Ignosticism

Today I was reading an essay by Jacques Maritain. This quote struck me deeply:

“There are pseudo-atheists who believe that they do not believe in God and who in reality unconsciously believe in Him, because the God whose existence they deny is not God but something else.”

This struck me because atheism is something I have pondered lately, seriously and at length. I have had heartfelt conversations with a sincere atheist that have left me a bit rattled and musing, because she threw some challenges at my faith for which I had no answers. I can be okay with accepting that I do not have the answer to something, but I’d like to at least know what I can answer and what I can’t, along with why.

The question of a definition of God comes up in relation to these thoughts. I do not believe I have a coherent, comprehensive definition of God, and I’m not at all sure that I would want one, either. Perhaps I could phrase that better by saying I’m not at all sure it is possible to have one. Words, after all, are only symbols that point to something beyond themselves– actual entities or felt experiences or both. God is a symbol for Something that transcends any symbol or system of symbols that we might use to describe. He is to be worshiped by His creatures, not laid on a dissecting table by them. A God you can dissect is a God you can control. There is a lack of humility in this approach, and it has been said that God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. I feel like I must strive, in my following after God, to avoid intellectualizing it all away from lived experience and existential reality. We are to love God with all our minds, so I don’t think the intellect is in any way irrelevant to the spiritual task, but it should exist, along with the heart, soul, and strength, in service to the injunction to love God and one’s neighbor. I think in this manner we might properly exercise our smarts without ascribing ultimacy to them. We should want to understand what we can understand, make sense where sense is to be made, all the while having the humility to stand in awed silence before the incomprehensible.

All this brings me back to the question of a definition of God, and belief in God versus atheism. If I believe God transcends any words we might use to describe Him, to the extent that He cannot be defined in any adequate way, well then is there really nothing to discuss? To debate the existence of God one must first have a definition and if there is no definition, there can be no debate. There can only be a question of orientation and of action. In which way does one orient oneself to the question of God? With a dismissive shrug or with worship? If the latter, then in the context of a religion or in the context of silence? In community or in solitude? Do we place faith in revelations purportedly vouchsafed to others? If so, which ones?

I have had the experience of being so gripped by the story, teachings, and character of Christ that I can receive the dogma that declares Him to be the manifestation of God in the flesh with believing joy. This seems to be a response from the deepest core of my being, although I admit that I do not understand it and that there are parts of me that sometimes doubt.

 

Love as a way to the knowledge of God

“. . . ‘And I say to myself, ‘What if I’ve been believing all my life and when I come to die there’s nothing but weeds growing on my grave?’ I read that in a book. It’s awful! How– how can I get back my faith? I only believed when I was a little child, mechanically, without thinking of anything. How, how is one to prove it? I have come now to lay my soul before you and to ask you about it. If I let this chance slip, no one all my life will be able to give me the answer. How can I prove it? How can I convince myself? Oh, how unhappy I am! I stand and look about me and see that scarcely anyone else cares; no one troubles his head about it. I’m the only one who can’t stand it. It’s deady– deadly!’

” ‘No doubt. But there’s no proving it, although you can be convinced of it.’

” ‘How?’

” ‘By the experience of active love. Strive to love your neighbor actively and constantly. In so far as you advance in love you will grow surer of the reality of God and of the immortality of your soul. If you attain perfect self forgetfulness in the love of your neighbor, then you will believe without doubt. Doubt will no longer be able to enter your soul. This has been tried. This is certain.’ “

–from “The Brothers Karamazov,” by Dostoyevsky

” ‘Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.’

“Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, ‘Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?’

“Jesus answered and said to him, ‘If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.’ “

–John 14:21-24

“So we have come to know and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”

–1 John 4:16

Baby’s Words and Language Worlds

Doll

Cat

Trixie

Bye Bye

Mama

Dada

Baby

Bear

Banana

Hot

Uh-oh

No

Sock

Bottle

These are the words my baby can say, the ones I’ve been able to identify, that is. I find the use of language fascinating– how labeling and defining our world both creates and reveals our experience of that world. I love how in the Genesis story, the first human pair were given the task of naming. This is indeed the human task and it is a lofty one. I love watching my daughter learn to speak, watching her name a world, her world. I love how pondering her list of words helps me to see what is important and valuable to her, where she finds meaning and magic and security.

