Tag: faith

God Incognito


“I think, therefore I am,” says Descartes, and thereby overturns centuries of philosophy past. He imagines a dark spirit with infinite powers to deceive, who could turn lightness into dark and cause one to doubt the very ground upon which one stands.

Suppose, suggests Descartes, that I am mistaken about the ‘hereness’ of my body, about the realness of the world ‘out there’, about the existence of God? Suppose that every shard of reality I cling to is an illusion: how would I know? How do we claw through the fog? If it’s all wisps and shadows, how will we know when our little bark has run up on the beach?

He edges out on the high wire, squinting hard at the far post, determined to reject everything except that which he could not doubt. And what he could not doubt is that he is the one doing the doubting, and that those who doubt their existence must exist in order to do the doubting. ‘Cogito ergo, sum’ — I think, therefore I am.

It’s a grand and audacious mind game that Descartes is playing. It’s an axiom dressed as a revelation, a discovery of the self. He invites us to doubt, but he never really doubted anyway. What sets Descartes apart, though, is that he’s given personal experience and his own thought as much authority as conventional wisdom. Find the truth, he says. Think for yourself; argue it out in your own head. Be the master of your interior world. You think, therefore you are. And therefore, is God.

What do we mean when we say we “know” God? Do we “know” the wind? Do we “know” the darkness within the cloud? Do we “know” the cry of our own voice caught up and away in the wind and the cloud? This will not suffice; there must be more.

* * * *

The mild-mannered parishioner two pews over, his attention wandering during the homily, moistens a finger and doubles the pages of his Bible under his thumb. He has an idea to look for God in the Old Testament, but not in the bloody chronicles of genocide and terror. Ecclesiastes appears, but he remembers something about everything as vanity. He frowns: he needs a handhold, not a slippery slope. The Psalms are familiar — he’ll pitch his tent there for awhile in hopes of a well-known verse or two.

“Answer me when I call, O God of my right!,” shouts the ragged singer of the Psalms. He rages, he twists, he cries out; he will stitch up one star to another if he has to and create a zip line to Yahweh. Our parishioner stiffens in the pew; no one should talk to God like that. He reads it again, his finger tracing the words. He whispers it to himself, bending over the page, eyebrows lifted. He imagines ravens wheeling against the desert sun, a cave behind him, the whorl of a desert dust devil swirling closer. He raises an arm against the sun and the shriek of the wind, the ground rocks beneath him, and he hears it, a whisper: “I am.”

“Yes,” he says out loud. “Yes, you are.”

Elaborated Spontaneity #4 (Photo: Clarisse Meyers, Unsplash.com)

Being With Thomas

BuriedLife2I would have been with Thomas in that upper room. Never an early adopter nor a joiner, I would have held back to watch others, see their reactions, imagine myself in their place until the resistance I felt toward the new had reduced its charge.

It’s a question of how we know what we know and whether what we know can be verified. It’s a question of how much you trust your senses and whether your rational faculties can puzzle it through. Mostly, it’s about whether you’re willing to look foolish in pursuit of truth.

Thomas gets the rap as the doubting one, forever holding out until he can touch and feel and see with his own eyes. Like it had never occurred to the rest of them that maybe this kingdom of God business was just too good to be true. Like all the other promises made that had not so much been broken as had not materialized beyond the promising stage. But with Thomas, it was never skepticism about the nature of Jesus’ intentions. Nor was it cynicism about the possibility of goodness in the world. There was plenty of goodness, and beauty also, and where goodness and beauty live truth must be in the neighborhood somewhere.

No, what Thomas knew about himself with the clarity that comes from aloneness is that he lacked the courage to commit himself to another.

It hadn’t always been this way. After all, he was Thomas—Didymus—aka ‘The Twin.’ There had been another, his brother, older by two minutes and stronger twice over. They had been inseparable, each the other half of the other, together as one, but not the same. He had led, Thomas had followed. Thomas was thoughtful, holding back, his brother plunging ahead with a shout. Thomas had read and questioned, his brother had acted. They had talked and argued late into the night about politics, religion, freedom. His brother joined a group; they were armed. He was adamant: “Better to die trying than not to try at all.” Later, after he was crucified with the others, the soldiers had come round for Thomas. By that time he had gone, into the night. Keeping to the back roads, he had traveled north to Galilee alone.

And now here he was amongst a band of brothers, younger than most, the first to ask, the last to step forward. When he had met Jesus it was as if he had seen his brother again: all the strength but without the recklessness. And now he was gone, crucified like his twin; another one taken, promises dashed.

So he might be forgiven, Thomas reckoned, for standing back when the others told him, breathlessly, that they had seen the Lord. “The door was shut, we were afraid, and then there He was!”

“I see,” said Thomas, but he didn’t really. “He asked about you,” they said. “He said he’d be back.”

“I’d have to see that for myself,” said Thomas dryly. Peter smiled. “He figured you’d say that.”

Eight days later he was with the others, the door locked and bolted, voices lowered. And then He was there, smiling, in their midst, and looking Thomas in the eye. “I’m real,” He said. “Touch me. Act on it! Believe.”

All this was a long time ago but set down this. Set down this: I came to faith, finally, by acting as if it were there. And then it was and is and will be if I but act.

For we are saved by hope:
but hope that is seen is not hope:
for what a man seeth,
why doth he yet hope for?
But if we hope for that we see not,
then do we with patience wait for it.