4. I could also have learned from Creed in 1970 that choosing the centre, choosing belief in God
rather than atheism, and belief in the Christian God rather than a vaguer
theism is a matter of choice, a matter of deciding where you will place your
trust, since the existence of God cannot be proven. I rather think that, as an
18-year-old I was looking for some decisive piece of God-affirming evidence
which would sweep away all my doubts and bear me triumphantly into the kingdom.
The fact that God seemed elusive appeared to me to nothing to do with the
mystery of God’s self-withholding and everything to do with my own failure and
lack of faith. It would be some years before I came to realise that it’s OK to
acknowledge that neither the proposition that God exists nor it opposite can,
as Shideler puts it ‘be proved beyond the shadow of doubt to be either true or
false.’ (p29) What we must therefore do is to examine the evidence
reflectively, open both to God, to the Bible and to the experiences and
arguments of others. And then we must decide whether the evidence is robust
enough for us to commit ourselves to the Christian God. And at this stage we
must be willing (and this is my view rather than one expressed by Shideler) to
walk away from God if we genuinely feel that the evidence for God’s existence
is wanting. It remains the case that, as
Shideler puts it ‘When the informed Christian says “I believe,” he is stating
that his conclusions are based on presuppositions, that presuppositions are
necessary for thought, and that they cannot be proved. My choosing life,
choosing joy through commitment to God is a faith-based choice. It may be based
on powerful evidence, but not on absolute proof.
5. Because no theological system is final, and because
the choice to believe is based on presupposition, it follows that asking
questions is not simply permissible, but is positively to be encouraged.
Christian faith invites scepticism, not in any destructive, unbelieving sense,
but in willingness to confront the questions which arise, the awkward realities
which won’t fit into the paradigm. ‘The Christian sceptic,’ writes Shideler,’
can be both Christian and sceptical because he knows that in accepting the
Christian faith, he is trusting uncertainties.’ (p39) it was a great relief to
me to realise, again perhaps in the 1990s, that its OK to ask questions, and OK
also to live with those questions which prove to be unanswerable.
6. The final lesson from Creed which I would not learn for some time is the validity of
different experiences of God in the context of Christian faith. I had rather
naively assumed that if Christianity were true, then the Christian (or at any
rate the genuine Christian as opposed to the ‘counterfeit’ Christians of whom
we were warned) would not only believe much the same things, but also
experience God in more or less the same way. It was the cause of great
perplexity to me that my experience of God seemed to be so much out of kilter
with other peoples’ reported experiences of God. It was a breakthrough when I
realised that similar belief in God does not
engender similar experiences of God, and that the fact that you experience your
faith differently from others is not an indication that your faith is less
valid than theirs. Shideler writes ‘in enthroning our own experience or lack of
it, we repudiate not merely our neighbours' opinions but also his personal
identity.’ (p47) I, of course, in my diffident lack of self-worth, was
enthroning the experience of everyone else – believing that what they reported
must be the only valid Christian experience, and so repudiating both my own experience
and my own identity. A long way down the road from 1970, I would learn to
affirm my experience and embrace my identity, and this discovery was
liberating.
And so, in 1970, I was not yet ready for the lessons A Creed for a Christian Sceptic held for
me. But there was one image from the book which spoke to me so powerfully that I
have never forgotten it. So vividly did it linger in my imagination that I
completely missed it the first time I re-read the book, so blandly is it stated
on the page compared with my recollection of it. Here’s what Mary McDermott
Shideler wrote:
While
the way of Christian life may be narrow, it is more likely to twist and bend
like a river than to run straight like a Roman road, and we who follow it
down-stream to the sea may be temporarily heading west around one curve while our
companions are heading east around another curve, yet both may be travelling in
the same current to the same end.
I saw in my mind’s eye this river, sinuously making
its way to the great ocean. I stand in the flood-plain watching. There are
yachts on my river, sails down so that all I can see is their masts. I was sure
Mrs Shideler had boats in her river too, but I was wrong. As the river curves,
some masts move from right to left, other from left to right, so that they seem
to be heading in different directions. In fact each yacht is on the same river,
borne by the same current down towards the same sea. And that is the image
which consoled me, and made me value Creed
even if at that point I did not fully understand the nature of its consolation.
No comments:
Post a Comment