I’m a guy who doesn’t believe. Pure and simple, I don’t pretend to be anything but what I am, and I am an atheist. I grew up a Christian and learned along the way that the basis for the faith was not something I could accept any longer. And honestly, I do have trouble understanding how grown adults can continue to believe. Some recent and interesting research has led me to the notion that, among many other issues, people use their faith as a means to control the uncontrollable. That makes sense to me. When times get tough and things are difficult, people often like to have that thing to hold on to that gets them through. I understand that, and while I don’t share it in the sense of a God watching over me or what have you, I know that my absolute certainty that I can weather any storm because I’ve weathered my share assists me.
It’s an incorrect statement, of course, as mathematically flawed as my absolute mathematical proof that I shall live forever. I take the total number of time I have died (0) and the total number of years I have been alive, and compare them in a ratio:
0 : 36
Now, the math behind ratios is simple. Whatever thou doest unto thine left side of thy ratio, thou shall doest unto thine right side. So if we quadruple the number, clearly the result is:
0 : 144
Let’s add an order of magnitude:
0 : 1440
Clearly, the math shows that no matter how old I get, I’ll never die. It is of course a joke of an equation and not meant to be taken seriously, but the same logical hiccup tells me that since I’ve weathered every storm in the past, clearly I’ll be fine to weather any present or future storms. There’s no relationship between each of these events, and it is entirely possible that I be presented with a storm I cannot hope to best.
I just read some writing on the Huffington Post web site by Dr. Serene Jones, the President of the Union Theological Seminary. Honestly, I was bored at work with a few minutes to kill, and I figured that HuffPo would result in much giggling on my end, and I was not let down. There is nothing wrong with Dr. Jones’ (hah! Get it? NO TIME FOR LOVE, DOCTOR JONES!) premise. She says that in tough times, such as the divorce that she went through, she knows that God’s love is the rock of her foundation that will keep her grounded and safe.
It’s a classic example, though, of that idea that we use faith to control the uncontrollable. More power to her, I say. I’ve been through a divorce, and mine was amicable enough, but still was an ordeal emotionally that I’d like to not have to experience again. I can relate with the frustration and the fear and the self-recrimination that goes hand in hand with a failed marriage. If that’s what gets her through the day (just as my belief in my ability to handle what life throws at me does for me) then that’s fantastic.
What’s interesting to me on the topic, though, is what my ex-wife went through spiritually during the divorce. She was a fairly evangelical Christian at the time, though now she has converted to Mormonism, and naturally chose to find comfort in her faith. What greeted her was no comfort to her. Malachi assures us that God bloody hates divorce (Malachi 2:16), Matthew tells of Jesus sounding rather surly about the idea of divorce (Matthew 19:8), and also explains that any woman who been divorced is an adulteress slut who can never again be touched by a man for fear of God’s eternal wrath (Matthew 5:32).
I guess I’m curious to know how God can be your rock and help you through a change that he so totally hates.
Jim
