I Hope Jesus is Right
July 15, 2007
Rev. Jerry Fargo

The Nation's recent cover story "The New Atheists" (June 25, 2007) noted five books about religion that reached bestselling status in the last two years. One had caught my attention last January when it was the cover review of The New York Times Book Review, a featured article in The New York Review of Books, and the subject of an article I read in a glossy new religious publication, Think.

The book's author, Richard Dawkins, is highly respected in his own field of evolutionary biology. Although, according to one review, Professor Dawkins proposes a kind of inverted "argument from design" against the existence of God, all reviewers agreed that the real purpose of The God Delusion is to discredit any and all forms of religion.

I read no further. I live with my own doubts. I could, and no doubt you could also, write, an article's worth, of content similar to Dawkins.' Think of all the in-your-face examples of abuse and atrocities committed in the name of God. It's not hard for me to imagine that someone taking these things seriously might be motivated to discredit the entire religious enterprise.

I remember a senior pastor under whom I served for a short while in the early 80s, becoming highly defensive when I happened to question the track record of the churches. Having and expressing such opinions does not endear you to partisan religionists. I can't help but think of my own disiullusioning professional experiences with "wolves in [clerical] clothing."

Had I not been willful, and eventually jumped my denominational ship, I would not have performed the work I end up being most proud of. It was done mostly outside of the religious establishment, though I must give credit to the UCC (the United Church of Christ), with which I subsequently affiliated, for not interfering. But back to believing in God.

I don't think one comes to believe or disbelieve for intellectual reasons alone. Not that I would discount the role of reasoning. I would, if I could, replace a lot of so-called religious faith with reason. One of the motivations for my entering the ministry was to help people distinguish between sense and non-sense in religion. Yet my faith was conceived and continues mainly because of experiences of the Holy Spirit moving in, with and under my relationships with others in a faith-community.

My first serious encounter with doubt was in 1955, my freshman year in college. It was charged with intellectual "angst," inner turmoil ignited by my college English professor's assault upon God-belief. I searched diligently for and found the classic philosphical arguments for the existence of God, somewhere in the vast library of Wayne State University.

These reasonings were helpful in assuaging my anxiety but even then, at that tender age, I came to the realization that my experiences of love and liberation in my church, especially through my pastor and the Gospel message he interpreted, were a stronger persuasion.

My subsequent sojourn in faith, however, has not been free of doubt, at times stronger than others -- as in the last year or so. I have turned down requests to preach because, I think, the troubles and sorrows of the world moved in on me so that I felt that I really didn't have much to say that would edify people.

I've also considered that my reluctance to preach may include some resentment and anger at God, also some weariness, some faith-fatigue. No, for me it's not God's existence that's in question, but how I perceive God is being god. I'm having a minor, latter-day Job experience.

I mentioned this to our pastor, Donna, who in turn referred me to her friend, another clergyperson who is writing a book about clergy and doubt. When I was asked to preach for my former pastoral flock in February, I said something about what was going on to a member-confidant. She reassured me of that congregation's love and advised me to let the Spirit speak through whatever was going on, so I accepted the invitation.

I also recalled my partner Ted's commenting, back then in the early 80s, about the same defensive clergyman I've already mentioned, that he would be a far better pastor and preacher if he occasionally evidenced some doubt or questioning. Well, as I got to know him, I realized he was an authoritarian, and authoritarians are deathly afraid of doubt, they're "deciders," that is, they decide for others.

Subsequently I preached and shared the sermon with Donna, who asked that I share it with you.

As for the content of my current ruminations, I can pick out a couple of ingredients from the stew of what's been bothering me. They come under the heading of "God and nature," which is probably why I gave more than a passing glance to those reviews, Dawkins being a scientist. But I must state that I've never had a problem accepting evolution as a general description how we and the rest of the world got here. That is, evolution is the best way, so far, that we have for understanding how God creates. Fortunately, no one ever tried to teach me that the Bible was where I should get my science.

All my life I've heard people saying that they find God in nature. Just recently I received a church pension health newsletter recommending communing with nature as a way of combating stress. Even those of us who choose to worship in one another's company over singular experiences in the great outdoors sing loud praises to the Creator of the natural world. Surely, the natural world is full of sublime beauty.

Creation is complex and awe-inspiring, and we could spend a lifetime, as my partner Ted once wrote for Judson audiences, "tortur(ing) nature for her secrets." But it's no secret that nature's also extremely violent. And you just better not get in the way of those creative forces: floods and tidal waves, earthquakes and landslides, lightning and fire, hurricanes and sandstorms! Haven't we been somewhat schizoid about Creation? When we celebrate its beauty and goodness we praise God. When we see people caught in the violent paths of Creation-going-on, we speak of "Mother nature" or Nature with a capital N.

The predatory nature we see in the creatures God makes troubles me too. Nature programming on TV does not shy away from showing us the hunt: the stalking, the kill and the consuming of the hunted. In fact, it seems to indulge in it. We seem to have a morbid fascination with it. Some take it as a lesson for our living with each other. This is the way life is, and we are meant to go with it, and not flinch at the necessary cruelty in it.

I'm disturbed by the disconnect between what I observe about the world and what I've come to value in human existence. A couple of biblical illustrations I can think of resonate for me and provide some hope. There is Isaiah's vision of the lion lying down with the lamb and the child playing where the venomous snake lives. And then there is Jesus, observing how expendable life is, saying that not even one sparrow's death escapes God's notice, from which I deduce, therefore, that any death is not inconsequential. In Testaments, both Old and New, visionaries see the former things passing away, and "a new heaven and a new earth" coming to take its place.

It's the enormity of the suffering and dying that's going on in and around you; it's in all those places where the natural seems unnatural to you, and wherever your fellow human beings are mindless and heartless that can overwhelm you. The "survival of the fittest" may still be the world's foremost faith, so pervasive that it finds expression among those who recite creeds contrary to it, which may provoke intelligent and compassionate people to write books bashing religion. Maybe doubt and uncertainty and the perplexity that "causes me to wonder, wonder" are part of what makes an honest faith journey? I hesitate to generalize from my personal experience. I don't deny but admire the great faith and faithfulness I find in individuals. Otherwise, how would I have had any faith at all? Just maybe, "uncertain faith" is required for some of us, including the pastors and preachers we look to to show us the Way.

I think we should hear the rest of Mark Van Doren's poem ("Praise Doubt") with which I prefaced today's worship:

Praise the good angel doubt,
Guardian of us that walk
On the deep waters of this world.

Praise him, he never rests,
However weary the way
Over these dark, salt dangerous meadows.

Do not look down, he says;
Beware with me and the sun
Of faith's inumerable caverns.

Monsters can be there.
You will have plenty of time.
Too soon descending, you are devoured.

Praise him. He believes
In the long day we are given.
Praise him. He dances upon the whitecaps.

I hope that this whole evolutionary history we come from is leading up to the birth and growth of such spiritual consciousness, and that in the long run, whatever we count as real loss, and grieve over along the way, will be saved.

What this witches brew of perplexity and doubt may boil down to is "who do you trust?" I know we can be deceived by others, and also deceive ourselves by what we think we need, or want to believe, but ultimately I think we follow others in their faith-journeys who have proved themselves trustworthy, and that, aside from visions and other mystical experiences of the Sacred, that is what we have to go on.

Considering those who have gone this way before me, as well as many who are walking alongside me, I often feel like a "93-pound" Christian. Still, it is Jesus, as well as the influences of others who measure up to his life and teaching (which, for certain, doesn't include everyone who call themselves Christian) that I continue to cling to -- both in my doubt and in my faith.