Confessions 2009

What is the center of my “belief” in Christianity?

We can set aside, for now, questions about the historicity of the gospel accounts preserved in the New Testament – the good questions of historicity, that is, not the silly ones (silly ones might include, but are not limited to, “did Jesus really exist?” and “did Jesus spend years in India studying Hinduism and Buddhism?”).

I am glad to jump into critical discussions concerning the writing and editing process of the gospels, and to probe the warp and woof underlying the texts – what did the words and symbols mean, in ancient Judea, in the Aramaic language?

Let us also set aside comparisons of religions and their descriptions of heaven, hell, G-d, the devil, immortality, and morality, etc., etc. I am not entirely disinterested in debates along those lines, but I am certainly less interested than I used to be. Less interested for now, anyway.

I am a believer in the scientific method, and hold two degrees in science fields. I am an amateur statistical theoretician. I am at the same time a believer in things unscientific, and ungraspable by the scientific method.

Can science and faith – I think this is a false and ill-defined dichotomy for most, but I will state the question in its popular form – be reconciled? Is the Bible scientifically accurate, especially given the historical context in which it was written? Does the cosmos present evidence of a creator, or evidence that we are uncreated? All good and fun questions. For later.

Am I, like others I know, the recipient of some sudden revelation? Not yet. Was I turned on a dime from a virulent form of atheism? No. Childhood trauma? Nope. Childhood privilege? Not so you’d notice.

If G-d exists, why do good people suffer and bad people prosper? What of the problem of pain? Does G-d care?

All good questions, that have been explored, and will (I hope) continue to be explored in my life to come.

But for now, I begin with the core of my faith:

(1)  the guy-in-the-mirror (GITM). That is the fellow you see every morning, looking back at you. Where did he come from? Why doesn’t he get any older or younger, even though his face ages? And where is he going? Materialism and atheism are silent in the face of these questions. I await their replies. Who is the GITM? He is, of course, no proof of the validity of Christianity per se. But he is in my opinion possibly the greatest overlooked evidence of the supernatural in most people’s lives. I think most people forget he is there.

(2)  The general tone of the Old and New Testaments concerning the leading figures in the Judeo-Christian religion: to wit, they are largely numb-skulls. The Bible is worth reading if only for that. It reads – beginning with Adam and Eve blame-shifting original sin, to St. Peter literally asking Christ “what about him?” after being told by Our Savior some very sobering news – it reads as an almost unbroken record of flawed, weak, ne’er-do-wells being chosen by G-d to step up at various touch-points in history, some hundreds of years apart. Although I haven’t yet dipped more than a toe into the other holy books of other religions, I wonder if they have the same sort of detached, amused viewpoint regarding their founders and leaders.

(3)  Something happened. I find historical evidence compelling to a high degree: something very odd happened 2,000-plus years ago in Judea. Something beyond the boundaries of mere apocalyptic journeyman preaching. We can argue over detail, but in doing so, we can’t miss the broad stroke: what in heaven’s name happened?

And that’s about it. That’s the core, around which my understanding of the non-scientific, supernatural world crystallizes, rock-candy on a string.

The Big Rock-Candy Mountain.