MysteriousFaith

My Struggle with God

What does having a personal relationship with God really mean? Do we resort to personal words, denoting human relationships, when we should make sure our language and our very mindset has dwelled on what it means to worship a Being fully the other? Do we use religion to fill up our minds in an effort to make sure the most pressing questions are not asked by our intuition, our searching souls?

Evangelical Christians like to use phrases such as “a personal relationship with Christ” or “talking with God” or asking a question like “do you know Christ?” or better yet “have you told God that?” during discussions about their faith. But for many, I included, these statements are confusing and deeply unsettling. Does God talk back to these people? Do they, in their quiet devotional time, have a discussion with a Being that talks back to them? Do they have visions? My guess is that the answer to each of these questions is a resounding “no”, which begs the question of whether or not they have a lot of personal relationships with Beings they have never met. Say, for example, my “personal relationship” with Jennifer Aniston. While she has never returned any of my calls or cologne ridden notes, I have little doubt that we have a personal relationship – as I was taught to understand personal relationships with the Divine.

The issue of language used to describe spiritual experience is critically important for a number of reasons. First because such personal language is counter-intuitive to the reality that God does not talk back to us in any way, shape, or form that is tangible. Such an ethereal relationship begs another choice of words, another means of framing this Divine Dance if you will. This type of language is counter-productive to spiritual formation and growth as it establishes in the minds of genuine seekers, people who deeply desire to know God personally, the expectation that at some point in their spiritual journey they will become pious, mature and deep enough to have these intimate experiences. When these experiences are never encountered, the question of the truth of the spiritual disciplines themselves and the inherent doctrines within the practices becomes strained. The second difficulty I see in the use of such language is that it establishes personal experience as a means of judging truth. Many people across the eons of time have claimed to talk to, walk with, and understand God. How are we to test the reasonableness of such statements? Why should we believe Abraham’s theophany any more than Muhammad’s? Both men claim to have walked and talked with God: Abraham’s conversations ranging from moving directions to sacrificing his son, and Muhammad’s conversations resulting in Islam’s Holy Scriptures’, the Koran.

Please do not hide behind some dry theological argument to answer these questions – put yourself in the shoes of the believers in their day; today’s seekers are asking similar questions, struggling with similar crises of faith. Be honest about the chasm crossing leaps the journey of faith requires. How were the first people who were told of the implications to Abraham and Muhammad’s theophanies to react? How were they to judge the absolute truth claims made by each of these men? Upon what basis were intelligent people to determine whether or not these men were psychotic or were genuinely changed by a moment of Divine interaction? It is right to ask ourselves why these questions are important. Intellectuals explain too much away through concepts that assume certain internal symmetries, affording them the opportunity to explain away an unexplainable conclusion on the basis of a pre-determined “must be.” It is within the context of the historical moment-in-time that we can get to the brass tacks about belief in action. How would you have reacted to Jesus if you were in His day? How would you have responded to His teachings, challenging the systemized religions of the day that you had placed your trust upon? How would you have responded to finding out your husband took your only son to sacrifice him based on a revelation from God? The moment God’s revelation is no longer your personal experience, it must be judged, weighed and tested against that which is universal. What is universal is not Scripture, it is our God given ability to reason. What is reasonable is that morals are universal; they are cross-cultural and trans-historical. Faith can not exist without reason; for faith to be good it must bear the weight of morality. Faith is a decision – a point in time where we surrender our mind to what we acknowledge is the fully unknowable. Some have claimed that what we have faith in is less important than the act of simply having faith itself. But while such a holistic view of faith is charming, it overlooks the tension that must exist with reason. We may not abdicate either faith or reason in order to embark on a meaningful spiritual journey. But, I would suggest, we must incorporate three things into our spiritual walk: faith, reason, and practice. Taken together, I choose to believe (have faith if you will!) that real spiritual truth will be revealed when tension and balance exists between these three things.

After eighteen years (from birth to becoming a teenager) of being invested in a highly sectarian evangelical church, I lost my interest in Christianity for a number of reasons. The primary reasons were legalism and not being able to ever say my spiritual experience matched that of the people around me. Was I alone in this, or was I merely being honest about my own struggles and the inadequacies of my faith experience whereas others were content to go along, to pretend, to substitute new emotional highs for the reality of a frighteningly solitary spiritual experience? And did this pretending explain this thing we called Sunday Church? Was it really a time to reflect, to learn, to grow, to share with others frustrations, anger, joy or sadness? Or was it an organization symbiotically developed with our psychological need to believe, designed to give us a once a week up-lifting experience in the hopes of quelling the fears and quieting the doubts that our spiritual experience is much more singular and alone? If we are honest, is not our spiritual experience much more about us reaching towards the Divine than the Divine reaching to us? And if that is accurate, does such a realization not color our view of what the purpose of spirituality is? If spirituality is less about being doctrinally “right” and more about embracing the mystery of the Divine, then I believe we might be able to find much common ground among the spiritual journeys of those from other faiths.

