them. And in all cases, the difference in the results will derive from the differences in the seeker. The serious and the honest will go one way, the lazy and the corrupt will go another. Religion can be used for any purpose at all and the religious should be judged by their tolerance and their love and not their ability to provide answers and move crowds. We live in an age where the word "religion" has been debased by many people who claim to be religious. And its original definition of a personal "still small voice" has been erased from consciousness. The atheist simply honors that voice and rejects all others.
7
What an empty piece of writing. Is this about connecting with old friends? Where is there an “agony of faith” in that? About wandering into a church and hearing a message of love? Where again is the “agony of faith”? Slipping lazily into the faith of superficiality isn’t agony. Where is the “agony of faith” on why a friend is in a wheelchair? Or why transgender people are routinely victimized by the “faithful”? Or the “agony” of why so many sermons and scriptures are NOT about love and compassion but instead about intolerance, exclusion and punishment of the “other”: especially the “unbeliever.” If the author had wandered into a religious service in Afganistan would the reader be as sympathetic to the “agony of faith” the writer proposes? What a disappoiinting essay on one of the most important questions we all, as 21st Century humans, have to face.
9
" one of the most important questions we all, as 21st Century humans, have to face."
Yeah, right, that question is at least as important as the question of whether Spider-man is real.
11
It is wonderful to have life long friends, but hardly miraculous. Do you imagine that your friends stick by you because they are loyal and true, or because god wills it?
6
It’s tiresome reading people attack religion and religious people in these comments. So you’re atheist/non-religious/agnostic---good for you. But that doesn’t give you license to feel smug and superior and denigrate people of faith as uneducated hypocrites who believe in fairy tales. Why? Because that’s prejudice and stereotyping.
Is it ok to assume that because some terrorists are Muslims that all Muslims are terrorists? No. Is it ok to assume that because some people of color are poor that there are no people of color that are wealthy? No. So why is it ok for the self-professed atheists/non-religious/agnostic crowd to assume that because some people of faith follow their leaders blindly that all people of faith must be incapable of intelligence and depth? The answer is it’s not ok.
It doesn’t matter if you think you have science on your side. Once upon a time, the greatest scientific minds believed the universe was flat and the earth was the center of the universe. Our current knowledge is commensurate with advances in technology and what we know today can be upended overnight based on new findings.
Live and let live people. If you’re happy in your faith or lack thereof—great. But don’t preach so vociferously about it and for heaven’s sake, don’t be so convinced of your own superiority that you are condescending towards others who believe the opposite of what you believe.
31
But you believe in fairy tales. You believe in things that are demonstrably not true. What am I supposed to do with that? You are willfully ignorant and you are asking for a pass. It just does not work that way.
20
@ W
There's nothing "demonstrably not true" in believing in a Christian/Jewish/Muslim god, simply because it has never been proven that they don't exist.
So EM is perfectly right here.
Being "willfully ignorant" means ignoring the existing scientific evidence out there, which is exactly what you're doing ...
Or to formulate things in a less judgmental way: you're confounding absence of proof and proof of absence. Although that's a quite common confusion, it's not a reason to justify intolerance towards religions.
And you probably also ignore that most of the 20th century's greatest scientists were religious people (most of them Christians) ... ?
Why do so many people of faith call those who don't share their beliefs a "crowd?" I hear that a lot. We don't call believers a "crowd."
5
I am an atheist. I’ve always been an atheist. And yet, I have faith: Faith that nature is, fundamentally, orderly and predictable. I believe in rapture, for I experience it: when I behold nature’s beautiful mysteries, far stranger than talking donkeys or the rising of a dead man.
And I believe doubt is the greatest of virtues. For those who doubt are able to hear others, consider beliefs and circumstances and experiences that sometimes contradict their own, without feeling threatened.
Love is a natural outgrowth of doubt, because a person who holds doubt in stable equilibrium with the rest of his or her life, is open to the lives of others, their experiences and feelings, without judgment.
We all need, if we are to be healthy, to connect to something bigger than ourselves. There are so many ways to make this connection without god or religion or magical thinking.
15
The "faith" you are talking about is different from "Faith" — belief in the supernatural and the rejection of physical proof.
2
The reality of life is that we are born with a use-by mortality date no matter our faith in the supernatural or belief in the natural.
All faiths cannot be true. But they can all be false. Every faith condemns other faiths. And unlike science there is no acceptable agreed upon methodology for testing faiths. Hypocrisy and hubris are naturally normal.
Jesus wondering who men said he was, despairing in the Garden at Gethsemane and feeling forsaken at Golgotha knew our fears. Jesus eating, drinking and talking knew our pleasures.
10
Many religions actually don't condemn other faiths.
It's only the three "religions of the book" (the monotheisms Judaism, Christianity, Islam) that identify their doctrine and "the truth", and as a consequence reject other religions as being "false".
Polytheistic religions (such as those of ancient Greece and Rome) and Buddhism for instance don't work this way. For polytheists, each region has its own gods, so a traveler has to worship the gods of the region if he wants to be safe in that region (= protected by the local god(s)), but nobody will ask him to stop worshiping the god of his own region - whereas you can perfectly become a Buddhist all while remaining a Catholic, from a Buddhist perspective.
4
The problem I have with "faith", in the religious context, is that it seems to require the abandonment of critical thinking. Sincere questioning or doubt is not to be tolerated. Believe, or you will be thrown into a lake of fire for eternity. No thanks. People can believe that if they wish. I choose to navigate the mysteries of life utilizing reality, to the extent that I can discern it.
24
Is that not precisely what the article is arguing against? Ms Boylan is saying, very specifically, that sincere questioning and doubt ARE a part of faith. You may agree or disagree but don't just ignore her argument.
5
this is a biblical quote I have been chewing on lately-
"faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen".
Life, Truth, and Love are all synonyms for God, and I can certainly get behind all of those!
6
"Life, Truth, and Love are all synonyms for God"
They may be for you, but for many of us there is no connection whatsoever between these human experiences and imagined entities.
And don't be so easily seduced by that quote! Faith offers neither substance nor evidence; if it did it would not be called "faith".
16
Many of us do not need God in order to be good.
But we do need God to explain existence, to explain why being should be at all.
2
But do we need to explain existence in the first place, to explain "why being should be at all"? And does God explain it satisfactorily? Can we explain what created God? If not, and we can still live with that, why can't we live with not having an explanation of what God is supposed to explain? Why do we need to make up stories to explain it? Can't we just admit that we don't know?
13
"But we do need God to explain existence"
In fact, no one needs this at all, given that other explanations are possible, and no evidence exists for the god hypothesis.
14
There is no "why" to existence.
There is only "how."
How did the universe come into being? How did beings evolve? How did humans become self-aware?
"Why" relates only to our own actions, such as, Why do intelligent, educated humans continue to hold onto irrational beliefs?
6
Faith was agony for me, too. Now that I've shed myself of the burden, I have a sense, if not peace, plain resignation at least. I've discovered that coming into existence is indeed harmful. Better to have never been. Afterwards I expect it to be like before I was born. Many find this offensive. Even atheists. Anyway, I feel part of a failed species that is de-evolving with each passing year.
5
How wonderful to read, in one article, the divine imperative, the "necessity"
of loving others!
Meanwhile, on the same page: article after article urging the necessity of fearing and hating Russia, China, Iran, Korea, Venezuela . . .
Holy hypocrisy!
5
My spiritual tradition is not Christianity, but I hear what you're saying, Ms. Boylan.
We have a lovely chant in Zen, the Heart Sutra. It includes this line: "You do not see the way even as you walk on it."
Your path is your path. The paths of all the commenters are their paths. With our words, we tell you who we are, not who you are, no matter how critical some may be of your essay or your journey.
The path taken "away from" or "toward" one's spiritual tradition is still the path. Each moment offers us a chance to learn something new, to face a new teacher in the obstacle that confronts us, to extend compassion and kindness to others.
Faith and doubt are about things "out there": what really happened in history or who God is or what's going to happen when we die. My own experience has been that resting in love, in this moment, removes any need for Faith or Doubt. And wasn't that what Christ was saying when he exhorted his followers to "have no thought for the morrow"?
Best wishes to you as you continue along your path.
37
Buddhism is the matter opposing the antimatter of Christianity. The first is a path, the latter an anti-path. Christianity worships suffering. Buddhism gently suggests there is a cause and a cure for suffering. It is mental confusion to assign equal value to all "paths". The Buddha himself had no such relativism in mind.
5
God or not, religion is like language; it’s whatever people make it up to be.
6
When the eye is single, there are no strangers, even the stones sing praises, and donkeys speak.
5
"The sermon that day was not about talking donkeys. It was about feeding the hungry. It was about working for equality. It was about justice for minorities, and gay and lesbian and bisexual and trans people. It was about giving refuge to people — including immigrants and refugees — who do not have a home.
It was, in the end, about only one thing: the necessity of loving one another."
Rather than ascribe the above to being the sole provenance of religion, and succumb to irrational faith to "get behind" it, try reading "The Moral Animal" (Robert Wright).
It's a bit of a dense read, but the logic and scientific citations it offers show that being "moral" was, and is, not dependent upon being religous, or having "faith" in a god.
11
To have faith, is to have hope, a good thing, perhaps the best of things.
10
Faith is the irrational belief in what cannot be proven.
Hope is a rational desire that what one aspires to will be attained.
Two different things.
4
"I don't know if an actual person named Jesus rose from the dead. I hope that this is true..." wrote Boylan. She doesn't say why she hopes it's true or when that desire arose in her and thwarted the common sense she relied on for most of her life. My guess is that, at least subconsciously, she's been all-in on faith even through her years of professed doubt.
It's a rare person who has religious faith who also doesn't hope that their beliefs are true. You'll not hear many who would say, "I have faith that it's true, but I hope it's not." In order to have faith, one must first want and hope for their fantasy to be real, and only then can the mental and emotional trickery of faith be introduced and sustained.
7
So to arrive those many years later at the idea that helping others is good, or that lifelong friends are a comfort and a great goal requires some sort of religious faith? Was your life that empty in the intervening years? None of those things, or the many others that define a full and fruitful existence, are dependent on attachment to any religion, and organized religions have and continue to be the greatest obstacle to an evidence-based understanding of the universe and our place in it. Goodness and humanitarianism has never required religion, and has often been frustrated by it. While some practitioners surely do good things, that they often do them at least in part because they think they'll be judged and found wanting if they don't has always made me think much less of their motivations.
19
My seven year old daughter asked me last night why I don't believe in God.
After explaining my logic behind my disbelief in the Bible and Christianity in general, she simply said, "So how do you believe the universe was created, then?"
I told her I didn't believe in God like Christianity teaches. I haven't ruled out the idea of a creator of the universe, yet. It is difficult for me to rationalize how something came from nothing, without some assistance. But even that, I said, is open for debate.
Point is: Doubt may drive us to faith in something beyond ourselves, beyond our universe. In that manner, logic and faith can coexist. Religions, on the other hand... religions simply aren't logical, because they are inherently based on the fantastical stories, told by humans, all of whom had an agenda.
So while I respect anyone's decision to worship as they will, my firm belief is that you must choose: logic and faith, or religion and faith. There is no other resolution.
8
"So how do you believe the universe was created, then?"
Science removes the need to "believe". We either know or we do not yet know.
7
The "how" of existence is still largely a mystery to science, but I see no value in even suggesting the possibility of a supernatural creator to an impressionable child.
Adults often seem to find it impossible to simply say "I don't know."
3
My father was Catholic, my mother Protestant, my older sister is a declared atheist, my older brother is a Jehovah Witness, my younger sister is a waffler, two of our sons are non-partisan, our third son goes to the Catholic church for his kids.
