A few months back i attended a church service and the pastor delivered a sermon in the form of an apologetic argument for the existence of God. The sermons was great, and I have nothing against Christian apologetic's, but something was said in the midst of it that I find is all too often affiliated with the genre of Christian apologetic's and it has to do, I believe, with an aversion to confronting the uncertainty and doubt that accompanies our faith. The Saying, I am sure many of you have heard it before as it floats nonchalantly in and out of the whirlwind of overused and misunderstood Christian jargon, goes something like this, "I don't have enough faith to be an Atheist," or "It takes more faith to be an atheist."
At first glance this statement seems like a positive one for a Christian believer. Not only does it make for a great introduction to a sermon on the science of and/or argument for God, but it also provides a little boost of confidence in our belief while offering a nice jab to the ribs of the modern atheist, who, by this statements assumption, would view faith as a negative thing, correlated with ignorance or lack of intelligence. The problem is, as Christians, we don't believe that about faith; or a least we are not supposed to.
When we drop statements like this regularly we are missing the mark in two ways. First, we are doing a disservice to the Christian faith outwardly, and second, we are placing ourselves within a false sense of security that avoids the beautiful and fearful depths of our faith.
Since we are on the subject of Christian-isms, we might as well look at how this statement doesn't fit in with the majority of the verses we love to quote and the sayings we adhere to. By this statement we insinuate that too much faith is a bad thing, but how often do we hear the echoes of 1 Corinthians 13:13 floating around our conversations at church, "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." Or Romans 1:17, ""The righteous will live by faith." And probably most importantly, and indeed the very core to our belief in salvation is Ephesians 2:8, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God."
It doesn't end there, but I think the point is being made clear here. When we affiliate faith with ignorance or lack of evidence we create a negative aura about the word, and not only that, we fail to cling to the significance of faith and it's place in our lives over things like intelligence or evidence. In doing this we reveal that we, Christians, of all people, have become afraid of faith.
Some might be calling me a nit picker right now, and all I have to say to that is: I agree. But shouldn't we be nit picking at the language we choose to use publicly? Should we also not be looking at the insinuations of all that we say? Indeed we don't want to be found as ignorant...the irony of the entire matter is that by disclaiming and discrediting faith through this statement in order to be seen as more rational than an atheist, we give light to our true ignorance about our own faith...and to make things more ironic, it is in the attempt (apologetics) to base our beliefs in argument and reason, thus making it consciously rational and agreeable, that we fail to reasonably and rationally understand the deeper portions of our faith.
We must not be sucked up into the common trap of attempting to frame our Christian faith within the boundaries of reason. Faith, although not an enemy to reason, takes us where reason cannot. Faith is of a higher intellectual, emotional, and spiritual order than reason will ever be. Faith, indeed, requires the very death of certainty; and certainty generally ends outside of the boundaries of our own reason.
I love apologetic's as a method for searching out the mystery and the greatness of God. But, I think the best apologist is the one who is left with more and more questions and less and less answers. Wouldn't that be the greatest argument for God? That he is so far beyond our grasp that we just can't seem to figure Him out? Instead, I think too many utilize Christian apologetics as a security blanket that eludes terrifying but beautiful faith. Particularly in academia I find people put their faith in apologetics which leads to framed and comfortable certainty rather than putting their faith in God, which leads to uncomfortable, romantic uncertainty...uncertainty that requires deep faith founded in deep love.
Instead of making this blog even longer, (it was only intended to be a few paragraphs) I will end with a quote from Peter Rollins that briefly sums up this wonderful and terrible thing called faith, He writes
"However it is at this point that we need to be careful, for faith does not describe an intellectual disagreement with the wisdom tradition (which would put it on the same level, i.e. as a philosophical position). Faith describes a lived protest against it. In other words faith is a mode of life in which we encounter the world as infused with depth and meaning. It is an attitude towards the world that births within us a profound concern and care (as Heidegger wrote)."
Faith is found when we allow ourselves to be swept up into the mystery of God. To no longer be confined within the simplified or watered down version of Christianity that merely involves prescribing to set of beliefs, and become lost within the vast and raging Sea of who God is with all of the violence of it's waves and terror of it's storms. T1he kind of Sea, that, should an Atheist find himself lost in, would lead him to cry, "O God, Save me!"
I have way to much fear, life, and love...way too much faith to be an atheist.
