Into the Nothingness of It All

A little more than 40 years ago, something changed when I became a Christian. My faith was not born of tradition or custom; it was an entirely new spiritual awakening. I had spent a couple years searching for meaning, looking into other religions, other ways of believing, other understandings of existence. I practiced--tried practicing--some of them. They ended up feeling contrived, forced, external. One day, opening a Living Bible (a paraphrase of the accepted Protestant Bible), I stumbled upon the writings of the apostle Paul--his letter to the Roman believers, I think--and it felt like the words leapt off the page, as though they were on fire, and I could not deny that, unlike the other things I had been reading and practicing, those words were internalized in a way that created a deep longing for more. In those days, it was called "being born again." From that point on, the Bible was the lens through which I looked at all of life. It was the framework of my existence, the guiding light, my strong foundation and hope.  Those who knew me -- some of you who may be reading this -- would confirm this.

One note about the drive for my faith: I did not believe in order to avoid hell, nor did I believe in order to go to heaven. That smug, "If you died tonight, where would you go" question is an anachronism, in my opinion. It presumes a universal belief in a particular afterlife. For me, the drive was always to find meaning, to make sense out of life.  

Thus, for many, many years, the centerpoint, the touchstone, of my existence was this very personal Christian faith. It was not a mediocre faith; I immersed myself in the experience. My entire life was founded on what I believed to be truth. My understanding(s) came from years of reading/serious study of the Bible, from regular reading of books by Christian authors, writings of historic figures, the works of contemporary pastors, from commentaries, from serious efforts of scholars and apologists, and so on. In addition, long before NPR was a common station in our home, Christian radio and all the programs that were broadcast day in and day out added to the foundation and understanding and depth of my faith. I was as devoted and authentic a Christ follower as you could find. I was always a bit skeptical of anyone who claimed to be Christian but whose life looked more like that of an opportunist or charlatan. Indeed, I was no follower of any particular teacher or creed. My authority was the Bible, as I understood it, and those in it, particularly Paul, I think, whose writings I found most compelling. When I became a leader in BSF (Bible Study Fellowship), I was obligated to join a church. That was difficult, as I have never been a big fan of organized religion. (My family stopped attending church before Easter when I was in fifth grade.) I still have a hard time with people becoming famous for being Christian; it seems a sure path to self-deception.  

From those first tentative "If You are real, God, I want to believe" of Spring 1977, fast forward to about ten years ago, when things began to shift. Perhaps it started with taking college courses again (I had enrolled at KVCC in Kalamazoo and took some classes just for my own enjoyment.) and thinking about things from another perspective. There were some books, too, that I read around that time. One was "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris. Reading it with the expectation to reject the author's ideas, I instead found myself agreeing with the author. I found that his criticisms were valid and appropriate. (Truth be told, I think that book ought to be required reading for anyone sitting in any pew or claiming to be a Christian.) Another book was about intelligence and artificial intelligence; it was a book my dad had given me. I cannot remember the title. In my conceptual physics class, I started thinking about atoms and about energy and mass and what happens to all of that when a life ends. I started thinking about how we create reality through our own experiences, and indeed, how we are indoctrinated into understanding the world according to someone else's idea of reality. My eyes were opened to the realization that belief did not equal truth. Any one could believe any thing, and the believing does not make it true. The more I thought about this, the more I saw the mirroring of this all around the world, and the more I realized that nobody on planet Earth knows The Truth: We only THINK we know it. We claim that our understanding is The Understanding. And whatever ideology we follow assures us that this is so.  