And my wife and I are Catholic. And we really like it.
6
Is there some reason why this week, which Christians regard as the most sacred week of the year (and which Jews will likewise honor with the arrival of Passover), that the New York Times feels a need to feature lapsed religionists on its pages, justifying their encounters with something on a sunny beach, in a forest glade, or on the eighteenth hole of Mar a Lago (oh, right, neither G-d nor respectable Times readers would be caught dead at the last one).
8
"Religion poisons everything."
-- Christopher Hitchens
Read Exodus and Leviticus. See how loving you think that god is.
20
People and religion have evolved in their understanding of God since those books were written.
4
Actually, I believe that quote is from Chairman Mao - who knew a bit about poisoning everything, and killing large numbers of people in general.
3
The complete title of Mr Hitchens book is, “god is not Great—How Religion Poisons Everything”.
I also recommend “The God Delusion”, by Richard Dawkins and “Letter to a Christian Nation” by Sam Harris. I would also agree that Robert Wright’s book “The Moral Animal” which was referenced in a comment above is outstanding as well.
2
Everyone may or may not have religion, but everyone should have a friend with which to stand on a beach in the early morning sun
13
Hey Sean O'Brin - says you. Maybe some of us want to stand alone.
3
"The rising sun burst over the ocean, and the light shone on our faces." It happened to Jennifer Finney Boylan on a Sunday, on the beach with the friend of her youth, so it must be true. There is the cornerstone of faith: the entire universe was created just for Jennifer Finney Boylan, so that light could be arranged to shine on her face on nice Sundays. Indeed it was created for each and every Center of the Universe we call "ME", just so that billions of events across the universe could be manipulated in order to give "ME" a special treat now and then. Who says human beings are nothing but apes on a totally insignificant, microscopically small planet in a nondescript galaxy among billions of other such galaxies? No way. We're special. Sunday sunshine on the face of Jennifer Finney Boylan proves our significance. Rejoice!
14
Religious belief accounts for most of the human blood spilled on any ground touched by every rising sun.
No solace, no joy and no resurrection for them.
17
Well you are completely wrong here. Just check on the millions killed by Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot who were adamantly atheists. Your talking point is erroneous. Even those killed by so called "religious belief" were twisting their "belief" to their own ends, not at all true to the "belief" they were supposedly espousing.
6
RC, there is a difference between someone who happens to be an atheist or a believer doing something bad, and someone doing something bad because they think their religion, or God, requires it. Wasn't Giordano Bruno burned at the stake by order of the Roman Inquisition, i.e., the Catholic Church? Weren't Cardinal Bellarmine and the others in an authoritative position to determine whether what they were doing was "true to" the belief that motivated it?
The dictators you cite did not kill in the name of atheism, but for personal power.
Religion is a manmade enterprise. There is no "true religious belief" apart from it, but only what religion itself dictates and how its proponents act.
Afore-commenting smug atheists: please refer to the sadly profuse history of atheists & non-religious political actors who have perpetrated war and mass murder, then return to your indictment of religion as the cause of war and death. ; it's quite a thin argument in the face of history. Additionally, please consider the truth: atheism is just as impossible to prove as religion.
9
Nope. It's nobody's job to prove that something doesn't exist. It can't be done. Prove to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that there's no Santa Claus. Come on, I dare you!
No atheist would deny that wars, violence and mayhem are caused by atheists as well as by the religious. But atheists don't organize themselves into huge corporations and institutions that dominate and hypnotize masses of people with their dogma (the Crusades, jihad, etc. etc.). Human beings are a violent lot, notwithstanding the peace, love and understanding preached by every religion under the sun as we march off to war with God On Our Side.
14
Indeed, and it's an abject failure of reason each time humanity fails in compassion and restraint. But I am not asking for you to prove in the presence or absence of any deity, only making the point that the nature of science (null hypothesis testing, i.e., providing confidence that an assertion is supported by more than random chance) doesn't ever, and need not prove a thing. It does an atheist disservice when they (often) condescend to the assumptions in religious observance, as the assumptions of atheism do not rest on any more firmly established footing. If an atheist holds science & empirical evidence higher than a belief in God, they should be able to approach that subject with the humility science demands, not to scoff and discard beliefs they personally reject.
Oh, and importantly to your concern about organization: atheists do, in fact organize and behave badly. Communism. Russia. Estimates range wildly due to destroyed records, but as many as 25 million were murdered by Stalin in his purges. Your point is best in noting that humans have such a problem with leaving violence alone. However, Steven Pinker makes a really convincing case that things are improving with time (via glorious statistics):
https://stevenpinker.com/publications/better-angels-our-nature
Jennifer,
Hope you find solace where and whenever you need it. As a former Roman Catholic and Christian my suggestion is to dump the myths and hierarchy that surround most modern religions; Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc. and keep practicing love to your fellow beings.
What do I believe in? Love and science!
17
This piece conflates our inspiring capacity to love and care for one another with so-called miracles like resurrection and talking donkeys.
Human beings seem to be hard-wired to invent gods to give us meaning and comfort. There's so much suffering that comes both from nature and from other people. Who'd have thought that 70 years after the cataclysm of World War II, we'd be in the middle of another resurgence of despotism, fascism and racism all over the world? The tendency to scapegoat is ever present, and so the battle for fair treatment has to be waged in every generation. Yes, some things do improve, because we stick our necks out and fight for it. But it has nothing to do with faith in a supernatural dimension that we ourselves invented. It comes from our innate sense of justice, fairness and love for one another.
You're not sure if an actual person named Jesus rose from the dead, because you weren't there? You hope he did? Really? Why do you need to keep an open mind about something so obviously false in order to appreciate your own existence?
Life is beautiful, devastating, inspiring, and mysterious. Everything happens for a reason that we make up. The love and loyalty you describe between yourself and your friends feels miraculous and is to be celebrated and cherished for what it is: the best expression of what it means to be human.
6
"something so obviously false " is not so obvious. As a matter of fact, even non believing experts have admitted that the preponderance of evidence shows that Jesus existence is not only true, but so was His death and resurrection. Its a "fact" not a myth....
1
Name the "non believing experts" and their works. "As a matter of fact", there is no "preponderance of evidence" just because you say there is, unless you can back up your claims with examples of that evidence. Otherwise, it's just hot air.
1
@RC: Oh! Wonderful! It's nice to have all that settled. All this fighting about the one true faith can finally end! Still, if you know of a credible "non-believing" expert" who has said that the "preponderance of evidence" shows that a human being was, in fact, dead for 3 days straight, only to resurrect himself, surely you could've thrown in some kind of link or even a SINGLE name of such a "non-believing expert." Don't get me wrong... I trust you and ALL anonymous online commenters implicitly (especially when the assertion is so plausible), but the followers of Anubis are going to insist on conducting a review of this data. What journal published these findings again?
Not to put words in your mouth, but did you perhaps mean that some experts agree that there are ACCOUNTS of people claiming such a thing happened? Or maybe historical sites have been identified where such things are said to have taken place?
If that's what you meant, it goes without saying that an account of an event, while interesting, does not actually establish the truth of an event. It only tells us what people 2,000 years ago believed at the time. While reasonable people may accept accounts of a human being who was born (let's not get into the virgin-birth circumstances), lived and died, it's going to take a bit more than that to say the "preponderance of evidence" shows that the same man had supernatural powers. That's where "faith," as opposed to "expert opinion" comes into play.
1
I'm not clear on what the author's making clear her trans status adds to this. Come to think of it, I can't see how anything in this confessional is anything new. The struggle with faith is deeply personal, experienced by billions, and literally thousands of years old. What is new here? "My struggle with faith is special because of my sexuality"? Line up, girl.
1
This article conflates "faith" with "religion". Like so many words, "faith" has been co-opted and in the process lost much of its significance. The religious definition is an empty acquiescence that is born more out of laziness than wisdom. In its fully developed form, faith comes from wisdom, a deeper understanding of a reality that does not reveal itself so easily. The faith described here is naive and childlike. It's the kind of thing that is cute when children say it but coming from adults it kind of pathetic. Faith is not an intransigent belief in an idea that doesn't produce results. It can be a means to steel our resolve in a process that our reason tells us will bring long term benefit such as getting an education. I have faith in the ideas of democracy of a system of government that derives it power from the consent of the people, that confers to benefits of freedom to all people. I am confident that realization of that form of government is the best hope for humanity.
17
God chases us until he gets us in most cases.
to live a life that imitates Christ would not be a life wasted even if his Rising was not factual. I choose to try to imitate his Love. and try to believe in the Risen Christ as well. Both are hard to do but helps all of us.
7
What was so enjoyable for me about this column was Jennifer’s story of, “Here’s what I’ve come to believe, for now, here’s the highlights of my winding road journey to get there, and (maybe the best part) here is how my wonderful friends have helped me along the way.”
The comments are interesting too, except why are so many of us so driven to call out people we feel believe even 1% differently from us? At the highest level, the non-believers can’t accept that some believe in any kind of higher power, and the same way the religious can’t tolerate the non-believers but then oddly reserve most of their anxiety for, again, those whose beliefs are slightly different from their own.
So Jennifer is just one person, and all she says is here’s how this has worked so far for me, period. And her story of how she has wandered between the believer and non-believer camps makes it even better. Yet some commenters even went after the NY Times for so much as printing this at all! Well, I liked everything about it, so here’s at least one small fan letter for Jennifer and for the Times.
20
I believe that scripture (any denomination) is more metaphorical than anything near fact. Think of the long history of transcription for the stories of the bible - how much were they embellished over the millenia? I also believe that quite possibly a man like Jesus (if that was his real name) was probably a noted individual for his time. He was probably incredibly intelligent, intuitive and altruistic. In today's political climate, these characteristics are being tested in a severe manner. The tensions are becoming greater as we recognize that we are part of a global society. Reconciling "global" beliefs should be a primary objective towards the goal of true world-peace and the ending of strife.
3
Essentially out of deeply ingrained familial/cultural habit and, at least on my wife's part, a lingering sense of obligation rooted in guilt, we cradle Catholics attend Mass at a Redemptorist order retreat house. We have chosen this parish - which is independent of the diocese - primarily because the "charism" of the order is preaching and the homilies reflect this. With the exception of one wizened Boston Irish priest of the old school, over the years, these homilies have come to resonate with the revelation Ms. Boylan experienced. That love, compassionate understanding and - crucially - action in expressing them, are
the essence of the message of Jesus. Indeed, we are sometimes explicitly encouraged not to let the "rules" get in the way of this message that - as Paul is reported to have written to the Corinthians, "In the end, there are three things that last - faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love."
10
God cannot be proved nor disproved. God can can only be believed as almost all human societies have believed for all of civilization, especially in times of trouble. I choose science and rationality, but will not argue with faith.
Most of the major religions central morality is the Golden Rule, which I follow without guides.
11
There are many issues in "science" that cannot be proven either. Belief in so called evolution is just as much "faith" as any belief in God, yet few seem to question that. I for one believe that God can be proved, as it says in Psalm 19 "The heavens declare the Glory of God".... or in Romans 1:19-20 "For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse"...
There are literally tons of evidence for the reality of evolution. You can even see it happening.
150 years ago, 10 years after Darwin and Wallace independently proved evolution with objective facts and rationality, most scientists and intellectuals accepted evolution. Most religions now accept evolution. Prejudice is the alternative to commonly accepted science.
The word 'Agony' is enough to cause readers to flee and check to see if a mild scratch has healed. Before writing the hind-legs off a donkey, I remembered a friend who shot herself in the head, and left me an exquisite Madonna, cradling The Infant Jesus astride this sturdy beast of burden led by Joseph in exodus to Egypt. When I saw the poster, the reproduction of an artist in 1399, it caused an agony of tears to think of the tragedy of my friend now at peace.
