A friend recently -- and honestly -- asked on Facebook: "The question is not whether or not there is a god. The question is, why do we care?"
I think his question deserves an honest Christian response -- which, sadly, would be more than a Facebook comment might allow. So here goes.
First, it's important to recognize something essential about atheism: Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists have one thing in common. They don't believe in gods. Indeed, Christians were atheists for the first 400 years. For the Roman and Greek pagans, the Jews and the Christians of the first centuries were pagans. They had no God whose name others recognized. They were "without" gods. Even now, we Christians may seem like atheists in the eyes of people of other religions.
It's very important to recognize that when Christians use the word God, we're not describing merely the exemplary among a class of things. God isn't the apex of pantheon. In fact, Christians give enough specificity to God to make God mysterious. That is, God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That distinction alone is significant. Because sometimes I find myself agreeing with atheists that say there is no god. Because I don't intend to assert that God is merely the greatest of a whole class of somethings. God isn't "the greatest thought that can be thought" or a "Supreme Being".
This is why I think it's important to ask: "What does this God, in whom you do not believe, actually look like?" There are some popular images out there -- a cosmic policeman or bellhop, come immediately to mind -- that I don't believe in, either.
Sometimes, of course, there will be an astute atheist (who's really more an agnostic) that will assert: "I don't believe in God but I know there is Something more than the material universe". This is akin to what Robert Bellah 30 years ago called "Sheilaism". People believe there must be something, and that something they call "God". That "something" often lacks clear and concise speech, though, and quite easily runs afoul of atheism before long.
This is precisely the point at which atheism helps Christian speech. It calls for us to be clear about our theological language. There are plenty of images of God -- even in the Bible -- and therefore we must be careful the ways in which we describe God. Again, there are plenty of gods I don't believe in either. Sometimes (sadly, this is true for Christians all-too-often), God simply describes the projections of human fears, hopes, wishes, etc., onto the universe. Feuerbach wasn't wrong. Atheists can help us be clear about the way in which we are describing God.
In fact -- and this is my second thesis -- modern atheism strikes me as an absolutization of negative (or apophatic) theology -- theology, in which we try to describe God by talking about what can not be attributed to God. This was, for example, an important method for St Thomas Aquinas.
On the road of negative theology, we can travel a long way hand in hand with agnostics and atheists. But at a certain point we come to a crossroads: At this place, dogmatic atheists turn away to their own certainties and dogmas. The agnostics stay standing at the crossroads with their doubts. Fundamentalist Christians suppress their own doubts and critical questions. The first and third alternative seem both untenable to me. Only agnosticism makes sense. (This is something I develop in my book, Finding Faith.)
People with what I call "good faith" know that there is a way forward. Good faith gives us room to move forward with doubts, even if it's a difficult movement. The main trait of "good faith" is main trait is the courage to enter into the mystery of God, into unknown territory, and not become exasperated. These folks can withstand the mystery of the unknown and they can withstand their own uncertainties. In this life, as St Paul told us, "we see though a glass darkly" (1 Corinthians 13.12). It's only in the final eschaton that we shall see God face to face.
I have a theory about atheism: It develops at precisely that moment "bad faith" hasn't given us the resources to withstand all that life throws at us. That is, people -- even people like Darwin -- become atheists not because it's logical, but because it's autobiographical. Personal crisis confronts "bad faith" without the resources of "good faith". And when living with paradoxes, you either embrace them openly and live with them, or they break you open and you reject them -- in favor of the cold "reality" of human "reason" (which really isn't reason at all).
It's very possible to live in those crises with faith -- humble, open, honest hope -- but only if you're willing to let go of your own inner subjectivities. There are lots of guides through that process, and I can recommend a few good books. But the point is that we never let our own perspective -- even in suffering -- become the only perspective from which we view the world and God.
We can get a "second life" of faith, but only if we're willing to let go of certainty and embrace mystery.
