Void?

I got in a conversation with my friend Kristin the other day about agnosticism. Here's the gist of what I was telling her:

I think deep down I am an agnostic. I think there are a lot of different levels that the term can apply to. The general sense that we use the term generally refers to those who believe that whatever is Absolute cannot be known. Therefore, all our religions aiming at salvation are mere guesses at a reality so far beyond us that there's no hope of truly having any true understanding of it all. I also think that often there is a separation between apathetic agnostics who just don't care and don't like being forced to think hard, and intellectual agnostics who have considered as many angles as possible and given up at the complexity of the whole thing. I think I lean towards the latter. The more I learn of other faiths, of history, and of human experience, the more I feel resigned to this hopeless state. I find myself with this sad thought that maybe all our religion and striving after salvation (however we understand that term) is some kind of means to distract ourselves from the haunting silence we hear in the realm we would like to believe is filled with "God".

The book I just finished reading talked about how Buddhism is a religion that heard that same haunting silence and embraced it. Ultimately, it showed that Buddhism's idea of nirvana has no concern for a 'self' or individual soul and what happens to it in the metaphysical realm beyond ours. Instead, Buddhism tries to deal openly and honestly with the eternal void. Instead of painting a mythic picture of a world beyond the world they accept the silence of the grave and claim salvation to be a return to this silence. Essentially I think Buddhism is a religion for intellectually motivated agnostics. It focuses on intangible, ineffable nature of the Absolute reality beyond ours, and seeks to find some kind of harmony in that unknown.

Talking with Kristin, I remembered the general attitude of the members of my church growing up. I would consistently be advised of who not to read and what not to listen to. Why? Because I would "lose my faith". I have no doubt that they would probably have informed me that seeking to understand Buddhism would be a detriment to my faith. Instead, I should read the Bible through 5 times a year, and read commentaries from 1930something by good doctrinally sound preachers who in reality knew the Bible in its original languages and still had no idea what it said. The basic idea was to surround oneself with a fabricated ignorance for the sake of drowning out all the outside influences that might make me question if my faith was true - like I had stumbled on faith and now I had to surround it with some stale formaldehyde belief system to preserve a faith that was real but not alive. Needless to say it didn't work. So, here I am, with who knows how many million others who tasted the forbidden fruit of "outside knowledge" and have thus slipped into agnosticism. All that, except . . . .

The truth is that the only true faith is living faith. Holding to faith in some formaldehyde jar is worthless, as is keeping a faith which is alive yet still caged up in a like a display in some denominational zoo, so as to say "here is what a good Baptist looks like . . ." So, to the many agnostics who have recognized such worthlessness and left it behind, I salute you. Yet, what of Jesus? Wasn't he one who showed an intrinsic disrespect for tradtion and mechanical doctrinal systems? In fact, I think the gospel has much to say to the situation of agnostics.

Think of Jesus, who grew up under oppression. Imagine the tension he must have felt hearing of a God who loved his people yet let them suffer under foreign rule. Maybe, Jesus too suffered from doubt. Imagine Jesus looking out over an eager Jewish militia ready to terrorize the Roman rulers, and realizing there was no hope that they could beat the Romans, even with God "on their side". Imagine in that Jesus who had a heart for the forgotten members of society, realizing the greed of God's people was the cause of the suffering of those whom God had seemingly forgotten. Imagine Jesus living his life for the sake of seeing the world set as God would have it . . . . and then as his reward, he is struck in the face by religious henchmen and the religious rulers themselves. The "holy" members of Israel's society spit on him. He suffers a flogging that would most likely have killed him, but before he could bleed to death from that, he is crucified to cause the last 6 hours of his life to end in agony that we cannot understand. . . . When Jesus is in the garden praying that all of this would not happen, when he is on the cross crying out, when Jesus "takes on the sins of the world", I am not satisfied with some shallow interpretation that he chose this. Instead on the cross, I see a man looking straight into the most horrifying doubt anyone could imagine. I see a man wrestling intensely with the very thing that religion would tell me to flee: the opportunity to lose faith.

If the members of my church had been right, then Jesus' death could have been much simpler. He could have live out his days well into his 80's with a family, a large school of disciples providing for his needs, and done his best to sheild himself from doubt at all costs. Instead, scorned by God himself, so it seemed, Jesus faced the void that Buddha chose to embrace. And, wrestling back and forth he ends his life with a statement of faith. "Father into your hands I commit my spirit." I don't see this automatically as a triumph. The cross was a defeat into victory. Also this statement, I can see as a hopeless proclamation of hope. An innocent man, an unreconizable Messiah wrestles with the silence of God in the face of his own suffering. Where was God? Why would he allow such a thing to happen? Forget all the attonement theories that didn't come about until decades later. Jesus faced the haunting silence of death, but never gave up. The gospel has plenty to say to agnostics!

And here's the kicker:
To have a faith that matters, we must face our doubts. Wrapping myself in some guise of doctrinal self-assurance may protect me from doubt, but it also proves a straight jacket for true faith. The best news I had heard in some time came a little over a year ago when someone told me that faith doesn't originate with me . . . . let that sink in a little. Faith is a gift. Faith is grace. It is given to us. As a Christian I am not saved by my faith, I am saved by Jesus' faith. He gives it to me. In the face of my gravest doubts, I never need give up. Nor do I need to fear. The greatest freedom that Christ provides us is that we need not be afraid of what we experience. No doubt can separate me from his love. Christ has set me free to face my doubts as he faced his, and still have an informed naivete that allows me to trust, to leave my spirit in God's hands even after I have no reason to believe God is present. He gives me his own faith, one that lives past its own death.

Christian faith sees the same void that agnostics and Buddhists do, but in even in its most obtrusive moments it is a void that only prepares our souls for the emerging symphony. Silence is the fire, the ashes that result are the fertile soil for the intimate harmony that results somewhere beneath what had previously been audible.

"Where others only heard an endless silence, the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scriptures tell of a people being addressed and claimed by its God. Where others experienced unechoing space and the void, this people was allowed to discover for itself and others that the Absolute can [indeed] be heard and spoken to, that it is a mysteriously communicative and responsive Thou."

Doubt is not to be fled, but overcome. Silence is not cause for resignation, but anticipation that it will be filled. And faith is not projection, but a grace leading to power, freedom, and hope.