If there is Heaven, she is there, along with many others in places of The Heart. A friend from Africa, a bird of paradise, once lamented 'My Religion is about Love not Hatred'. A devout believer, I am in awe of the Power of her faith. It is healing.
Recently I asked Austria who is Jewish about my Lutheran neighbors, asking whether they are slightly rigid in their views. They are kind in a shallow way and in constant apology-mode. Telling you they voted for Trump because they could not do 'otherwise', or they have been dumping rubble on your property; telling you their absolute beliefs, without any questions on your part. 'We are Christians', they tell you and give you a statue of Buddha for the garden.
Whether Believers in Jesus, The Easter Bunny, or jelly beans, We need Joy, Ms. Boylan, and Hope for many pink dawns to grant us safe and kind passage on this Life journey of ours, remembering that it takes a bit of everyone to make this world we live in.
6
No one knows. No one.
7
False equivalence.
The idea that the world's religionistas' fantasy world exists and requires equal intellectual respect with a natural atheistic view of reality simply because a significant portion of humanity was hit over the head with a medieval textbook at a young age is preposterous.
Just because so many people 'believe' in magic doesn't mean it's a respectable point of view.
There is no fantasy world for bees, fish, ants, dogs, birds or humans.
Wishing it so is quite childish.
14
Whoever Socrates is, the NY Times granted him what they call the "Verified Commenter" status, but he's really abusing it here and bullying many commenters who don't agree with his athiestic views.
6
yes - those atheist bullies who keep pointing out that the bible is as close to reality as any book about Hogwarts. Adam and Eve, the Flood, the Exodus, talking snakes and donkeys - none of it happened. Nothing in the real, observable world supports the claims, old testament or new. Historical records don't support the bible. Archeology doesn't either.
Bad, bad atheists keep pointing this out. Bullies!!
1
If the only problem with the Bible was the improbable miracle stories than I would have been able to maintain my faith. Where I lost it was when I read in Leviticus that men who laid down with other men were to be executed as were children who disobeyed their parents. And then there was Joshua where God calls on the Hebrews to take town after town and kill every man, woman, child and animal. Why does the Lord do so? To isolate his people so that they wont pick up the ways of the Canaanites. So then I turned to the New Testament where I thought the words of Jesus would be free of such horrors and came across a verse where Jesus says to his disciples that if his message is rejected in a village to leave and shake the dust of the village of your feet, and then adds "for by doing so it will be as if you are heaping hot coals on their heads in the world to come"....here is a test, take some of these verses and memorize them and then the next time you here someone criticizing Islam ( I have read the Koran as well and it also has horrific passages of its own) tell them the verses and say they are from the Koran, when your Christian friend says that this shows how violent and heartless Islam is stop and say..." Oh I am sorry, those verses where actually from the Bible" Fact is that if Christians, Jews and Muslims were to actually read the book that they say has all truth, read it cover to cover, there would be far fewer believers.
12
Talking donkeys, eh? Well--that is one surprising story.
Can I tackle the question another way? Bear with me.
I have read accounts of battles where a commander WASTED HIS TIME attacking this or that strong point. A bridge for instance. The battle was being won (or lost) elsewhere--but NO! The original plan called for General X or General Y to TAKE THAT BRIDGE--and by gum! he was gonna TAKE IT.
There is one single, overwhelming miracle in the sixty six books of the Bible. The resurrection of Jesus Christ. THAT--is where the battle is won or lost. Take THAT away--and the other miracles sink into insignificance. The parting of the Red Sea? The feeding of the five thousand? Who cares? They don't matter.
"If Christ be NOT risen from the dead," says Paul. "your faith is vain. You are still in your sins." BUT--the Apostle goes on to say. . . . .
". . .now IS Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that sleep."
All four gospels recount that resurrection. In detail. Christ appearing on the Emmaus Road. Christ appearing to Mary in the garden. Christ reaching out to poor, broken Peter. On and on it goes. That wonderful, that incredible narrative of Christ's resurrection. And TRUE! Every word of it.
Accept THAT (and I do--millions accept it). . . . .
. . .and you need not boggle at talking donkeys.
'Cause in God's incredible world, God's incredible providence. . . .
. . .ANYTHING is possible.
Even talking donkeys.
1
Your statement of faith is powerful, but it is only that. The canonical gospels are full of contradictions both in terms of differences in recorded events and in the details of the events that all four gospels do record. For example, the occurrence on the road to Emmaus that you cite is found only in Luke and the story of Jesus and Mary in the garden occurs only in John. (Here is a non-resurrection example - Mark and John do not mention a virgin birth even though Mark's gospel is generally considered to have been the earliest of the four - closest to Jesus' lifetime - why would that detail be left out?). To use Emmaus and Mary in the garden as examples of how the gospels agree about the resurrection "in detail" and claim that every word is true is to create a new gospel that combines favorite passages of the four canonical accounts (avoiding the differences and contradictions) and then calling this new version the Truth (capital T). There are also other gospels that contradict the canonical four even more - why are these accounts less true?
I think that the bible represents the thinking of the people who wrote it in the context of the time and context in which it was written. It can be read as a moral philosophy, as a political reaction against Roman rule in Jerusalem, or a good-faith effort to reform religious practices at the time. But the text itself cannot be used to establish its truth - that must remain an act of faith.
3
Very well said, Ghandi.
The Bible is a sales brochure.
And that last sentence is really all you need (at least it's all I need). No need for believing in a highly improbable being in order to love one another. Just do it.
6
I went to grad school at Columbia and I am embarrassed for you. As Mark Twain said, the best argument against Christianity is the Bible.
As you are a professional academic I suggest you read it.
11
A few weeks ago, the Jesuit priest at the church where I sing in the choir said, "God pursues us." I am not Catholic, but somehow I found myself singing in this church a few years ago. I know why. I have looked back over my life of 60 + years with all its stupidity and arrogance and selfishness and vanity. God has pursued me.
10
Why is it assumed to be a good and noble thing to have "faith"? What does that even mean? Why does "god" so strongly desire us to have "faith"? He seems insecure. As @JamesEric says below, religion and faith are not the same thing. The concept of "faith" is something peculiar to the"Abrahamic" religions. As a recent review of a book on ancient Roman religion said, it is remarkable how limited a role “faith” played in Roman religion (and other ancient religions). Romans could unhesitatingly worship the state gods (Jupiter, Juno, etc.) in public without necessarily feeling any personal connection to them; what mattered was the correct performance of collective public rites. At the same time they could privately practice all manner of private cults, including both indigenous and foreign gods, in a generally transactional relationship. "I offer this, and you, god, will do that." The distinctive feature of Christianity (and later Islam) was that its priests claimed (as earlier Roman priests never had) the right to regulate all aspects of worshipers’ religious activity and to require their mental adherence to a prescribed dogma. (The ancients had no creeds or catechisms.) Worshipers had to “belong” to the Christian church as no one had ever "belonged" to any single Roman (or Greek, or Egyptian) cult. It was a radical idea that there are several different and distinct “religions” and that each person can have one religion only. A radical and I think regrettable transformation.
33
Religion has caused more wars and death with its ignorance and delusions. No thanks, I am a happy atheist.
19
Lutherans, Presbyterians, Jews.
At last, a Times article that discusses religion and manages not to mention evangelicals.
9
To answer your question, Ms. Boylan, a talking donkey is far more miraculous than a lasting friendship. I would have thought that was obvious.
2
Faith is believing in that which is yet unseen; the reward for that is seeing what you have always believed...in whatever form it may take. Blessings to all at this time of forgiveness.
1
I wish someone could measure the effects of "religion". Wouldn't it be fascinating to compare the number of people killed in the name of religion to the those who have been helped?
Or better yet, let's get a total of those who have been helped by the offer of shelter, food and water (those that have been really assisted) and compare that with those that have been ....
1. Murdered
2. Tortured
3. Displaced (homes burned, bombed)
4. Cast into the wilderness
5. Incarcerated
6. Incinerated
7. Brainwashed (ex: denial of science)
There's much more, but you get the picture.
I like what you usually write Jennifer. But don't let those stained glass windows and sweet stories suck you in. The people who preach "God" are ready to burn you at the stake because you are "different".
Everything you need to be a good person and to treat the planet right is tucked away in your heart already. We don't need puppetmasters or a magic man in the sky to do the right stuff or enjoy a sunrise.
Peace and love to you.
15
The scientific standard would be to measure those who have been killed in the name of religion to those who have been killed in the name of non-religion, both values normalized by their population sizes. This is the proper way to control your study and arrive at a proper conclusion about the effect of religion. Any thing else falls short of the critical thinking so many agnostics tout.
3
Actual non-fundamentalist Christians don't believe most of the things that skeptics use to discredit them.
Even in ancient times, the Bible was interpreted on several levels, from "What is the literal meaning of this story?" to "What does this teach us about the human condition?" to "What does this teach us about the ultimate questions?"
10
Thank you for your moving and honest account of your journey in faith. They say that ow you introduce poetry to children will make all the difference in whether they appreciate it as adults. The same can be said of organized religion. It's a terrible shame to renounce over a course of life a treasure trove of food for the soul just because of one bad experience. I think your journey is one that many can identify with in modern, secular times where even the phrase "I am a Christian" is super politically charged. In truth, the authentic road to God is however you find her.
6
We seem to have killed all previous gods and are left, for some reason, with one to go. Every deicide left humanity better off as man killed their gods for nonperformance. As we stand on the edge of a precipice and have been for over 70 years perhaps it would be a good time to get rid of the last god and start using our common sense. Wouldn't that be refreshing!
17
Faith is hard enough for the average person but as an LGBT it would be even harder. Knowing who you are and with a vast majority of "Church People" trying to tell you that who you are is wrong, asking God if you "have to do this?" would be beyond what most of us are asked to do.
Bless you Jennifer and thank you for your article.
7
Look for your church. You'll find it. LGBT friendly churches exist. At least in SF.
7
Metropolitan Church in Manhattan is very welcoming to everyone.
1
Lovely. I have faith. In Dogs.
5
“Who never doubted never half believed
Where doubt there truth is—'t is her shadow.“
—Philip James Bailey
3
What a lovely column.
3
As you believe, so it is for you, whether or not it is scientifically true. This is the definition of faith. Your belief serves to direct your behavior and give you a sense of security and order. Does "God" exist? I don't know. You don't know. Nobody knows. It is the belief in God which is of value. Believe as you wish, but do not seek to impose your beliefs onto me, and I shall not impose mine upon you.
4
Better to have illustrated the "Agony" with Goya's riveting version rather than the calmer and almost saccharine rendition by Raphael's teacher, Perugino. If you really want an illustration of "don't make me do this", look there.
2
Jennifer, it doesn't take a god to see the undeniable logic of our most beneficial guiding mantra; "do to others as you would have have others do to you."
5
Professor, it is great that the Church you entered into on that day was talking about justice for gay and lesbian and bisexual and trans people. Sadly, many others you might have entered that day would have been teaching that they are evil. As in most things, selecting the right Church is the key as so many are letting us down.
5
The Old Testament is part of the Christian bible. Bible-thumpers quote from the OT when it suits their purposes, but deny it has validity when it does not. they can't have it both ways. Either the Ten Commandments come along with the murders of innocents, or they have to be left behind. If Christians want to be against homosexuality because the bible says that it is wrong, then they have to agree that killing children and cutting open pregnant women is acceptable because the bible said that it was right. Jesus never disavowed any of the brutality in the scriptures from which he liberally quoted.
3
"The sermon that day was not about talking donkeys. It was about feeding the hungry. It was about working for equality. It was about justice for minorities, and gay and lesbian and bisexual and trans people. It was about giving refuge to people — including immigrants and refugees — who do not have a home.