Of course, my daughter is only a year old and her language system is rather simple and straight forward, which only adds to the charm of it and of her, at her age. I often think about the more complex language worlds we older humans inhabit, and how switching from one to the other can alter our perceptions of our experiences. For instance, I can read Italian, a little. I’ve read, copied, pondered, and memorized several passages from the Bible in Italian, as a spiritual and mental exercise. It’s something I enjoy doing a great deal on many levels. I find encountering familiar meanings in the context of a different language adds an exciting new depth and richness to my encounters with those meanings. No doubt if I was more fluent and well versed in Italian this would only be increased. I intend to continue to work towards that end, bit by bit, if for no other purpose than exercising my little gray cells.

In the family and church culture I grew up in, we borrowed heavily from the Bible and from pre-20th century literature and theology when it came to labeling our experiences of reality and relationships. Thus one would speak of rebellion, submission, honoring, headship, the old man, the new man, the walk in the spirit, sin, grace, faith, worldliness, godliness, purity, defrauding, abiding, etc. Some of these words have more positive connotations than others, obviously, but they are all bits of the language system that framed my world. One can see (at least, one at all familiar with this sort of thing can see) how they are part of a mindset that perceives the world very much in terms of a) Christian spiritual development and b) family hierarchy and duties. For both were important in my family. It wasn’t a works based religion with no appreciation for grace or the work of the Spirit, rather both were emphasized as important, and that was reflected in the language.

It’s odd to jump from this linguistic world into a more secular way of naming and hence understanding things, because if some things are illuminated there is much more that is lost in translation. I’ve been trying to make this leap because I have been having personal and family problems that the previously mentioned model seems inadequate for dealing with successfully. I thought secular psychotherapy might help. It has, I think, but learning to talk in psychobabble in place of Christianese is strange. When I talk of family and relationship issues in therapy, we use different words– enmeshment, control, manipulation, intimacy, authenticity, wholeness, integration, validation, invalidation, emotional abuse, emotional damage, emotional health, etc. It paints a different kind of picture, one in which the things that happen between humans in relationship seems to matter more, but at the same time it makes the events of my life seem a bit more depressing and a bit more sinister.

(As a side note, sometimes I wish I could talk more here about concrete events and real feelings in my life instead of all this vague allusion and attempted theoretical speculation, but it’s difficult. There is a layer of pain and confusion that I tread gingerly around, and may simply indicate rather than specifically analyze. I hope this doesn’t make for boring reading, but then, I’m really not writing for anyone besides myself.)

Anyway. If swapping language systems around can make things look and feel so differently, how do you know what is real and what is true? Is it simply a matter of pragmatics, where you use whatever model  works best at the time? Do you switch back and forth to give yourself a more well rounded view? Do you try to fuse systems and end up talking Christian psychobabble?  *shudders* Am I on my way to becoming a linguistic relativist? Would that be a good thing? Do I understand what linguistic relativism is? Can you be that and still be a Christian?

These are some of the thoughts that swirl in my head space these days. But now, my daughter is awake and I will go rescue her from her crib and join her world.

Doll.

Cat.

Bottle.

Bye-Bye.

I’m Back

It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged. Nearly two and a half months, in fact. I’ve been preoccupied by my own thoughts, but in a way that’s made me withdraw into myself to the extent that I haven’t even sought the outlet of anonymous writing. I haven’t felt like typing things out, somehow, preferring to experience the thoughts that emerge and then submerge in my own head as they come and as they go, rather than harnessing them into the coherency and order required for even a simple blog post.  In this same vein of withdrawal, I’ve also felt somewhat aloof and disconnected from relationships with my friends, family, husband, everyone, even when I do make the effort to interact. This sounds a little bit like depression, typing it out the way I am doing now, but that doesn’t feel like an accurate description of the my mental state, because the sense is not so much one of falling into a black hole as it is of going somewhere. I couldn’t say where, but I feel like it’s all “mined with a motion, a drift” to quote Gerard Manley Hopkins. I wonder if this is a step along the way to individuation?