Karen Armstrong’s books present a fundamental assertion about the spiritual experience of mankind. She has been, in the past, described as a “free-lance monotheist”; a statement she now disagrees with as she believes our conception of God is less important than what our beliefs about God do to our conduct. This shift, while seemingly subtle, takes her away from questions about the identity of God (or read differently, which religion is right about their view of God), to questions about what good such projections about the ultimately unknowable can have in this world relative to our behavior and conduct towards others. I find Armstrong’s analysis of the world’s religions deeply insightful and probative relative to her conclusions about the equality between each. I am also profoundly touched by Armstrong’s personal spiritual experience, finding her honesty about her own spiritual seeking and experience very consistent with my own. However, I believe her work must take one additional step forward out of historical treatises on the world religions to a developed philosophy about what this idea of God is that we humans have such a need for. It is, in my opinion, a mistake to view her work as more than two things: first, a history of man’s idea of God as revealed in systemized world religions (something she is uniquely and I would suggest profoundly capable of articulating), and second, a realization of the common threads and ideas that are woven together throughout each of these respective theologies (something her work never diminishes; rather, she develops and presents their respective ultimate spiritual ethos consistently and in a disciplined fashion when harsher critics of world religions have chosen to mitigate the good and fixate on only the bad of institutionalized religion).

I know of few people who do not struggle with their idea of God and this idea’s implications to our every-day lives. Many bring to the struggle their culture or familial experience with institutionalized religion (however much baggage either may entail!). How many of us can honestly say we sat down and read the Sacred Scripture of the world religions in the interests of deciding on the basis of comparison, contrast and study which religion is more right than the others? No, for most of us, our spiritual decision is marked by a stark moment of need when the desire to believe in something more, in an all-powerful Being is in control of our out-of-control world or life, became so great that we embraced religion in the solitude of our fear and longing. Such a desire is by no means wrong, nor is it a sign, as some cynics propose, of psychological weakness. I agree with many Christians that our in-born need for God is a sign of God’s reality. But we must begin to be honest among ourselves that how this in-born need reveals itself to us rarely experientially changes as our spiritual journey advances. If we are honest, our spiritual experience is rarely more alive than in that moment of ultimate need – when our desire to be folded into the arms of an omnipotent Father takes over. This need is the emotion we carry with us through our spiritual journey. Some of us, like Armstrong and I, become weary with the overhead of religious activities, choosing to believe that a life lived in compassion, service and love is the point of the search for God – not some solidified, systemized view of what God is and which side He is on. While I can not embrace her terribly ambiguous idea of God, I can appreciate her weariness in genuinely trying to live a spiritual life within the confines of organized religions.

Nowhere are the confines of organized religion more strained than when attempting to thoughtfully and fairly discuss religious pluralism. Because many religions are incompatible with each other (i.e. they make varying absolute truth claims), at least as is taught by most of their respective main-stream advocates, any serious study of religious pluralism is a contentious point among believers. Each religion, and frankly each sub-set within each religion, claims a higher standard of truth than that of opposing systems of belief. For me, religious pluralism is a challenge on two fronts. The first is intellectual (the actual evidence to support respective claims of absolute truth) and the second is related to the spiritual experience. I was raised to believe, and even such commonly referred to Christian apologists as Lee Strobel suggest, that the claims of absolute truth made by Christianity can be tested by living them out. But to me this poses a problem. I have met Christians who are completely at peace, loving, self-sacrificing, content, confident in their eternal destiny, and comfortable in a “personal relationship with God.” It is when you meet a Mormon, Muslim, Buddhist or other non-Christian religious person who has those same characteristics that you must stare your own deeply held religious convictions in the mirror and ask what the point of religious belief is. Theologians such as John Hick (as the most extreme) and Clark Pinnock (as a more moderate example) struggle with this point as opposed to the academic question of ultimate truth (who is right and who is wrong). These men see the outworking of grace, love and salvation in the lives of people from other faiths and as such, make a conscious decision to wrestle with what the point of religion is: to be doctrinally pure – to be right about your systemized theology - or, to live life as a creature fully aware of his finite nature and entire dependence on the Creator. Such a position holds up our murky idea of God as being a collective effort to embrace the Divine at the same time as holding a reverent, even holy idea of what this God is that we collectively seek to know.

Armstrong’s books are a powerful source of introspection and insight into the ultimate questions about God posed by religions. I remain unclear, even confused, about what her view of God actually is. She embraces humanity’s varied ideas about God, but when pressed by an NPR host, states that she does not believe in God. Perhaps this is her intellectual way of saying that God is so fully “the other” that we do ourselves harm by attempting to capture the fully unknowable within the lexicon on human experience. Her lecture “The Future of God” touches on this point. In this lecture she argues that it is time for mankind to develop a new idea of God. She is unclear as to what this idea is to be, suggesting only that it must be an idea that gets our eyes off of ourselves and focuses us on the need for charity and loving attitudes towards others. I find it profound that a woman who has given up on the conventional idea of God shares so much in common with the essentials of Christian faith. Her life is, I would suggest, very much modeled after Paul’s challenge to us when he said “faith, hope and love; but the greatest of these is love.”