It was, in the end, about only one thing: the necessity of loving one another."
You can recognize the need to love one another without accepting superstition. It seems you'd been doing so for much of your life.
4
Ms. Boylan, you cherry-pick Numbers 22. Got a bit further to Numbers 31. That is Moses, (short version coming here) telling his army, to slaughter the Midianites, every last man, woman and child, except, and note well, the women who have not "known a man", which women the soldiers can keep for themselves. This is not a story, allegory or parable. It's historical fact. There are some of those in the Bible.
It's easy to go through the Bible and find one after another atrocity. And it is also easy for a single person to say they got something good from the Bible or a religion. I'd say let's take the actual social role of religion and examine it from that perspective. Being of Irish descent, I'm sure Ms. Boylan is more than a little aware of the Church (among those of us of Irish descent "the Church" means only one thing) and the damage it has done to women. And that's before we get to its recent history with pedophilia.
8
"That is Moses, (short version coming here) telling his army, to slaughter the Midianites, every last man, woman and child, except, and note well, the women who have not "known a man", which women the soldiers can keep for themselves. This is not a story, allegory or parable. It's historical fact. There are some of those in the Bible."
Tom: While I agree wholeheartedly with your main point, I have to disagree with calling the old testament history. Even Israeli scholars concede that there is not a shard of evidence of the Israelites marauding in the desert for 40 years. It is, at most, folklore. (Horrible story, though!)
2
I would agree that not all of it is factual, not by a long shot. The burning bush, for one example. But some of it is history as told by the patriarchs of slave-owning societies. Further, a lot of the narratives that opponents of slavery use from the Old Testament are in fact the stories of an enslaved people whose objection to slavery was not the practice of slavery, but that they were its victims. Those same enslaved peoples were themselves slave-holders when they were free.
Balaam was on his way to curse the Israelites but wound up praising them for their effort at human dignity characterized by modesty. The people had set up their tents so that no one's entrance would face another's entrance, hence respecting border lines and personal space. It is a good way for people to get started to do the right thing by others.
1
From one Jennifer to another: And that’s why they call it faith.
2
Faith is only necessary for people who don't know the truth about life. It's really no great mystery. Truth is simply what's going on in this moment prior to putting it all into concepts. As Huang Po said "It is that which you see before you. Begin to reason about it and you immediately fall into error."
The key is to drop all thought and just pay close attention to what we actually perceive with our senses in this moment.
Unfortunately most people do not understand this. And even the ones who do, don't practice at it (i.e., meditation). So they suffer needlessly.
1
Well, there is far more to life and existence in general than what we perceive through our senses. Sorry to complicate things.
1
Are you sure about that? Things only seem complicated when we start thinking. All we ever actually experience is our sensory perceptions. The conceptual world is comprised of nothing but abstractions.
1
Faith is nothing more or less than a human need, like the need to find food, shelter, safety, companionship, love, and so on. It is neither good or bad. It simply is. Whenever Samuel Beckett was asked whether Godot in his play "Waiting for Godot" was God, he said, "No," adding that if he'd wanted to make God a character in his play he would have called him God. When asked who Godot was, he always said, "I don't know."
1
"I have come to believe that doubt is, in fact, the drive wheel of faith, not its obstacle."
Your conclusion is exactly what Christianity counts on. Every time a Christian's commonsense kicks in, they can remind themselves that doubt is an essential part of faith. I think it's a wonderfully clever tactic by the Church.
6
In case some of you have noticed this type of essay popping up in unlikely places such as the NYT this week, I suspect it is because this is, for Christians, Holy Week; Easter is this Sunday (which is also April Fools' Day!).
I do not believe the faith-doubt binary is the true center of the issue. I am a Christian (and even a pastor, educated at Princeton) who was once an atheist. I have been down the well-worn paths of intellect-reason, both as defense of faith and as repudiation.
Carefully read, the Bible clearly shows the true elemental powers of the universe to be fear and love. This can easily be seen by the multitude of times fearful people in the Bible (including Balaam) do violence. Jesus said the ne plus ultra of his teachings is love: toward God and neighbor (and neighbor is certainly the person you would otherwise despise). I am not asking any readers here to "come to my side" ("my side" thinking is also fearful). Just appreciative of Ms. Boylan's essay and the robust conversation it has engendered here.
8
Yup. That is what it comes down to. When we overcome or manage our fear we are better people to other people. What is the opposite of love? Fear.
We are here to love God and love others. Our distorted nature makes that impossible for most people. The road of faith takes us a teeny teeny bit closer to the goal. That teeny bit makes a big difference. Somewhere inside, our essential nature is love.
2
I see faith as a way of avoiding fear associated with the unpredictable and uncertain nature of life. If we can attribute events to a rational and loving cosmic plan (even when we are forced to acknowledge that the plan is beyond our understanding), solace can be found in even the most painful suffering. Life is scary, so I get the appeal.
At the same time, faith presents dangers - a sense of quietism that accepts injustice or tragedy as part of a bigger plan rather than fight to seek justice or prevent future tragedy, a defensive tendency to perceive the non-faithful as a threat and so treat them with prejudice and persecution, pressure to resolve the dissonance between dogmatic faith and observable evidence by denying the evidence, and making one vulnerable to manipulation by those who would exploit that faith for selfish, personal agendas (the opium of the masses). Finally, I would argue that faith in an established cosmic order (and purpose) makes it difficult to embrace or seek change, a problematic situation in a world where change is occurring at an increasing rate.
I am an atheist but I don't think religious faith is inherently bad (I have seen positive effects in others) - I do think that it is no longer an adaptive or effective strategy for understanding and interacting in the world as it is (as opposed to how we imagine it to be or wish it could be).
8
Although agony is too strong a word, faith is hard and rightfully so. It flies in the face of reason and the harder people find it to have faith in religious superstition the better off we all will be. Unfortunately, there are still too many parts of the world where religion dominates over reason and people suffer for it.
5
Here's my daily renewal of faith: Frank Page, leader of Southern Baptists, has resigned his position due to "inappropriate relationship(s)". Truly, my faith in the hypocrisy of Southern Baptists, and like-minded folks, has been confirmed.
7
Yes, my life took a turn for the better when I finally found faith - in the Church of the Flying Spagetti Monster.
7
“It was, in the end, about only one thing: the necessity of loving one another. Well, Jesus, I thought. I could get behind that.”
To avoid all the perplexities in Bible stories that made no sense to her as a girl, and not to be fooled now, it is instructive to go back to what had to be before the beginning, if the Christian claims for faith are justified.
Is it possible that God, perfect in every way, all-powerful, needing nothing, knowing everything past, future and even possible; a loving, just, merciful and forgiving Father; would summarily create, from innocent nothingness, creatures capable of suffering, knowing in advance, which ones he will consign to suffer eternally -- as promised by Jesus?
What act of his 'creature-victim' could justify this verdict of unsurpassable hate, injustice and mercilessness; all in all, the very definition of unforgiving?
“The rising sun burst over the ocean, and the light shone on our faces.” And it will continue to do so without accepting that story of hate-implacable
2
Is that a small hookah that the angel is bringing to the Christ? Couldn't be, must be symbolic, ephemeral, a sign that Jesus is in ecstasy. While the gangs and such are challenging each other over false idols and his disciples are tired to therir limits from the demands new ideas and dynamics place on our laboring bodies and minds, Jesus has his priorities right and is energized by the demands of diminishing time.
Germane is the concept of doubt. It is difficult for me to have many concepts or events clear and without doubt. Among these are my perceptions of who I and others are and such things as faith that do not fall to periods of questionning. The mere existence of so much questionning of others is overwhelming evidence that we as humans are not nearly Godlike, who is all good and deserving of our Love.
The Apocalypyic words of W.B. Yeats, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst. Are full of passionate intensity." come to mind. So many, in hairshirts and simple shifts, have tried to alert us that "the End is Near." Does this quasi-realization connect with the mistaking of quickly approaching old age, with actual old age, which is as much a state of mind as physical infirmity.
Many expect a state of eternal youth upon death, the universal symbol of true old age. Of course, this is simply my attempt to support Ms Boylan's collection of anomalies which she would like to see as integrated rather than contradictions. Blessed she is, especially in this Holy Week,
2
The sad thing about religions is that they have such a narrow view of what we are and their fealty to fantasy.
This is just a state of what we are, no one can prove me wrong.
2
The sad thing about materialists is that they have such a narrow view of what we are.
1
Hey "Eyes Open" - I like the way you think! Here's something I posted earlier here:
Here are some of the tenets of fundamaterialism:
1. First, there was nothingness. Well, we really don't know that because some of our priests, such as Father Krause, say there was fluctuations of some kind. We really have no idea how they got there - if they're there at all - but we know with absolute certainty (see Richard Lewontin) - that no intelligence or consciousness or intention were involved.
2. Then (we know not how) "something happened," and in for a few trillionths of a second, there was utter chaos, then order emerged (we have no idea how but no intelligence was involved, we know absolutely).
3. Somehow this order over 300,000 years developed into stable elements. We have absolutely no idea how this happened (Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg says, "Don't ask") but we know no intelligence was involved.
4. Somehow this order continued to maintain itself for the past 13.7 billion years - we have no idea how but we know no intelligence was involved.
5. We strongly suspect that the life that "emerged" ("emergence" is a non explanation we use to explain this) is nothing but non-intelligent purely physical (which has no meaning - see Stanford philosophy online) "stuff" but lengthy conferences have not enabled us to define "life"
6. We absolutely know that reason, experience consciousness, emotion etc are "nothing but" non mental matter.
Utter irrationality posing as science.
Faith should be agonizing, because simply put it is believing things you do not know are true. When faith involves a gentle and realistic optimism it’s a good thing, but when it involves believing that a man rose from the dead (why the author hopes this is true escapes me) it is definitely noxious. Having a deep, profound faith that certain things are true when you really have no idea that this is the case corrupts your ability to think rationally.
2
Since humans didn't make the universe, it's pretty hard for them to know everything that is "true." I find the utter faith in science alone to be more touchingly childlike than grasping that there is a power far beyond us
and yet close to us.
2
No sensible human being would ever claim to know everything that is "true." But sensible humans have a rational, evidence-based method of determining what can be termed "true." This does not (yet) include a lock-down explanation of the origin of the universe- only the religious claim to know that (and of course they are dead wrong). And there is nothing "childlike in determining the truth by the scientific method- I think you, yourself would choose this childlike faith (the scientific method) whenever you're being operated on or making a significant financial transaction. Or posting an argument in the NYT comment section for that matter.
2
Jennifer is just alright by me. I left Christianity because of fundagelicals, the prosperity-ministry heresy, dominionism, sexual abuse, protestant and catholic. The list could go on and would include the obvious errancy and contradictions and mythical source for the Bible. Read Bart Ehrman. The only alluring figure in Christianity is Jesus depicted in the first three gospels. John's no good, and Paul's Christ is just another imaginary figure. But Jesus seems to be the least important figure in all of Christianity. So there's nothing there for me. Emotional moments abound and aren't tied to any deity. Enjoy the sunset for what it is - always beautiful. Followed, of course, (and here's the resurrection myth in action) by a sunrise - equally beautiful.
3
Socrates writes a paean to reason, implicitly basing his faith on the most unreasonable religion every conjured up.
Here are some of the tenets;
1. First, there was nothingness. Well, we really don't know that because some of our priests, such as Father Krause, say there was fluctuations of some kind. We really have no idea how they got there - if they're there at all - but we know with absolute certainty (see Richard Lewontin) - that no intelligence or consciousness or intention were involved.