Now, however, I am feeling the instinct to write again. There have been a few significant external and internal events that have taken place during my blogging exodus. May as well start with making note of those.

To begin with, I discovered that I am somewhat accidentally pregnant. I say somewhat because I am aware that the method of birth control I was attempting to implement was not the most fool proof and I took that risk knowingly, still I would say that this pregnancy is a surprise one, because I felt surprised. Early pregnancy makes me very ill. I have the 24/7 debilitating nausea, multitudinous food aversions that make finding something to eat very challenging, and frequent vomiting. I’m almost entirely over all of that now, but still a little weak from it all.

As far as how I feel about the pregnancy goes. . . I had very mixed feelings at first, because I didn’t think I was ready or that this was a good time, but human beings synthesize happiness and I am no exception. I’m glad that my daughter will have a sibling close in age to grow up with, I love newborns and am looking forward to having one again, and in spite of the physical misery pregnancy can bring, there is a lift that comes with the consciousness of that little growing life inside of me and with the nurturing feelings that follow from it. All told, I’m pretty much on board with this by now.

I continue to be much engrossed by thoughts of God and how I might understand Him better. I’ve applied an assortment of mostly second hand interpretive lenses to Scripture and to my own spiritual experiences and observations over the years, but I’ve yet to find the lens with which I’m entirely happy. Another way of saying this is that I don’t have a theological and philosophical model that harmonizes with my sense of reality.  This annoys me, and although I try not worry and obsess over it in a way that will lead to frustration and discouragement,  it’s a problem I keep returning to.  I do think I am making some progress and I’m sure I’ll be blogging more along these lines in future.

I’m still going to therapy once a week. It’s hard to update about that, because in some ways I feel like I’m learning a lot, but most of it is hard to articulate because it’s an implicit kind of learning. People grow from relationships and I know I am growing because of my relationship with my therapist, but pointing to exactly how and why change is happening is more problematic. Again, this is something I may be hashing out more on here, in bits and pieces, if I continue to write regularly.

All in all, I feel like I’m very much in a cocoon like stage, in addition to being myself a kind of cocoon to my new little one. It feels very vulnerable and a little scary, but I am hopeful of good things to come.

A Passage to India

Every few years, I am compelled to re-read “A Passage to India” by E.M. Forster. I am not sure why this is. It is not one of my favorite novels, but somehow when I am reading it I have a sense of being on the brink of a revelation that never quite comes– it beckons but it eludes me. At any rate, the feeling of being grasped by something in a novel that is not quite graspable in turn is intriguing and not at all disagreeable. It must be this that keeps me returning and returning to the book. For surely the  imperative must be issuing from my soul on some grounds other than mere liking, as I do not particularly like the story or any of the characters.   Oh, the inscrutability of living with the mystery that is myself.

Off to enter the Marabar Caves (for the fifth time),

bluebleakember

Jesus, My Imaginary Friend (and God)

“Romance”

When I was but thirteen or so

I went into a golden land,

Chimborazo, Cotopaxi

Took me by the hand.

 

My father died, my brother too,

They passed like fleeting dreams,

I stood where Popocatapetl

In the sunlight gleams.

 

I dimly heard the master’s voice

And boys far-off at play, —

Chimborazo, Cotopaxi

Had stolen me away.

 

I walked in a great golden dream

To and fro from school —

Shining Popocatapetl

The dusty streets did rule.

 

I walked home with a gold dark boy

And never a word I’d say,

Chimborazo, Cotopaxi

Had taken my speech away.

 

I gazed entranced upon his face

Fairer than any flower —

O shining Popocatapetl

It was thy magic hour:

 

The houses, people, traffic seemed

Thin fading dreams by day;

Chimborazo, Cotopaxi,

They had stolen my soul away!

W.J. Turner

 

I have a fondness and a liking for this little poem about imaginary friends and daydreams about far off places with pretty names. It reminds me of my childhood. Like many, I often existed in a pretend world populated by my dolls, stuffed animals, and other imaginary companions I invented personalities for and interacted with happily.

