Wrestling with Religion

   It’s obvious that a check-the-box vote for Mary's son's historic existence is not what the word believe means in Acts 16:31: “Believe in the lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” And so, by extension, this can’t be what believe means in the creeds. In Christian mythology, the fallen angels (aka devils) believe that God exists, having been cast out of Heaven by Him. But their ability to check the "true" box doesn't imply that they're saved. On the contrary, deliberate rebellion against a God they believe in makes them more culpable. So Kierkegaard makes sense when he says that a rational proof God’s existence—even of the whole creed down to every comma—would avail nothing more than what is traditionally attributed to devils in Hell.     So what is meaningful belief? The term translated believe in English has, apparently, been so transformed as to corrupt the sense of ancient religious texts. Wilfred Cantwell Smith details this in his lecture series, B...

     If believe is understood in the sense of validating a line of the Apostle’s Creed as we would that water is wet, ducks quack, and 2+2=4, then belief based on a leap of faith is dishonest. We must at least bracket it as unproved. It seems wrong to affirm a premise (as opposed to acting on a hypothesis) just because it pleases us—even if it satisfies deep existential longings and completes our souls. Grad school professors red-inked that out of me. Truth, if we can find it, requires authority independent of our needs and desires. Of course, if we’re looking for reasons to believe in God in a true-false sense, there are philosophical “proofs," but Bishop James Pike’s theology best seller, A Time for Christian Candor (1964), summarily dismissed them: “We certainly do not claim that the existence of God can be proved” (17). I agree, but his dismissal is brusque, so I'll walk through a few odd proofs.       First, let’s dismiss a few that aren't proof...

        Like all my early and heartfelt songs, this one is engraved in memory. A paper copy may not exist. In fact, in the half century since I wrote it, I've never performed it, as if these words in the air, not just in my head, might break a taboo. It’s in the style of a gospel quartet, but its message might be anathema to the myth-affirming gospel crowd.       How do you cross yourself and feel something like justification without magical faith? Suppose that St. Paul’s grand and ghostly edifice crumbles around you even as you kneel before the passion of the Son of Man, stopping with the original text of Mark’s gospel: "So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid" (Mark 16:8). Walking in the graveyard, Heard the rooster crowing, Thinking bout the dead folks underground, My body weary,  I heard Jesus saying , "Look up, sinner. Lay your burden dow...

     As children, my best friend Robert Stacy and I didn't doubt that a Father in Heaven had sent his only-begotten son that we shouldn’t perish but have everlasting life. The Bible was true as surely as Truman was President. How did we know? The grownups told us so, and (Santa Claus notwithstanding) they were usually reliable. The Good News was like Mutual Radio News. The Kingdom of Heaven was like a geography lesson—a public fact, not a private belief. Of course, we did puzzle over some things, but, heck, adults said a lot of puzzling things.     Then, somewhere in our precocious teens, we read adult books and discovered that pulpit theology wasn't fact at all. It didn’t take many paperbacks from the college bookstore to expose that Christianity was one of several conflicting religions and that most modern intellectuals weren't believers. Riddled with self-contradictions, the Bible was only one of a library of scriptures that contradicted each other. ...

Hugh Bentley     A voice speaks to Abraham with such authority that he feels obliged to kill his only son. Moses is called by a talking bush. Ezekiel sees a psychedelic vision of wheels within wheels. Amos is sheep herding when a phantom voice commands him to speak truth to power. Jacob wrestles with an angel. Elisha is recruited by Elijah and David by Samuel, who himself hears a disembodied voice. Jesus calls the disciples with irresistible authority to fish for folks. Jonah’s call is enforced by a great fish. Jeremiah can't sp eak until God touches his mouth. And Paul is struck blind.      This last looms largest in the Baptist tradition where I was raised and is the paradigm for “once saved, always saved.” I felt social pressure to “come on down,” and was dipped at age nine, and indeed I did "believe" at the time, which was all I was asked to do, but I never felt transformed. If I’d waited for an experience like Paul’s, I’d still be waiting. Men...

To an old friend of my lost youth (written about 1985) A cheap pleasure it seems now, Our old teenage repudiation Of certitude, before we both Became by many permutations The very neck-tied arbiters We doubted and still doubt— Cheap because it claimed its own Certitude, the last certitude Of denial, as if the undoubt We denied grew real in its denial Like Johnson’s stone, kicked, extant, Before we fell into the void Of selves, collective and alone. Then we knew what hypocrisy was.       To any sufficiently inquisitive person, there comes an age of realization that everything we "know" consists of (1) spotty constructions from sense data, (2) customary behavior of others, (3) and information from parents, teachers, and other authorities who pass it on more-or-less unquestioned as ideology or common belief. Much of this is necessary for survival--or, at least, prosperity--in the contexts into which youth  find themselves sum...

     My thespian identity is like a sexual orientation, something I discovered without choosing it. Maybe all children play make-believe, but I played American-rebel-and-British-officer with my English friend in a corner of the playground while the other boys played softball, a sport I never practiced voluntarily. In the third grade, I drew knobs on a shoebox, put it on the teacher's desk, and "entertained" the class by reading under the desk a radio program I had written. I don’t recall thunderous applause, but by senior year I directed, wrote, and starred in a show for a high school assembly. I also had a tape recorder (maybe the only kid in town) and gathered with friends to improvise “radio” programs. The first time I auditioned for a university play, I was cast in the lead as a bearded, wigged magician. The rest is history (see https://www.youtube.com/user/BanjoBillGreen for recent madness), and I have often puzzled over what that says about my personal sense ...