2. Then (we know not how) "something happened," and in for a few trillionths of a second, there was utter chaos, then order emerged (we have no idea how but no intelligence was involved, we know absolutely).
3. Somehow this order over 300,000 years developed into stable elements. We have absolutely no idea how this happened (Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg says, "Don't ask") but we know no intelligence was involved.
4. Somehow this order continued to maintain itself for the past 13.7 billion years - we have no idea how but we know no intelligence was involved.
5. We strongly suspect that the life that "emerged" ("emergence" is a non explanation we use to explain this) is nothing but non-intelligent purely physical (which has no meaning - see Stanford philosophy online) "stuff" but lengthy conferences have not enabled us to define "life"
6. We absolutely know that reason, experience consciousness, emotion etc are "nothing but" non mental matter.
Utter irrationality posing as science.
3
You poor old religious believers cannot even grasp the most simple facts about physical reality.
First, belief in physical reality is not a religion. For one thing, there are no gods. Why is that so hard to grasp?
Nobody, including Lewontin, thinks we know anything for certain. All we "know" is that there are facts which lead us to believe one thing or another. And those facts are empirical, testable. No magic fairy tales. Anyone who cares to can learn for himself how to test for the truth of those facts. Even a Christian.
Nobody knows absolutely that there was no intelligence involved. It's just that we cannot see any need for one. As Laplace said, I have no need for that hypothesis.
1
Bill as a Catholic believer says:
The misgivings expressed about the Old Testament are only explicable to someone immersed in the idea of a transcendant God infusing myth with some truth.The O.T. prefaces the truth of the New Testament which is a clumsy but accurate reflection of the faith given to the apostles and disciples of Christ while he influenced their lives.
The essential message of these wonderful images and words remains with the writer -Love Your Neighbour.
Her vision of decay setting in on childish and yet true faith is one of her loving God thru the instruments of His people-not irreligious at all.
One comment harkens to the great Church Father St.Thomas of Aquinas-doubt is the handmaid of faith;without it you can not truly believe(my simplistic recall).
1
Like the writer I was raised in a Lutheran Church. It was always clear that we would not "enter the Kingdom of Heaven except through Me". In other words you have to say you believe in the Trinity, Resurrection and all the other points in the Apostles Creed or else you are out.
All religions wish to confer order, structure and discipline to the human experience. Ex: We get married to establish a blessed union which insures we know who our kids are and that they will be nurtured to maturity. Originally, the faith include only two sacraments, baptism and communion. We now have the first two rituals along with Confirmation, Confession, Marriage, Last Rites, etc. Did I mention this also brought the Church more revenue? The church markets faith as a comfort in return for remaining in power. I think it is totally possible for us to recognize these components of the church and rise above it all to see the really important values of life. The mystical, almost pagan principles of the faith are decreasingly needed in a world where education and social awareness no longer require "miracles" to win our attention and obeisance. Immortality, eternal life, an undefined heavenly environment, punishment for the evil doers(Hitler?), etc are no longer required as much. In fact as these concepts wane we are more and more drawn to a list of the real needs of life, e.g., justice, human rights, food, clothing ,shelter, medical and education.
2
Thank you for an opinion piece that lifts up the reality that people of faith are not all greedy, arrogant bigots, and that the message people hear in a house of worship today may have a lot more to do with feeding the hungry, caring for the ostracized, and living out a call to love neighbors. I wish it was more obvious, and I wish fewer people carried scars from religion used as a weapon, but people of faith are and always have been what one teacher pointed out: we are like a pinch of yeast that quietly and unseen leavens the loaf... Sometimes, despite the hypocracy that gets far more press, people of faith, doubts and all, do make a positive contribution to the world.
3
The usual comments and articles that appear during religious seasons, especially those containing feeble attempts at interpretations of foolishness smoothed over by calling them " sacred mysteries", never offer anything interesting. Being old has few advantages, but noting how religiosity and goddisms are shriveling up as age shrivels most things, is a sign of human progress. We can all smooth things over, or didn't you notice?
4
The teachings of Jesus, when stripped from the accounts of preposterous miracles and fictitious encounters, form a simple religion of love for nature and fellow-man. Jesus’s religion has only Two Commandments, no catalog of sins, no need of intercession by priests and theologians, yet it provides guidance to cope with foreseen and unforeseen circumstances.
On the other hand, the organized Christian denominations teach a mishmash of Biblical characters, preposterous situations, and contradictory notions. All condemn many of the sins cataloged in the Old Testament, and most invent new sins to cover advances in medicine and technology. Some insist on the inerrancy of the Bible, despite the gulf of disparities between the Israelite religion of the Old Testament and the teachings of Jesus and Paul in the New Testament. Others claim to glean the essence of the Scripture without swallowing the trite miracles of talking snakes and donkeys, but still cling to the accounts of virgin birth and bodily resurrection.
Some denominations supplement Scripture. The Catholic Church reveres a pantheon of more than 10,000 dead saints, including the mother of Jesus. The Catholic Catechism is 1,425 printed pages; the entire New Testament is less than 250 densely formatted ages.
You’re not likely to find a religion of love and respect in a Christian church. You might try non-mystical Buddhism, which is not a religion but is wholly consistent with Jesus’s teachings and modern psychology.
4
Great essay. Too bad you didn't identify the church by denomination. Regrettably, it did not sound like any RC homily I've experienced over seventy years.
2
Thank you, Jennifer, for sharing a glimpse into your life's journey. Thank you, NYT, for being the vehicle for this sharing.
As to religion, faith, doubt, science ... you're an adult and don't need mine or anyone else's advice unless you ask for it. You didn't. So ignore all the "helpful" strangers and continue to walk with those who love you.
4
An old yankee farmer was walking by his pond one day when he heard a voice calling. Upon closer inspection he saw it was a frog. He picked it up, and the frog said, “Please Mr. farmer, help me. I’ve been cursed by an evil wizard, but if you kiss me it will break the spell, and I’ll become a beautiful princess and grant your every desire.” To which the farmer replied, as he slipped the frog into his pocket,. “We’ll that’s interesting, but frankly at my age I’d rather have a talking frog.”
4
There are two questions to be asked regarding faith. The first is whether a creator of the universe exists. The answer is that we don’t know but there is nothing to preclude this possibility. The second is whether the God of the Bible exists. The answer is no. History, science, and morality demonstrate that the Bible cannot be literally true. The question of theodicy - the justification of the ways of God to man, as Milton put it - remains as unanswerable as ever. A benevolent god could not have created a pain-filled nature, let alone imposed a host of unnecessary tortured upon his supposedly favorite creature, man. The Bible read as a work of fiction is as uplifting, poetic and sublime as anything created by Dante or Shakespeare. Read as the literal revelation, it is a poisonous lie. The same with faith. Understood as the experience of the universal mystery, it is beautiful and profound. Interpreted as the proof of the existence of a deity created in your own image, it is dangerous and destructive.
4
Jennifer, while most spiritual pilgrimages begin with a question of faith, they end with the fullness of experience.
There is no equation yet written by man that can quantify the experience of an authentic spiritual moment.
Moreover, while we cannot definitely know whether Jesus physically rose from the dead, we can know that his luminous philosophy endures to this day - even if his most obnoxious and vociferous adherents continue to ignore at every turn.
And it is that perennial philosophy, as echoed by great spiritual avatars across cultures and millennia, interpolated for our era, that will ultimately save souls, if there is a soul to save (as is my strong bias) - not the blather, judgementalism, and melodrama so prevalent in the religious world today.
3
Matthew - I always enjoy your forays into the perennial philosophy, which take a special kind of courage in the NY Times comments section (hmmm, I see Socrates hasn't replied to you yet!.... or Gemli....or for that matter - strange bedfellows - Richard Luettgen, who despite his vast political differences from the other two, shares their myopic, stunted and distorted understanding of the aforesaid perennial philosophy.
It's funny - David Brooks is certainly not one of my favorite columnists, but it seems that of all the NY Times OpEd writers of the past several decades, he has come closest to hinting of the relevance of the underlying contemplative vision associated with the greatest spiritual teachers (women and men, and children too - Sankara was 8 when he started teaching Advaita).
Just look - if you don't quantify but just look, what is there? Can you see any "matter" (the abstract kind, the kind that Stephen Hawking said needed "fire" to make the matter-energy equations come alive) anywhere?
It's a fiction - as much a delusion as the "old guy in the sky with a beard" - which is pretty much what Socrates, Gemli and Luettgen think sums up "religion."
Is there any faith so utterly irrational as the faith in purely dead physical stuff?
The dogmatists can't even define it. If you go far enough down the rabbit hole with them, you realize, when they say "the physical" is all there is - all there saying is: "We have no idea what's there, but we KNOW it's not conscious."
2
Ms. Boylan, I, as a baptized and confirmed Lutheran, thank you for sharing your beautiful meditation upon the nature of faith.
2
To me, this is a beautiful article despite my lack of faith in the author's religious beliefs. Having grown up in a similarly religious family, my faith was never endangered by the mere impossibilities depicted in the Bible. Even as a child, I recognized the improbable nature of miracles, but was willing to put them all down to manifestations of divine power. In other words, if I am willing to believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, immortal entity who operates beyond the human limitations of time and space... why am I nitpicking about the logistics of creation or resurrection. If indeed there is a God such as the one described in the Bible, such things are child's play.
No, it was the hallmarks of typical human failings that made me want to opt-out. Every week (sometimes 3 of 4 days a week) I dutifully sat with my parents and watched a group of people come together to sit in judgment upon others in DIRECT disobedience of an unambiguous commandment from the God they claimed to serve. The funny thing was that as me (and plenty of people my age) made our exits over the years, the church was under the mistaken impression that things like Hollywood, "political correctness," secular science textbooks or some other external thing was poisoning us against them. They were utterly incapable of turning their gaze inward.
This blindness has left churches so vulnerable to manipulation that it would comical if not for the tragic consequences.
6
Hi Jennifer,
Congratulations on living an authentic life. It's not an easy thing to do. You can have love, community, acceptance and values even without the church. The church simply isn't necessary. Whatever you choose, I wish you happiness.
Lois
5
People are inclined to have faith in some power.
Most have faith in GOD, others have faith in
free markets, political leaders, military power
and Science,etc. Despite the shortcomings of these
faiths we persist because life without faith will be
empty.Markets fail as we saw in 2008, science doesn't
explain everything,e.g., how life began, what is 95%
make up of the universe and how four forces in
standard physics model were so finely balanced
to create the universe. We believe whatever explanation
some eminent scientist or economist provides. Adding
to the confusion is the principle of uncertainty propounded
by German scientist Heisenberg. When nothing is certain
faith matters. Religion is o.k. if it is not used to
engender bigotry, pit people on each other throat.
1
It all depends on what you mean by GOD.
Ms. Boylan refers to faith in terms of things that are wonderful, meaningful, and sometimes seemingly miraculous given the struggles we all encounter in life. But such things as life-long friends and sunrises and caring people serving others with love and compassion are all things that can be verified by anyone and everyone to actually exist.
When it comes to religion most people refer to faith in terms of believing in things that cannot be verified by everyone to exist, cannot be proven by anyone to exist, and almost certainly do not exist, like, say, talking donkeys, not to mention creator deities, life after death, or a man "returning in glory to initiate the Rapture" after 2000 years.
Faith of the latter sort mentioned above is in no way necessary to enjoy, nor to have faith in, the first sort - the kinds of things that we can all agree make this life worth living.
3
If I can derive one benefit from Christianity, It is that of morality, or how to live one's life. I think Jesus probably said most of the things in the New Testament attributed to him, but even if he didn't, they are a source of morality, or how we should all co-exist in the world. Spare me the hocus-pocus of a divine being - it's the "scripture" attributed to a mortal man that I take from religion. In that way you could say I'm a follower of Jesus, and although I think his life ended on the cross, his words live on.