A blogger friend of mine who is now an atheist recently remarked that she realized at some point that Jesus was her imaginary friend. This struck a chord with me, because it’s hard to deny He has been the same thing for me, at least sometimes, in some cases.

I remember very clearly a religious moment of sorts I had when I was around eleven or twelve. I had been chattering to my favorite stuffed animal, Rainbow, when it dawned on me that perhaps my friendship with Rainbow was idolatrous. After all, I relied on him for companionship, support, wisdom, and advice. I brought all my troubles to him. Surely I should be having this relationship with Jesus, instead?

From that moment, there was a shift in my emotional allegiance. I spent less time talking to Rainbow and more time in prayer. Of course, it’s hard not to suspect that perhaps what really changed was that I changed Rainbow’s name to Jesus. It was a step of faith, perhaps, into the hope that there was a real Jesus who wanted the kind of close connection with me that I pretended I had with Rainbow, but I’m sure that habit and my imaginative nature made Him seem more real to me than He otherwise may have done. May as well call a spade a spade.

I think it is also possible that what we call a “relationship with Jesus” may be serving as a form of escapism. Prayer and meditating on Bible verses were not hardships to me. They came naturally and seemed very real. In contrast, concrete and tangible reality did (and does) often seem like the “thin fading dreams by day” the poem above describes.

Easy to ignore dysfunctions and unhappiness in yourself and your family when Jesus is always there, offering unconditional acceptance and love. Don’t even think about those things, just be closer to Christ and He’ll work it all out. Bad things that happen will serve to make you more like Him, if you keep your heart soft. It’s all for your sanctification, which He will perfect in time.

I don’t necessarily deny any of the above. I am still a Christian, but I am a Christian that is, a little sadly, crawling out of some of her daydreams. Jesus as imaginary friend and as escapism has to die. There are tasks waiting for me, in the concrete world, that my relationship with Him has actually been distracting me from. I need to face some realities and in doing so tear down some strong holds in my mind, even the ones that I have named “Jesus.”

But in doing so, there is the hope, deep and passionate and radiating from the core of my being, that the God beyond God (as Tillich puts it) will appear.

Along these lines, I am pondering a more general philosophical question. It’s hard to deny that the shape our theology takes conforms to our emotional and psychological needs at the time we form it. When people change their theology and beliefs, the change is often a manifestation of a psychological break through or emotional growth that is happening at the same time. When you try looking at things this way, you see it everywhere, in everyone. It’s hard to deny that, to some extent, we all do make God in our own image. Yet, in recognizing all of this, is there still a place for a faith that is real? What is truth?

What does your husband think?

As a newly married, economically dependent young housewife I get asked this a lot. Whenever I make a decision for myself, express an opinion or the lack of an opinion, whenever I wonder aloud about possible courses of action or consider new ideas, eventually, people want to know how this fits into the context of my marriage. “What does your husband think?”

Is it that when people see a young woman attempting to be a strong, independent thinker they feel nervous and want to subtlely nudge her back into place? This is discouraging. Is it that they doubt my ability to work out my marriage successfully and so they are searching for an opening to give advice?  This is intrusive. I know in some cases these things are at work.  I also know that in other cases people are simply being innocuously curious, or making conversation, trying to get to know me better- and these are things I truly do not resent, and even welcome, but the question still poses certain difficulties.

For one thing, my husband and I have very different thinking styles and ways of expressing ourselves– which is fine, we manage to work things out and are happy. I find the mysteriousness sexy, if you want to know. Still and all, I’m not always certain I have a true grasp of  his real thoughts and feelings on any given topic, and even when I do, I certainly don’t think I can translate them into my normal way of speaking without losing a great deal in translation, or just making stuff up. Doing this feels disrespectful, so I figure if people want to know what he thinks, they are better off just asking him.

If I’m talking to somebody I care enough about or respect enough, I try honestly to answer the question and to convey both my impressions of my husband’s opinion and the necessary ambiguities surrounding my expression of it.

However, I wonder how best to handle this when it comes up in casual conversation, in a way that honors both me and my husband?