The Six Blank Pages Of Doug B

Years ago I paid a quarter for a used paperback copy of Leslie Weatherhead's The Christian Agnostic. I read it and have reread it over the years with great satisfaction.

 

Weatherhead titled chapter four God And Our Guess and related how "ludicrous" he felt sitting at his desk and writing God at the top of his paper. How little, he felt, man could actually know of that subject. He then wrote: "I feel that the most appropriate thing to do would be to leave a half dozen blank sheets of paper!"

 

That stuck with me, and I think of it often when I try to put down any of my thoughts about God.

 

Most people for better or worse have some concept of God that is meaningful at least to them. If we would stop being so insistent that we have cornered the market on God-thought religion might not receive such a bad rap.

 

Forrest Church, the late pastor of All Souls Unitarian Church of New York City, gave a good definition of God that is more than sufficient to describe my own way thinking about it:

 

God is our name for a power that is greater than all and yet present in each: the life force; the Holy Being itself.

 

There is the real starting point, I believe, for anyone who takes seriously the God-hypothesis. I could write page after page about the many coincidences in my life that seem upon deeper reflection too coincidental to be mere coincidence. That would be convince no other than myself that there is something deeper and more meaningful back of the big picture. But others who feel the same way would have their own personal verification from their own lives.

 

To think of God as the power that pulls everything forward and teases order out of disorder is surely not an outrageous idea. And if not, surely it wouldn't be outrageous for us to attempt to tap into that power.  

 

A thousand questions could be asked. Blank lines would serve as better responses than pat answers based on a caricature of God that has been passed down through popular traditions.

 

I am also an atheist about the God most atheists seem to object to. However, the power of the concept of a Master Mind at work in this thing called life can't cease fueling my own speculations. But let me be quick to label them that.

A Theocratic Threat?

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has - unwisely, in my opinion - referenced a Bible verse on his official Twitter and Facebook accounts. The verse is Phillippians 4:13: "I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me."

 

The Freedom From Religion Foundation was quick to send the governor a cease and desist - actually delete - letter over the signatures of Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor. 

 

Reasonable enough.

 

But check out this ridiculous paragraph:

 

On March 16, 2014, you posted on your official Twitter and Facebook accounts the words "Phillippians 4:13", a verse which reads, "I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me." (See attached screen shots) This braggadocio verse coming from a public official is rather disturbing. To say "I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me," seems more like a threat, or the utterance of a theocratic dictator, than of a duly elected civil servant.  

 

Yes, how threatening! Why, the next thing you know our presidents will be taking their oath of office with a hand on the Bible or other holy book, like theocratic dictators! (And yes, I could do without that bit of pomp and circumstance, too; however, I don't feel threatened by it, nor when I see it do I feel I am staring a theocrat in the face.)

 

Yes, I would like to see our government neutral in matters of religion, protecting both the freedom of religion as well as protecting those who might feel disenfranchised for a lack of religious faith. 

 

But what I'm not liking is this constant battle between those who are overly zealous religiously and irreligiously.

 

I have no desire to live in a theocracy, but neither would I desire an American version of the Cult of Reason. Humans should not be persecuted for following their conscience and reason to what they feel is a natural conclusion.

 

At present I don't feel our country is in danger of falling into either extreme. Nevertheless, the constant saber rattling of both extremes is troublesome. 

Why I Never Shut That Door Completely

It was always left a bit ajar, even in my darkest, most cynical moments. God had disappointed me - or rather, I should say, my indoctrinated ideas about God had rung untrue for me in so many ways. However, the door I could never completely close was the door which leads to a deeper meaning and a spiritual outlook on life.

 

Something inside me, something I fought for years to turn off, continued to gnaw at me. The more I fought the more I felt I was being dishonest with myself, that I was denying something that just seemed so obviously true to me.

 

William Newton Clarke, a liberal theologian from a few generations back, put into words something that more than anything forms the basis for my thinking:

 

We men are not the only thinkers in existence: there is a vaster mind. Science is our witness that the universe has been embraced in a single thought. It is one, and not a mass of fragments. It has been thought through, and the relation of each part of it to the other parts has been thought of. And so we live amidst rational operation, and there is something with which to compare our mental processes. We can judge of the validity of our reasoning. Our minds and their processes are supported by the universal mind. We are rational in a rational universe, seeking truth in an honest world, children thinking out the thoughts of the vast mind to which all things owe their intelligibility. The world is honest, and life is not a delusion.

 

(The emphasis there via underlining is mine.)

 

The idea of a Universal Mind forms the basis of my spiritual worldview. I have no need for the imagined authority of the various "holy books" that at best, it seems to me, contain only efforts by the ancients to make sense of the Universal Mind.

 

I limit my own search to what I find within myself and without, as I contemplate the cosmos. And I find myself free to explore without a need to impose my ideas on others.

 

 

The Case For Hope

Recently I saved the following quote from Pope Francis:

 

Faith is not a light which scatters all our darkness, but a lamp which guides our steps in the night and suffices for the journey. To those who suffer, God does not provide arguments which explain everything; rather, His response is that of an accompanying presence, a history of goodness which touches every story of suffering and opens up a ray of light.

 

Upfront I will state that Pope Francis does not echo my overall thoughts about religion. But here, on the matter of God and religious faith in general, he says something that rings true to me.

 

It comforts me to imagine that life isn't a haphazard crazy quilt. Perhaps it is more like a giant jigsaw puzzle that only comes together gradually and that, with faith, we can hope in the end will present a coherent, recognizable picture.

 

Faith doesn't enable me to believe what I know ain't so, as one of Mark Twain''s characters expressed it. It does allow me to hope that my inner voice isn't wrong about life not being accidental and undesigned.

 

This hope has be lampooned and mocked. There are those who have dismissed it with logic and philosophical scientism. Though it all the hope of faith has not been extinguished. I suspect it never will be.