5
"Morality" or righteousness, is what connects us to the divine. It is a fundamental
essential reality that exists within and without us. It is the essence of God. Regardless of time, place, religion per se, the drive in humans to rise above brutishness and savagery (which are certainly present in us too) is what makes us
creatures of spirit. It is allowing that spirit to grow that is really what faith is about.
I highly recommend the short essays "Morality" and "The Tao" from CS Lewis's The Joyful Christian. Very helpful. He uses the term "natural law," the idea that certain principles have been universal through human history, not limited to any particular religion, existing in some form even in ancient Greek pagan culture.
1
Wow. Funny that this topic is being discussed even in the New York Times. This is probably the fourth or fifth time I've heard it spoken this week, mine included.
I was pulled out of Catholic School in grade 2. My parents became Jehovah's Witnesses. While I learned a lot about the bible I was missing a key factor in faith, spirituality, that connection with a higher power. Believe it or not, this missing component led to many mishaps in my life. When I decided to return to my church and find those missing link things changed radically in terms being able to associate with a motivating force and a better life.
I don't think anyone can impose a faith or religion on anyone else, children included, but an introduction to spirituality, that feeling of belonging to a bigger presence would probably be a better way. Perhaps we just have to come around to it ourselves in our own good time.
3
This is an excellent essay about what faith is or should be. I spent my childhood and adolescent years, ten in total, in a Jesuit educational institution. In the end, my faith deteriorated to the level of agnosticism.
After many years of not believing, I realized that the cause was very simple: I had allowed the controversial divine attributes of Christ to obscure his humanistic example. Life, of course, is about the latter here and now, not a delayed effect with no practical implications to those around me.
3
In re talking ass: Well, I would say, "That's what comes of skipping my daily thorazine." More seriously. You say agony drives faith. I say there is nothing ennobling about agony. I say the love of truth drives our freedom from the cruelty and chains of magical thinking. I say these kind of "reflective spiritual pieces" have the potential to corrupt our intellectual independence. I am saddened by the Times' consistent promotion of these forays into delusion.
11
Jennifer: Beautiful story, beautifully told.
Church: First my kids stopped going...then my wife and then finally I did. I miss Easter the most because unlike Christmas it's not a secular holiday.
I've come to believe that Faith is more a Blessing than a Virtue. Thank you for sharing yours.
9
Not a secular holiday? I take it you haven't visited a store lately...
1
I really enjoyed this article and it made me pause and think about my faith. After reflecting, I came to the conclusion that I do have faith. I have faith in mankind, faith in my heart and faith in my surroundings.
But do I have faith in God was the question I posed to myself. That took longer for me to think about. I came to the conclusion again that I have faith in God. Not because of going to church but because of my inner feelings that God is out there and he will be there for us and hopefully for me.
I recently felt the need to go to church and as I looked around me, people were fidgeting and waiting for the priest to finish his sermon. I must admit the sermon was boring and I thought to myself, I wish he (the priest) would get to the point. Finally the sermon ended and you could sense the relief that mass was almost over. So why are they in church, guilt or pressure from family members like the writer of the article? Why was I in church? I am not a religious person. I really can't answer that question. But when the priest said communion and raised the host, I said to myself I have faith. Was it the priest or that feeling that God was in that host? I don't know.
Which led me back to think again about faith. Maybe faith is being kind, honest and helping our fellow human being survive in this ugly world we are living in. It's certainly not sitting in church waiting for the priest to end his sermon or there would be more people going to church.
4
We never know. We are just asked to have faith and sometimes that fails us.
Some of the comments here make valid points in themselves but they singularly fail to answer a personal need that some people feel.
Obviously a moral life can exist outside of faith. Yes, families effectively "impose" religion on their kids just as they impose political views or a decent attitude to eating vegetables (or otherwise). & yes, obviously not everyone needs or wants a faith group to belong to and that's okay.
None of these very valid points in any way changes the basic fact that for many people faith is a comfort, a way of living in hope and community and a very significant part of their existence.
4
I have to agree with what you wrote. Faith is comfort and hope. Faith is hoping that the world and the people living in this world will also have faith. Every day I get up read the paper, watch the news and sigh. That sigh is faith that the world will be okay. And a part of me is hoping that God is watching over this world, be it whatever God you are praying to.
The real Jesus was a nice Jewish boy and a committed democratic socialist who led an exemplary mortal life.
That should be plenty enough inspiration for all....and it is for me.
But to suspend all reason and 'believe' in the Resurrection is frankly Easter-Bunny-ridiculous.
Can't we all be adults about this ?
"Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.”
- Christopher Hitchens
110
We will never be rid of the agony and joy of faith in spirituality. This is because human suffering demands it. Without the promise of earthly escape from suffering, we will turn to faith in a higher power. One of my childhood friends is an agnostic/atheist counsellor, yet he marvels at the power of faith to help his clients quit drugs and alcohol. This is actually "logical" if we stop to think. Those who truly suffer turn to something beyond this life, because their is no other source of hope. The rationalist in me, content that I am "strong" in my agnosticism, must come to terms with this.
3
Jim....your friend's clients are simply replacing their addiction to drugs and alcohol with an addiction to 'God'; it's nice that it gets them off the sauce, but we're still dealing with basic addictive personality disorder.
Reason is also a source of hope.
In fact, religion has had to consistently adapt to reason over thousands of years; NOT the other way around.
But lots of people still need their opiates, even if it takes the form of religion.
18
OK Socrates---I love reason too for its humility and its teachings. Scientific fact though is cold comfort for people whose lives are marked by tragedy. They aren't all addicts either. I don't know if any of us qualify to offer hope for people who have faced very difficult circumstances. I don't want to lecture them on history and religion--or on political organizing, or on coping strategies, until I've walked in their footsteps and still have joy in my own life. It's a very personal thing, this faith.
5
Interesting comments about addictive personality disorder and reason as a source of hope. For (possibly) further insight:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/02/leslie-jamisons-the-recove...
Religion and faith are not the same thing. Faith is something specific to the Abrahamic traditions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Faith is the belief that political history has meaning and purpose. The central symbolism of Christianity is a man being tortured to death. This was a method used by the Romans to intimidate subject populations. Some African American theologians have, correctly, drawn the connection between this ancient Roman practice and lynching in the South. Things haven’t changed much in two thousand years. The resurrection of Christ is a symbol expressing the faith that such brutality will never have the last word, and that despite all evidence to the contrary, there is some purpose and goodness in human political life. Not always, but in my better moments, I still have faith.
12
Great op/ed. When I encounter folks who, for whatever reason, have doubts about the existence of God I encourage them to simply open their eyes. He's all around us.
6
Stu....that's hardly insightful.
I see around me a wondrous natural universe and myriad life forms shaped by billions of years of natural forces that are difficult for the average human mind to process because of his limited vantage point and chronically over-sized ego.
"God" is a complete no-show, except for those who like fantasy, fiction and fairy tale as chicken soup for the soul.
31
Stu, by crediting everything that's "all around us" to God you are explaining the unexplainable with the inexplicable.
Religion is by definition irrational, i.e., it entails an "explanation" by faith, not by evidence nor by reason. And since we have no answer to the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" dogmatic atheism also is irrational. Thus only agnosticism is rational, so let's just say we don't know and go on from there.
3
To say that God is everything, is to essentially make him nothing. If God is everything, I am God, so is my cup of coffee and my cat, Lucy.
3
Religious faith provides one path to understanding the meaning of life. It will not satisfy everyone, because it seems to contradict our secular ideas about the nature of reality. One person watches a sunset and sees the hand of God at work; another focuses on the physics behind both the motion of our planet and the colors generated by a natural phenomenon.
Miracles create an even sharper barrier between those who embrace faith in the supernatural and those who reject it. A miracle, by definition, defies the laws of science as we understand them, and therefore a rational person scorns them. Some miracles, however, seem to have little to do with science. When Jesus fed the five thousand with only a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish, for example, did he manufacture the additional food with a wave of his hand? Or did the example of one person willing to share his meal encourage thousands of others to emulate him? In the first version, Jesus performs a magic trick; in the second, he inspires others to create a miracle.
Human existence remains a realm full of mystery, and it may be that religious faith can help us penetrate some of its secrets. Faith in the divine, of course, may lead us down a false path, to a dead end; but even our five senses provide an imperfect guide to reality. I prefer reliance mainly on the latter, but a mind open to other possibilities may come closer to understanding the full complexity of existence.
7
JAME: I like the loves and fishes story which refers to the Sermon on the Mount, but I see it as a parable: The two loaves represent the two Tablets of the Law and the five fish represent the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses (the Torah).
Jesus expounded on these religious themes to the masses and their spirit was filled and they were satisfied. He fed their spirit, not their bellies. No miracle required.
2
I’m not religious, but I respect religion and those who are religious. The doubt that’s involved seems to be a kind of healthy skepticism that reality is based solely on the experience and sense made available to us in the ordinary conduct of our lives. That doubt is often shared by both the non-religious and the religious. The latter join with others and attempt to construct meaningful portions of their lives around such an intuition.
Many scientists share the intuition. Of recent, some have wondered whether our instruments, such as Hubble, may well suggest that some extreme distant galaxies are moving away from us faster than the speed of light, bringing into question one or more of our laws of nature. Ditto the apparent effect of dark matter as antigravity. Noone has even seen dark matter.
The self-satisfied smug that religion is a prejudice to be overcome once we become aware of what science reveals to us about nature is simply small-minded and ignores thousands of years of human creativity and thought. It also ignores the nature and importance of contemporary science. The Greeks called such mistaken certainty hubris and.... well, I call it hubris.
Thank you, Ms. Boylan, for your expression of doubt. If the rest of us recognized the importance of doubt, religious or not, we would live in a better world.
8
There are no 'laws of nature'. There are working hypotheses, used as useful approximations. Newton's 'laws', for example; useful to most engineers, but outdated as regards physicists.
Science is about what works. If something doesn't, science moves on.
1
Beautiful insight into human doubt marbled through the presence of cosmic Love beyond our ken.
My doubt insight was "If I'd been born in India, I'd be Hindu, not Catholic" and off I went. But a Swarthmore philosophy degree later, I had ridden doubt through Western wisdom and come back to the unknowable. Imagine, as a feminist, being dragged back through Quakerism to the [cringe] Catholic Church, one of the world's great Mystery religions. Agnostic or believer, it ends in Mystery.
11
If the Quaker Society of Friends had been able to stay true to its founding discovery instead of veering off into a secular humanism that lauds values and principles, you and many others might now have a home that recognizes the Mystery, and thus worships by waiting upon the Lord in spirit and in truth.
It was NOT secular humanism that led me back .... it was the affinity of the Fellowship of the Spirit that Kelley wrote about. No one failed.
1
Having being brought up Catholic in P.R.; I can still remember the warnings given to us back in early childhood and teenage years: "It is a MORTAL SIN to go to another church." Anyway, my best friend was a Methodist. I had even considered to become a priest, then, I came to my senses. So much for indoctrination.
Religion is imposed on the children by their caretakers, and they have NO CHOICE in the matter.
One comes to believe in the unbelievable, because there are many ways to affirm that illusion. Take the tooth fairy, or Santa Claus, for that matter. We had also the 3 Kings (3 Wise Men), who would leave gifts under our beds overnight, in exchange for freshly cut grass for the camels. Then came the barrage of religious themed movies during Holy Week, where you took what you saw as real. It worked, some.