Thirdly, faith is often described as an act of the will: I decide to believe something intellectually, and thus make it true. I think that's wrong. I think faith is less an act of the will and more an affective act. I don't believe because I think, I believe because I love. I'm not one who believes in God because I've intellectually weighed all the options and come through with the cold, hard objectivity of intellectual assurance. (That's part of it, but it's only the smallest part.) I believe because I have been loved into believing by a God made known in Jesus Christ. That God has hounded me all my life, and I've found that -- even in those darkest moments of suffering -- God simply wouldn't let me go.
In that way, modern atheism perpetuates a misunderstanding of the nature of good faith and bad faith. Faith isn't solely (or even primarily) an intellectual affirmation to a distinct set of propositions. Faithing is something we do every day -- in our marriages, our friendships, at work and in the classroom. It's an act of assurance -- a commitment to the pursuits of goodness, truthfulness and beauty. Modern atheists simply become apathetic -- much in the way the image of God they're often rejection is an apathetic and remote deity -- toward life, and therefore their apathy seeps into the way they approach paradox and mystery.
That's a phenomenon that we call "atheism" but I don't believe that's what it is. In fact, I think modern atheism itself doesn't exist. What seems like limited belief is a stunted form of personal spiritual growth -- a resistance to move away from "bad faith" and into "good faith".
The opposite of faith, for Christians, isn't doubt. It's idolatry. When a religious person experiences a crisis of faith, they have the opportunity to go deeper in the development of their relationship with God. But there is also the strong temptation in such moments to put something else -- a relative value -- on the throne of God, who is absolute. Every artificial god, religious simulacrum of God, or idol, begins with the absolutization of a relative value. It could be a nation, a political leader (Fuhrer) or a political or economic theory, career, sex, or money: There are many different pretenders to the throne of God in our lives.
Modern selves are idolatrous in this way. A conversion to "good faith" is the real revolution. It's the kind of revolution that frees us from our own egos. That freedom is what Christians call love.
Love isn't an emotion. It's an inner transformation where there is more to universe than we ever dared to dream or imagine, because the universe is bigger than Self. This is why, in any expression of love, God is always present.
Fourthly, the struggle between atheism and faith isn't the struggle between two teams. It drives right through the heart of every person. Myself included. Believers -- whether they admit it or not -- have an unbeliever living inside them. And unbelievers have believers residing somewhere inside them.
This is why I'm excited when folks ask questions like my friend posed on Facebook. It opens the conversation with the believer living inside them. There are spiritual dimensions to every person's life -- it's a matter of drawing those dimensions more to the surface.
There are still, of course, some atheists who are what I call "sorrowful" atheists. Those who say, "I would like to believe but I can't". These are folks who are participating, often in a way that is unclear to them, in Jesus' own cry from the cross: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" This is why I think it's important that Christians refuse language of faith that creates the image that faith is enthusiastic feeling. The subject of our faith is the story of Jesus, and in the story of Jesus as well as in the personal story of every believer, there are dark moments.
Emptiness and loneliness are part of the Christian story of the Crucified God. But they are not the only parts of the story. Sadness without some sense of hope is only a disguised apathy. Sadness and pain are not the last words of the Christian story. So Christians need patience, too -- patience with atheists and certainly patience with God.
Finally, I think every type of atheism is a theological challenge. So, for example, the type of atheism called "scientific atheism", popular in the Enlightenment, was a challenge that caused Christians to examine their fundamentalism and consider the deistic concept of God. There were also those who claimed, in effect, that there should not be a God, because if there is a God, how could it be possible that I am not a god? That was Nietzsche's attitude. Here is a challenge for the theology of human freedom: We are being challenged to show how Christian life is the way to freedom and not to slavery. We should demonstrate, that servire Deo regnare est -- to serve God offers more freedom and dignity than to play a role of God.
