What I Do Believe

Last time I talked about the Nicene Creed and threw out about half of it as uncertain/unnecessary. So today I'm going to try to define what I do believe. Belief in the religious sense is a strange concept to me. I'm not able to say that I'm certain of anything about God or that I know anything. As I've said before, there are too many ideas and experiences and not enough clarity in how to evaluate them. So for me, in religious terms, a belief basically means a working hypothesis. A hypothesis because my ideas could eventually be disproved, though I don't expect that in this life, nor do I expect enough evidence to be able to move from hypothesis to theory. It's important to my sense of intellectual honesty that I maintain the awareness that my beliefs could be totally wrong. It could turn out that there's nothing, that the existence of the universe is a chance event. It could turn out that the divine being is actually a giant interdimensional badger. I don't think these are likely, but I can't say they're impossible.

But anyway...that explains the hypothesis part. And then working because for me the point of religion is to inform the way I live my life, to give me a perspective that makes life more than just a series of events, to help my life be about something. (I'm not claiming that religious belief is the only way to give one's life meaning – there are many ways to anchor one's life – this is just the one that works for me). So I guess for me a religious belief is an idea about the divine that, if it were true, would affect the way I live my life, and that I attempt to live as if I know it to be true, while recognizing that I don't actually know that. This gives me some difficulty distinguishing between faith and hope, which Paul delineates as separate things.

Because I think of my beliefs primarily as the things that inform my life, there's a lot of stuff that's part of the traditional Christian faith that I don't consider myself to believe or disbelieve because it doesn't seem to affect my choices. Things like: the circumstances of Jesus' birth, whether he was conceived of a virgin or the traditional way, whether God exists as a trinity and the details of that, whether Jesus was God from all eternity, whether and how the biblical miracles happened, even whether there was a literal bodily resurrection – these are all things where waiting and seeing seems to be adequate.

So, on to what I do believe. I believe that there is a God who created the universe out of love and holds it in being. For me, this manifests as a sense that the universe is trustworthy, both in the consistency of natural law, and in the intuition that everything will be set right one day. At the same time, I'm aware that it's far easier to see the universe as trustworthy when one is healthy and well-fed and safe and loved. People really are crushed by hardship and injustice, and I can't blame someone in those circumstances for deciding that the universe isn't so trustworthy after all.

I believe that God loves each person uniquely and individually, and also loves His natural creation. This is where all ethics come from (for me, not for everyone). Not just that God loves everyone, therefore I should too – but that God loves everyone, therefore there is something there to love in everyone. This means approaching the world with an assumption of goodwill, giving people the benefit of the doubt, trying to look beyond my own prejudices and first impressions, meeting people where they are. I fail at this all the time, sometimes because I just can't seem to get past my own emotions, but more often because I forget to try. I think one of the dangers of our fast-paced, results-oriented world is that in the need to get stuff done, we run the risk of not seeing people as people, but as tasks to be accomplished or obstacles to be overcome. The fact that it's a societal problem doesn't make it okay for me to fall into those traps, but it does raise questions about whether we as a society ought to reprioritize. And society certainly isn't to blame for all of it – I also fail because I'm tired or preoccupied or angry or nervous or fearful.

I believe that God is patient with human failings. If I didn't believe this, I simply wouldn't be able to function. I have my ideals, but I also have my tiredness and impatience and self-centeredness, and a brain that's the product of evolution and frequently seems to still be in beta. It's hard for me to distinguish when I've failed because of being truly overwhelmed or because I just chose not to try hard enough. Sometimes it's clear-cut, but more often it isn't. And so I have to believe in forgiveness – I have to believe that God won't write me off but will allow me to keep trying and furthermore positively wants me to keep trying – because the alternative is just to give up. Of course, I also ought to remember this when I'm dealing with other people and their failings and try to be patient with them as well. And sometimes I succeed at that, and sometimes I fail.

I believe that God will set all things right eventually but that He also cares about the present. Without the belief that goodness and justice will win out in the end, I don't know what I would do – my best guesses are either suicide or a totally self-centered life. The reason is that the scale of suffering and injustice is simply overwhelming, and I don't think humans are likely to be able to totally resolve it. Plus there's nothing we can do for those who are already dead. Fixing a little piece of a really big problem does indeed have value, but it's still psychologically difficult to tolerate the fact that you're working on a problem that you'll never be able to solve. Without the belief that it will be solved eventually, the temptation to just give up would be too strong. At the same time, with the belief that it will be solved, there's a temptation to just not worry, to sit back and let God take care of it. And I think this is also a mistake. The work we can do in the world might be incomplete, but it's still real. Yes, all will be well in the end, but the end isn't the only time that exists. Suffering that we alleviate now is still alleviated – sooner is better than later. Maybe all the extinct species will be restored in the new creation (wouldn't it be cool to have dinosaurs in heaven?!?) but if we preserve them now, their continued existence also has meaning. I don't know why we're given this tension between now and in the fullness of time. My best guess is that it has something to do with giving us some space to work with free will, maybe to let us fiddle around with it before we get down to using it in earnest. I sometimes question whether this is worth the cost in suffering and bad decisions, but I have to assume that God knows what He's doing or I have nothing left to work with.

There are other things I believe, but I'm out of time to write, so that'll be it for today. Maybe sometime I'll put up a sequel.