In my 66 years, I have seen so many good people put their unassailable faith in a god, who can relieve their suffering (or not), and pray their hearts out, declare themselves (and others) cured in the name of such god; only die latter on, after unspeakable agonies. Afterwards, it's explained as: "It Was God's WILL." or, the classic: "God works in mysterious ways."
And life goes on. Now, I try to follow the Golden Rule, and subscribe to this: "You don’t need religion to have morals. If you can’t determine right from wrong then you lack empathy, not religion."
Maybe I'm wrong; who knows. I guess I'll find out when I die. So far, no one has managed to convince me.
92
Nationality, language, culture, economic status, and pretty much everything else in children's lives is "imposed on them" by their caretakers. Why should religion be any different?
1
“With or without religion, good people will do good and evil people will do evil, but for good people to do evil, that takes religion” Steven Weinberg.
7
Because we are overcoming nationality (if not,... we have seen the disasters), because we overcome language as a human category, because we overcome economic status and allow everyone a decent living (apart from Republicans). And so we will overcome the narrow sights of religious indoctrination.
There.
People don't need God to be good, to love and be generous. They need God to explain away all the anxieties of what we we don't understand, of the forces we fear, of all the unknowns.
If we accept that there are a lot of things that we can't explain or understand, we don't need to invent God as a shield against against all those mysteries. We can get on with our lives, we can love, be generous and be happy.
And a Sunday morning sunrise is just as awesome for us Atheists as it is to believers.
57
Several years back you will recall the Met did Prince Igor. I was fortunate enough to attend. At one particular point the Met chorus came out into the boxes on each side of Orchestra on the Parterre level to sing. It was amazing. It was spiritual. It was celestial.
As an non-believer I thought if there is ever proof of god Opera is it.
But I don't think there is proof of god. And if you think having faith is hard, try going without it. Being a part of the rhythm of the Universe is a comfort that doesn't depend on any sort of club or feeling of superiority. It just is.
13
Well,. it's sweet that the writer has lad long-term friendships, but that does not bear on the question of whether "faith" relates to anything real outside ourselves.
With respect to faith, I don't think anyone has ever improved on Emily
Dickinson's quatrain on the subject:
"Faith is a fine invention
For gentlemen who see.
But microscopes are prudent
In an emergency."
36
The real agony is reading these saccharine paeans to faith.
"I have come to believe that doubt is, in fact, the drive wheel of faith, not its obstacle."
I'm sorry, but this ever so common trope is obnoxious. The drive wheel of faith is what is wished for; all of us doubt things - and many of us consider doubt to be the beginning of wisdom - but "faith" was concocted to justify preferences.
All this standard-issue emoting about sunsets and the "miracle" of friendships aside, faith is, as Ambrose Bierce defined it, "belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."
There must be a religious holiday approaching. ;-)
42
Very few people actually "choose" their "faith". It is foisted upon them by family or society and leaves so many desperately psychologically(spiritually) scarred.
"Faith" is a desperate cry of emptiness, seeking fulfillment in the confidence trick of religion, rather than the beauty of knowledge and scholarship.
35
And the acceptance of not knowing. I have not been burdened with childhood indoctrination and haven't acquired anything like faith along the way. I'm sorry that people are praying for my soul- surely there are better things for them to do. As I tell my dear religious aunt, "If there's to be a judgment, I'll be judged on my actions, not my thoughts."
4
We all have faith in something. I wish we could de-couple the word from its religious context. I don't have faith in God, but I do have faith in the power of certain practices, habits or rituals to ensure that I remain a person who can act with integrity. I also have tremendous faith in science to find the correct answers to many problems, despite plentiful evidence that it does not always do so, and that it often leads us astray or misses things. But I have faith in it anyway.
1
People with strong religious inclinations seem the think people who are not religious are inferior. Bad. Heathens. Even evil.
How wrong they are. Spirituality, like so many of the other things that make us human, is part of nature. You are born with it, or may develop it. But it doesn't make you a better person. Only your actions can do that.
15
Faith is what religion gives you because it has no evidence.
Also note that christianity gave us Donald Trump.
46
And Hitler and Stalin were avowed atheists. Silly argument, even if you think that guy is really a Christian.
4
I was not talking about Trump's religion, but his christian supporters who made this nightmare possible.
Not an argument, just what's right in front of us.
Lots of christian countries exist with evil dictators in charge.
It's not hard to believe that something is bigger than yourself. Where the challenge comes is developing a conception of what that is. I have found it useful to believe in a higher power. I have found it useful to pray. Does this mean that I believe in an entity that rules the Universe? I can't make that connection. On the other hand, all the science of mankind doesn't for a moment suggest to me that that entity can't exist. I am just as baffled when scientists like Stephen Hawking and Neil Degrasse Tyson suggest that the theory of the big bang or knowing that there are black holes and quantum physics proves that such an entity cannot exist. As far as I can tell faith in God is a decision we make because we believe that faith serves us better than disbelief. Since we can't really agree on what consciousness is, or if it even exists, we can't use science to help us with our desire for an emotional or intellectual understanding of what is greater than man. Finally, this has nothing to do with organized religion, which is demonstrably a liability to our progress as a species.
12
It's interesting that the astronomer/physicist who was the author of the Big Bang theory, Georges Lemaitre, was also a Roman Catholic priest. Religious faith and science can coexist.
1
I think that faith without doubt is not faith--it's simply coasting, either lazily or smugly or maybe something else, but not faith. Doubt enables us, actually forces us, to keep considering our faith and thereby strengthening our faith. Talking donkeys are neither game changers nor game breakers. They are wonderful little stories that just might initiate other stories (or "jokes" in your case--a good one!) and lead to yet more "questioning" or interrogating or pondering our faith. And that is something we need to do all the time to remind ourselves how restorative and inspiring it is, even in moments of doubt. And, certainly for me, how essential it is. I hope you are your friends continue to enjoy those sunrises and faith discussions for decades.
12
When evidence against a proposition (doubt) reinforces your belief in something (faith), that's an unfalsifiable proposition and a type of logical fallacy.
2
The author just happened to stumble upon a sermon that was trying to teach all the things that Jesus taught. If she had instead stumbled across a fiery evangelical sermon, the outcome might have been quite different. Many people can experience the spiritual feelings and connectedness she describes at the end of the article without having to step foot in a church.
14
If you think faith is hard, try skepticism. Many an agnostic who have been raised in deep religious faith, have struggled for years before finally coming to terms with their doubts. They had to finally admit that faith no longer worked for them. It was one of the most difficult things they ever did. I ought to know.
36
Every word unveils its truth in our consciousness - as Steven Pinker writes there is no fixed "meaning" tag in our brain for a word. The context and the state of conscious mind manifests the meaning to the mind for a moment in the continuos time space causality experience of our life. Yes, the scripture and sermons encapsulates the metaphors and stories and philosophies that helps or hurts the purification of conscious mind. We can use it or reject it on our own choice. It does not reduces its utility. But we can not ignore our life's experience - it is only guide we have, "contemplate what you have done, contemplate what you thought" as stated in Upanishad. The question will come out and you have to seek answers - the answers that is not available on secular world. Ultimately you have to seek an entry pass for the spiritual world if you like to get the experience of "real life".
1
Faith has the same relationship to doubt as courage has to fear.
9
Beautiful article. While the comments section of the New York Times is full of atheist scolds who almost invariably claim that all bad things in the world, like war, are the result of religion (really? there were never power struggles between people or conflicts over land etc. that weren’t about religion?), I have to confess that I appreciate, from time to time, a piece which reminds us of the bigger issues in life—even if they may intersect with the concerns of (gasp!) religion. Thanks for this wonderful op-ed.
31
Believe it or not, I actually have what I view as a compassionate reason for being an atheist scold. Theism is like a gun. In the hands of a responsible owner, it can be quite beneficial. But a culture of broad theistic permission gives less responsible practitioners an environment to prey on others.
Atheist scolds are like gun control advocates. There are some extremists who want to ban all guns everywhere, but by and large most of us are only out to nudge society toward a more temperate position that is less permissible to the excesses of religion.
2
"full of atheist scolds"
I'm very happy to see that atheists are speaking up, but not at all surprised to see uncharitable descriptions like yours. I'm an atheist and I have never for a moment thought that "all bad things in the world, like war, are the result of religion".
I'd put it this way: Among the many bad things in the world which are caused by human failings, we must include religions, because every reasonable criteria so far used indicates them to be false and unnecessary accounts of our world, however well-meaning some of them may be.
Consider yourself scolded. Now, can we talk about something far more commonplace - religious scolds?
4
"atheist scolds who almost invariably claim that all bad things in the world, like war, are the result of religion"
Well, since YOU bring it up...
Interesting column considering the author is younger than I by a number of years. My "faith" was broken by a lifetime career of being a scientist starting at about age 10 when logic and thinking took over for good. Questioning and not getting any answers will do that. There may be a god or gods but I haven't seen one yet. If one shows up, let me know so I can collect data about it. Other people are welcome to hold their faith and believe in a god or gods. In my lifetime, I have seen all too many of the faithful fail to live up to their own religious precepts and seen more hypocrisy than anything else. Just don't try to put your religion into our laws or try to convince me they do exist. Evangelicals can stop trying anytime to codify their ideas into law.
81
What is the ultimate source of energy?
1
"What is the ultimate source of energy?"
Study some physics. Physics is all there is.
Paul, good question but I do not believe it is God.
3
It's predictable that whenever someone writes about their religious faith, there will be the usual somewhat (and I use that word to be generous) patronizing responses that religion is bad, or useless, or a delusion that really smart people have grown out of. Doubt is clearly not part of their worldview.
There is certainty, and there is smug certainty. The latter is condescending whether is comes from those whose experiences have led them to value faith, or to not value it.
For me, choosing faith (and yes, it was a choice) has helped me grow into a more compassionate person. If some of you managed without it, that's great. But please don't sneer.
49
Is there anything quite as smug as believing the entire universe is tailored to suit humanity in their pursuit of salvation? I’ve been an atheist for many years now, and while I may feel a tingle of superiority whenever I hear someone explain how the Earth is 6,000 years old, or Muhamad rode to heaven on a flying horse, I don’t think I could ever reach a theist’s level of hubris.
When I speak, I speak for myself. I do not attach divine authority or inspiration to my decisions. I am a humble human, one of seven billion on a pale, blue rock in the midst of a cosmic vortex. One day I will die, and the stardust in my molecules will be recycled by other organisms. This is fine.
63
And recognize that is a PERSONAL choice. If you write an OpEd in the NYTimes or otherwise publicly declare your "faith" there are people who won't agree.
And it's amazing to me, as a non-believer how condescending people of "faith" can be. It's as if they belong to a secret club the rest of us are too blind to get into.
So that knife cuts both ways.
13
Yes Deb, what kind of bugs me is how for at least the readers of the column who chose to post comments, many are driven by a zeal and almost a desperation to debunk the beliefs of others.
But one of the many things I liked about the column was that Jennifer does NOT say, "Here's what I believe, so that's what you must believe too." Instead, she starts with the somewhat-goofy story of the talking donkey as a segue into her 60 year winding-road journey of faith. Her message is, "Here's my experience, maybe you'll find some inspiration in it, that's all."
A little bonus, of course, was the revealing of how she fit in with the old guys. Having been a teenage boy myself back in that era, I was wondering how this girl had this life-long bond with these boys. And the huge bonus of the column was the explanation of all that, and how that part of her winding road fit into everything, and how that wasn't a barrier to their wonderful friendship.
2
Many of the stories of the Bible are not going to make sense until one is given that same Spirit by which they were written. I like your statement that "doubt is the drive wheel of faith," but would expand it beyond "doubt" to hungering and thirsting after what is right and true. When the pangs of this hunger are not blunted by some idolatry of one kind or another, but remain sharp, even through despair, we are prepared to receive that same Spirit that wrote the Scriptures: that is the inward resurrection to life in faith.