Sadly, though, Christians are more dismissive of atheism than we are willing to engage it. In that way, my friends' question -- "why should we care?" -- becomes a condemnation on the Church's own call to share the joy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I think his question deserves an honest Christian response -- which, sadly, would be more than a Facebook comment might allow. So here goes.
First, it's important to recognize something essential about atheism: Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists have one thing in common. They don't believe in gods. Indeed, Christians were atheists for the first 400 years. For the Roman and Greek pagans, the Jews and the Christians of the first centuries were pagans. They had no God whose name others recognized. They were "without" gods. Even now, we Christians may seem like atheists in the eyes of people of other religions.
It's very important to recognize that when Christians use the word God, we're not describing merely the exemplary among a class of things. God isn't the apex of pantheon. In fact, Christians give enough specificity to God to make God mysterious. That is, God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That distinction alone is significant. Because sometimes I find myself agreeing with atheists that say there is no god. Because I don't intend to assert that God is merely the greatest of a whole class of somethings. God isn't "the greatest thought that can be thought" or a "Supreme Being".
This is why I think it's important to ask: "What does this God, in whom you do not believe, actually look like?" There are some popular images out there -- a cosmic policeman or bellhop, come immediately to mind -- that I don't believe in, either.
Sometimes, of course, there will be an astute atheist (who's really more an agnostic) that will assert: "I don't believe in God but I know there is Something more than the material universe". This is akin to what Robert Bellah 30 years ago called "Sheilaism". People believe there must be something, and that something they call "God". That "something" often lacks clear and concise speech, though, and quite easily runs afoul of atheism before long.
This is precisely the point at which atheism helps Christian speech. It calls for us to be clear about our theological language. There are plenty of images of God -- even in the Bible -- and therefore we must be careful the ways in which we describe God. Again, there are plenty of gods I don't believe in either. Sometimes (sadly, this is true for Christians all-too-often), God simply describes the projections of human fears, hopes, wishes, etc., onto the universe. Feuerbach wasn't wrong. Atheists can help us be clear about the way in which we are describing God.
In fact -- and this is my second thesis -- modern atheism strikes me as an absolutization of negative (or apophatic) theology -- theology, in which we try to describe God by talking about what can not be attributed to God. This was, for example, an important method for St Thomas Aquinas.
On the road of negative theology, we can travel a long way hand in hand with agnostics and atheists. But at a certain point we come to a crossroads: At this place, dogmatic atheists turn away to their own certainties and dogmas. The agnostics stay standing at the crossroads with their doubts. Fundamentalist Christians suppress their own doubts and critical questions. The first and third alternative seem both untenable to me. Only agnosticism makes sense. (This is something I develop in my book, Finding Faith.)
People with what I call "good faith" know that there is a way forward. Good faith gives us room to move forward with doubts, even if it's a difficult movement. The main trait of "good faith" is main trait is the courage to enter into the mystery of God, into unknown territory, and not become exasperated. These folks can withstand the mystery of the unknown and they can withstand their own uncertainties. In this life, as St Paul told us, "we see though a glass darkly" (1 Corinthians 13.12). It's only in the final eschaton that we shall see God face to face.
I have a theory about atheism: It develops at precisely that moment "bad faith" hasn't given us the resources to withstand all that life throws at us. That is, people -- even people like Darwin -- become atheists not because it's logical, but because it's autobiographical. Personal crisis confronts "bad faith" without the resources of "good faith". And when living with paradoxes, you either embrace them openly and live with them, or they break you open and you reject them -- in favor of the cold "reality" of human "reason" (which really isn't reason at all).
It's very possible to live in those crises with faith -- humble, open, honest hope -- but only if you're willing to let go of your own inner subjectivities. There are lots of guides through that process, and I can recommend a few good books. But the point is that we never let our own perspective -- even in suffering -- become the only perspective from which we view the world and God.
We can get a "second life" of faith, but only if we're willing to let go of certainty and embrace mystery.