Were I to be pushed into a corner and forced to make a statement about what I believe about God I would be reduced to a blubbering, quivering mess of emotional, psychological, and intellectual nerves. I have never thought more about God than I have in the past several months, and yet I find myself wandering from what I had been raised to believe was acceptable under Christian orthodoxy. If I am honest, I am more at peace with these new ideas than any of those I held to in my past; and for this tortured soul, that is not a slight improvement! I hid for too long from questions that were answered with complicated and confusing justifications for the suspension of morality or social justice. I hid for too long from the pressing realization that if security within the life of faith were to be a test of the rightness of faith, many people from many different religions would qualify. I no longer wish to hide from these questions; perhaps because in part I have never wanted to know God more than I now do. I wish to know Him, to be changed by my knowledge of Him, by my reflection on this idea of God that we share. My challenge is less to know why what I believe is right, but more to let my belief foster meaningful change in my life relative to honesty, sincerity, love for others, selflessness and sacrifice. I, no more than anyone else, can know absolutely what is right relative to contrasting ideas about God. What I am increasingly sure of is what I am to do on this earth relative to the outworking of my personal spiritual journey and the necessary changes to my life.

Additional Resources:

Karen Armstrong’s books are well written, if not a bit over-whelming in the level of detail she presents. I wish to be clear that I do not endorse all of her conclusions nor am I educated enough to speak to the factualness of all of her claims; you will have to judge for yourself her worthiness as an advocate and guide. In particular, her statements as to the Divinity of Christ merit serious questioning.

At least two approaches can be taken when being introduced to her work. If you question the sincerity of her spiritual odyssey or if you deeply resonate with her struggles, start with her book Through the Narrow Gate and then read The Spiral Staircase: My Climb out of Darkness. If you are comfortable that such a personal statement is not necessary and wish to seriously study comparative religions, Armstrong’s The History of God is superb. A particularly germane book to read, in my opinion, given the battles brewing between Christian and Islamic fundamentalists around the world is her The Battle for God. I would not recommend starting with any of her other books (Islam, Buddha, In the Beginning: a New Interpretation of Genesis) or her recorded lecture The Future of God until you have grounded yourself in her earlier and more personal works.

Moody publishes a series of books known as the Counterpoint Series that wrestle with issues ranging from religious pluralism to the nature of Hell to the “once-saved, always saved” debate. Two of their books are worth reading relative to the topics this essay touched on: Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World (my review of this book can be read here) and Four Views on Hell. The latter book is good not just because of its treatment of the topic of Hell, but its introduction to perspectives on the nature of God that are not dwelled upon by certain evangelical Christian circles.

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• August 19, 2004

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3 Responses to “My Struggle with God”

1. Anonymous Says:
   August 23rd, 2004 at 8:55 pm

   I absolutely love to read your work and appreciate how you stretch me into areas of thinking that I typically don’t wander on my own. Yet I cannot seem to grasp why you think “reason” is an important component of your spirtiual walk; doesn’t reason give way to faith?

   Tension smacks of conflict, and conflict is spiritual warfare. I pray that the Holy Spirit will put up shop in your tent and that reason will give way peace and joy.

2. Ben Shobert Says:
   August 24th, 2004 at 7:38 am

   Dear Anonymous - You must forgive me, as I am not sure I completely understand your question or the underlying point your question is attempting to make. To the extent that my response does not answer your question, you must forgive me and perhaps restate your question again.

   If I understand your question, you are not clear on why I view reason as being so central to a life of authentic faith. The words are, rightfully so, diametrically opposed to one another. On the one hand, faith provides a neat summation as to many of our gut instincts about the meaning of life by giving us the idea of God. On the other hand, reason begs of us to support what may be instinctual (i.e. my “gut feeling” that I don’t believe this world came about by chance). So if we may, the Socratic idea of the “uncaused cause” or the “unmoved mover” is a product of reason, but ultimately is a leap of faith because we, as causes or the objects being moved, can not ultimately know that which is fully the other.

   People much more intelligent than I have dedicated much more time than I am willing or interested in to the bifurcation between faith and reason. Ultimately, each of us is different - we ask different questions and require different levels of proof or rationale to support the ultimate leap of faith.

   Peter said, “come let us reason together.” I think we do our spiritual journey a collective disservice when we are not honest about the role reason plays in the formation of theology and belief, nor are we always honest about the unanswerable questions and the mystery and paradox that pervades spirituality.

   Please let me know if my response still does not address or did address your question.

3. Anonymous Says:
   August 24th, 2004 at 9:46 am

   You have interpreted my question accurately and thank you for your response to it.

   I agree that reason is critical during that time when we place faith in the balance. If truth prevails I would think that reason dies (perhaps slowly) and is replaced by the Spirit.

   Isaiah 1:18

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