11
So the author was persuaded of the importance of faith because she heard a sermon about tolerance? That one does not flow from the other -- in either direction -- is so obvious as to be self-evident. As the great Christopher Hitchens once pointed out, churches, mosques, and synagogues from Belfast to Bombay to Beirut are far more likely to preach messages of hatred and violence than messages of tolerance and kindness. If this believer had gone into a fire-breathing evangelical church that promoted a homophobic message, would she have found her faith there? Surely not, but that says much more about the decency of her own moral instincts than about "faith." Indeed, it is almost entirely from the secular world that we get notions of tolerance or even appreciation for those different than us, in particular on matters relating to sex and gender. Like many decent people she equates "faith" with service and kindness to others, but the faith she professes is humanist, not theological.
126
Christopher Hitchens was deliberately, invincibly ignorant about the actual lives of people of faith. He did know how to turn a phrase, but that's about the most that can be said for his critiques of religion.
7
Brilliant observations (as many seemingly 'obvious' observations are).
We chose our faiths, our faiths don't chose us. As humans, frail though we might be, we tend to chose faiths and ideologies that confirm our own beliefs.
When Voltaire noted "if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him," he was really just acknowledging that we probably had invented him.
4
Jennifer,
Welcome...to the World of Faith...and true Happiness.
Do unto others, as we would have others, do unto us.
Have love for one another. Love for yourself, and love for the Creator of all of this.
The journey...is worth it.
9
Happiness has ZERO to do with religious faith. Happiness comes from being loving, kind, and unselfish, which themselves have no necessary connection with irrational belief systems whatsoever. If your irrational "faith" contributes to making you more loving, kinder, and more unselfish, it will indeed make you happier. (Think how miserable a totally selfish jerk like Trump really is--it's obvious, isn't it?) And Jesus was the best role model for becoming happy humanity will ever have. But you don't have to "believe in" him or have "faith" in a non-existent God to be as happy as Mother Teresa. You just have to be as loving, kind, and unselfish as she was. End of discussion.
1
You ask if you can call your friends bordering on 60 "anything but old men." I am 57, so the answer is no, you may not.
Your article reminds me of something I read a while ago about the beauty of nature and faith. I forget the source, but the question was this: Why can't I enjoy a beautiful sunset without believing there are angels on the other side of it.?
105
Being good to each other is not the monopoly of any religion and in fact does not require religion at all. In fact religion is perhaps the single greatest source for hate and harm to innocent people. I see little actual reflection and insight here.
And I dont see the agony either outside of the unstated fear of our mortality.
But i do see one exceptional fact that removes doubt about one thing: that while religion has actually little to do with the author's revelation, her good and admirable heart is on display. Her inability to transcend the typical cultural trap of crediting as the only source for love the strongest source for hate, her heart is a good thing for this earth.
42
I was born in 1952. When I acquired language, irony and coincidence were two different concepts. Ditto for wit and sarcasm. DITTO FOR FAITH AND RELIGION.
It has been many years since I've seen people talking about their "religion". It's always their "faith". That has effectively rendered my own "faiths" null. I have faith that an object, when dropped, will fall toward the earth. I have faith that the US will still be an entity when I am no longer one. Those things aren't religion, they're faith, albeit informed. They're a "best bet -- but you never know".
I think the use of different words to display different meanings or nuances is a good idea, despite the advent of Webster's III. Am I alone in that?
24
No, you are not alone at all in that, Alan. And while I'm here, I would like to take this opportunity to emphasize that Scotch is a drink and Scottish is a nationality.
4
I think as long as you are standing on planet Earth you can pretty much take as fact the idea that a dropped object will fall.
That's science.
You don't need faith for that.
2
You are not. Thank you for reminding the masses of the difference between religion and faith. Now if somebody could explain the difference between being an atheist and an agnostic, we would certainly advance the debate and there would be a not insignificant number of self-professed atheists who would discover themselves to be agnostic.
"Listen: I do not know if an actual person named Jesus rose from the dead. I hope that this is true, but I don’t know. I wasn’t there."
Oh, Jennifer....there's simply no reason to lose your sense of reason just because life is beautiful, nature is breathtaking and humans are the absolute worst suckers for storytelling.
Humanity is finally starting to ease out of the medieval religious darkness that has been concussed into human brains for eons and there you go getting all mentally weak-kneed as you have a mini-relapse during one of Christianity's 'holy weeks'.
Reason has come a long way over the centuries, but there is much more work to be done and 'thoughts and prayers' are about as useful good men doing nothing in the face of evil.
Sure the buildings and the music are nice, but the logic fails...badly.
Snap out it, get a hold of yourself, think things through, and come to your senses.
Use your head.
207
Wow, Socarates, I often like your comments, but you missed it badly this time, and I wonder if you ever sense an abundant life? There are plenty of Christians who don't know if there was a person who physically rose from the dead but we've seen other miracles as good or great as that one, circumstances or relationships that point to something far bigger than ourselves, and acknowledge that if "we're it" then the world is less hope-filled than we'd want. Western Christianity is currently self-sorting the value of all those buildings and stained-glass windows. As Therese of Avila said, "You are the hands, the feet of the risen Christ:" True disciples of Jesus actively oppose evil and recognize the abundant life this author experienced at the beach. It's churches like the one the author stepped in to that prove that self-serving sanctimony--to which you rightly object--is rightly being challenged, as it was by the real-or-not-real Jesus two thousand years ago.
23
Anyone who claims to know what a “true Christian” does, has a pretty big chip on their shoulder. After 2000 years and 600 different sects, I don’t believe anyone has any idea what a true Christian should do.
10
A little arrogant and demeaning here, "Socrates"? You are painting with too broad a brush. Progressive faith communities in the US are doing great work healing and repairing the world. We provide ongoing caring community, support, and hope to people struggling with every kind of difficulty. We are growing organic food sustainably for the hungry, bringing dignity to the unhoused, and so much more. And we are well educated, reality-based, social justice activists.
11
Yes, faith and doubt go hand in hand. That's why we call it faith. Some segments of Christianity, for some reason, need to believe that faith is about certainty. It is not. One of my favorite lines from the gospels is the one uttered by a Roman official to Jesus, "I believe; help my unbelief." There is certainly no rejection by Jesus for that. Faith is belief in what we cannot see and cannot prove. Christianity lived well should be challenging, not easy.
81
Oh for goodness' sake.
Will we children of the 70s ever grow out of thinking our every thought and emotion is worth broadcasting?
87
I am 60 and so are most of my friends. We don't broadcast our every thought and emotion - in fact, we are a relatively stoic bunch!
4
I don't think this is about "thinking our every thought and emotion is worth broadcasting".
It's about broadening understanding, which, since been the beginning of time, has been, for the most part, a positive process that has allowed us to become better stewards of each other, and the planet. If you are comfortable with "your" station in life, sweet, but please don't criticize someones willingness to help others understand and grow. It might actually end up will more "adults in the room". which is something sorely needed.
pax vobiscum (recovering catholic) (insert smiley face)
5
Faith is knowledge--the certainty that you can depend utterly upon a friend or family member, upon nature's cycles, upon the fruits of science. In the spiritual sense, faith is knowledge infused with love and hope--no more.
In this time of man we have all we need to be faithful to the idea of human cooperation and survival. We have outgrown the myths as literal truths, and seen the error of our ways as the most destructive species on earth.
I'm 60 too but this is nowhere near the end of life. We have come too far to go quietly as so many forces try to bring back the dark. Strength to you and your crew.
9
Nice essay. Yes, in the end, it's all about love: loving one another the way we want to be loved. Unconditionally.
It's often said that God is Love. It's less often recognized that Love is God.
58
Nicely said, Mr. McPherson. As a lifelong student of evolution, I think you're closing in on the adaptive origins of faith and religion.
Our behavior, like our anatomy, is the contingent outcome of 3.5 billion years of 'random' (non-selective) chance and ordered natural selection. In the last 45 million years or so, we evolved as social primates; IMO, the behavioral driver called 'love' arose before then, as an adaptation for life in groups of related individuals. We've been hominids for about 7 million years; again IMO, our capacity for 'culture' is probably that old. Fossils of "anatomically modern" *Homo sapiens* begin to appear 300,000 years ago. Archaeological evidence for "behavioral modernity", the adaptation that has allowed *H. sapiens* to dominate the planet is at least 130,000 years old. Clear evidence for group ritual ("religion"), though no older than 32,000 years for our own species, is 300,000 years for our close relative *H. neandertalensis*. Once more IMO, we'll find that our minds and bodies evolved in synchrony.
Scholars of cultural evolution argue that "ritual practices generate belief and belonging in participants by activating multiple social–psychological mechanisms" (jstor.org/stable/3108616). That is, the social phenomenon of "religion" is a cultural adaptation to the same evolutionary forces that shaped our brains. It's a collective expression of the private impulse to faith that led the author out of her apartment and into a nearby church pew.
2
Spot on observation about doubt. It is NOT the opposite of faith; indifference is the opposite of faith. Doubt is faith's recognition of its own potential fallibility; doubt is the common sense of faith. Thank you for sharing your doubts, your memories, and your faith.
33
When you say indifference is the opposite of faith, you deny the experience of millions who have given sincere, perhaps agonising thought to matters of faith and have concluded that we do not believe in any religion. Our lack of faith cannot be dismissed so arrogantly.
1
What is it you felt was missing? I must say, feeling the divine by looking at a sunrise is a copout. If you had the strength to stand behind the life you have led, you'd be afflicted with less doubt, and satisfied to appreciate the universe for what it is, and not need to find illusory meaning in the natural world.
As I head toward 60, I'm pleased that my nerve is holding, and I expect to face old age and eventual death with only what I've created in my life. I find that comforting.
132
Spot on. I was never a believer in supernatural powers, being or forces, and with each passing year this disbelief has served me very well. I find comfort in the life I have led, with little to no illusions or doubt.
30
It is sad to see hardhearted responses such as yours, with little understanding of the amazing strength that Jennifer Finney Boylan indeed has displayed over many years, along with her doubts. (As Jesus also had strength along with his painful doubts--to the point of sweating blood!) And, creation--the natural world even, of which we are a part-- is good, is it not? And does it not help us to see an aspect of the glory of God?
3
The Universe is a fountain of spirituality. No lines between ourselves and life's creation. It is a torrent of meaning. Teachings may shape this realization, revealing deeper connections- or block them, desiccating them with empty words. Living a life is a process of discovery and re-discovery. But in the end, our tears, tragedies and joys become the greatest teachers- re-opening the conduit to what is real- the boundless joy of what is. Agony and Ecstasy.
10
Although I enjoyed reading this article, I don't quite understand the title. Where's the agony here? If long term friendships and a sunrise do it for you, seems to me you've taken the path the least resistance. You might want to watch Paolo Sorrentino's beautifully expressive film, The Great Beauty, especially the last 30 minutes or after a 104 year old nun comes on the scene.
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Beautiful essay. We are the same age & we have had very similar life experiences. I'm still very close with friends from my catholic elementary school (and the public school) & we, too, have these conversations. We all are turning 60 this year. . . and we're not OLD! We talk, watch sunrises & sunsets. I don't know about any of it, either. I've come to say: "Please, Jesus, DO make me do it!" All the paid work in my life, doesn't add up to the value of the smallest amount of my ongoing volunteer work: yes, helping the least of my brothers (Matthew 25). Anyway, I'll be in a church pew on this Easter Sunday. I wish that I could be there with you & yours. I'd put my arms around you all.
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Thanks for the article. It was a nice way to start the last day of Lent (at least, I think it's the last day of Lent).
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