Thirdly, faith is often described as an act of the will: I decide to believe something intellectually, and thus make it true. I think that's wrong. I think faith is less an act of the will and more an affective act. I don't believe because I think, I believe because I love. I'm not one who believes in God because I've intellectually weighed all the options and come through with the cold, hard objectivity of intellectual assurance. (That's part of it, but it's only the smallest part.) I believe because I have been loved into believing by a God made known in Jesus Christ. That God has hounded me all my life, and I've found that -- even in those darkest moments of suffering -- God simply wouldn't let me go.
In that way, modern atheism perpetuates a misunderstanding of the nature of good faith and bad faith. Faith isn't solely (or even primarily) an intellectual affirmation to a distinct set of propositions. Faithing is something we do every day -- in our marriages, our friendships, at work and in the classroom. It's an act of assurance -- a commitment to the pursuits of goodness, truthfulness and beauty. Modern atheists simply become apathetic -- much in the way the image of God they're often rejection is an apathetic and remote deity -- toward life, and therefore their apathy seeps into the way they approach paradox and mystery.
That's a phenomenon that we call "atheism" but I don't believe that's what it is. In fact, I think modern atheism itself doesn't exist. What seems like limited belief is a stunted form of personal spiritual growth -- a resistance to move away from "bad faith" and into "good faith".
The opposite of faith, for Christians, isn't doubt. It's idolatry. When a religious person experiences a crisis of faith, they have the opportunity to go deeper in the development of their relationship with God. But there is also the strong temptation in such moments to put something else -- a relative value -- on the throne of God, who is absolute. Every artificial god, religious simulacrum of God, or idol, begins with the absolutization of a relative value. It could be a nation, a political leader (Fuhrer) or a political or economic theory, career, sex, or money: There are many different pretenders to the throne of God in our lives.
Modern selves are idolatrous in this way. A conversion to "good faith" is the real revolution. It's the kind of revolution that frees us from our own egos. That freedom is what Christians call love.
Love isn't an emotion. It's an inner transformation where there is more to universe than we ever dared to dream or imagine, because the universe is bigger than Self. This is why, in any expression of love, God is always present.
Fourthly, the struggle between atheism and faith isn't the struggle between two teams. It drives right through the heart of every person. Myself included. Believers -- whether they admit it or not -- have an unbeliever living inside them. And unbelievers have believers residing somewhere inside them.
This is why I'm excited when folks ask questions like my friend posed on Facebook. It opens the conversation with the believer living inside them. There are spiritual dimensions to every person's life -- it's a matter of drawing those dimensions more to the surface.
There are still, of course, some atheists who are what I call "sorrowful" atheists. Those who say, "I would like to believe but I can't". These are folks who are participating, often in a way that is unclear to them, in Jesus' own cry from the cross: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" This is why I think it's important that Christians refuse language of faith that creates the image that faith is enthusiastic feeling. The subject of our faith is the story of Jesus, and in the story of Jesus as well as in the personal story of every believer, there are dark moments.
Emptiness and loneliness are part of the Christian story of the Crucified God. But they are not the only parts of the story. Sadness without some sense of hope is only a disguised apathy. Sadness and pain are not the last words of the Christian story. So Christians need patience, too -- patience with atheists and certainly patience with God.
Finally, I think every type of atheism is a theological challenge. So, for example, the type of atheism called "scientific atheism", popular in the Enlightenment, was a challenge that caused Christians to examine their fundamentalism and consider the deistic concept of God. There were also those who claimed, in effect, that there should not be a God, because if there is a God, how could it be possible that I am not a god? That was Nietzsche's attitude. Here is a challenge for the theology of human freedom: We are being challenged to show how Christian life is the way to freedom and not to slavery. We should demonstrate, that servire Deo regnare est -- to serve God offers more freedom and dignity than to play a role of God.
Sadly, though, Christians are more dismissive of atheism than we are willing to engage it. In that way, my friends' question -- "why should we care?" -- becomes a condemnation on the Church's own call to share the joy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.