I was shocked. I had wandered into another spiritual awakening, a consciousness raising that I had never expected and which, frankly, concerned the hell out of me. It was quite a confusing time and experience; after a lifetime of thinking about things one way, suddenly I began seeing things quite differently. I felt unmoored, out to sea, no land in sight, altogether alone. I remember talking to my parents about this and them telling me that it took a lot of courage to question our own thoughts and to question my own experience. When I felt like I was drifting in open water, and thought that somehow I had done this to myself, or that I had been deceived in order to be pulled away from God, I remembered that if indeed there were such a thing as the Author and Finisher of my faith, then that Author was doing just what needed to be done to keep molding me into who I was meant to become. I began to see that things were--to steal a line from William Butler Yeats--"changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born." For I gradually came to understand that I had broken outside the limits of a previous awareness and there was no turning back. Once you have broken free of a previous limited understanding, you cannot undo the new consciousness.  

As I began to talk a little about this with others, tentatively, hesitantly, in a way sort of horrified at the experience I was having, others doubted the veracity of my experience and also, much to my chagrin, doubted that I had "ever really been" a Christian. I understood their concerns, because that is how, too, had seen such an experience before I had it myself. I was warned to turn back lest I be lost; I was admonished to "just read the Bible and let the Holy Spirit guide you" (which of course means that I had not been doing that, you see). I was told I was being prayed for, that the prayers were that God would bring me back.

You know that point in David Bowie's smash hit Space Oddity, when Major Tom is floating 'round his tin can and he realizes he isn't going to be returning, he is singing, "Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do"? Well, that is sort of what this "loss of faith" is like. You see things like you've never seen them before and nobody else can understand it. They keep calling you back; they do not know you are already gone. 

Within, you are still the same person, only now you understand even better what it means to be forsaken, and you understand, even better than before, from a new perspective, the experience of being considered unworthy, of being called a fallen believer, or a heretic. It is easy to judge someone you think has left the path. To that I say, "Father, forgive them, for they know what they do." 

No longer certain of anything, including of my own experience, I do not claim to have any truth about anything past this life. I do not know if God exists, or if God even HAS to exist in order for us to have deeply meaningful spiritual experiences, but I hope there is a God. I hope there is more than this life. 

And yet, I sincerely desire for my three children and for those whom I love most, the deep experience of faith. I hope, for my children, a thirst for spiritual connection. I hope for them, the practice of being willing to be changed, to be broken open, to be forgiving and soft, to not be "of the world." I continue to strive to live by the foundational principles that Jesus modeled in his own life, even as I also incorporate mindfulness and awareness and impermanence into that walk. No longer identifying myself as a Christian the way I did for 40 years has created an unusual empty place within me; in truth, it is a kind of loss, this awakening.  

Is there Something More that guides my path? I hope there is. As I write this, I recall an especially precious-to-me verse from Paul's second letter to the Corinthian believers, 4:7: "We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of power may be of God, and not of us." Oh, how fallible we are, even when we do not know it. In the words of the late Leonard Cohen, "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."  

Amen to that, friends, amen to that. 

Faith can be good. It can also be horrible, a license to kill those with whom we disagree. We ought not to fool ourselves. Any faith could be used as a weapon.  

Nevertheless, faith in Jesus Christ has the power to offer hope and meaning, as it did for me. His life shone with humility and mercy and love and forgiveness and grace. He taught loyalty and patience and honesty. He modeled surrender and devotion, service and compassion. And in the end, those who killed him thought they were doing God a favor. How little we have learned. We are still quite smug in our own certainty, aren't we?

I do not know if the same experience can happen to a person who is, say, Muslim, or Jewish, Hindu, or Baha'i. I cannot judge any other's spiritual reality. I have a hard enough time judging my own. But I certainly would not discount another's experience just because it comes under a different name. Nor would I discount a person's devotion or desire to know the ineffable and be known by it, simply because it comes under a different name.

Perhaps I am just as much a Christian as I ever was, only now, I have no label for who I am. I really do not know. It does seem, however, that I am unable to sort out who I am apart from who I have been. And time continues to unfold.

I wish I had awakened earlier than I did. I wish I had known better and had done better. I am sorry for the harm I have done.  

"When I am laid in earth, may my wrongs create no trouble in thy breast...Remember me..."  Click to listen