The Spirit of things: The buddhist Athiest

Interesting program on Radio National's Spirit of things with Rachael Kohn, "The Buddhist Atheist" The thing that I found interesting and was how within Buddhism there are those who struggle; that are more 'left' leaning for want of a better word.
The interview is with Buddhist Author and former monk Stephen Bachelor, who doubts reincarnation. It is similar to how liberal Christian often doubt the virgin birth or the atonement etc etc.
What I found interesting is that I think within most major religion there are those that doubt. Who don't fit into the orthodox.

Marcus Borg, The heart of Christianity: Ch2 Faith the way of the heart

 

The heart of Christianity: Ch2 Faith the way of the heart

This chapter starts by defining how most people inside and outside the Church define 'faith' : 'believing a set of Christian beliefs to be true.' To be a Christian there is a need to affirm the 'right' beliefs to be true. This form of beliefs turns belief into a head matter instead of a heart matter.

Borg goes onto mention four meanings of faith::

Faith as Assensus: faith as belief as just mentioned. A recent phenonemon with the advent of enlightenment and beyond. What happens is questionable things are true. Doubt
I like what he writes latter on in the chapter about Assensus, 'We cannot give our heart to something that our mind rejects'

[Comment, after reading this It gave me great clarity of my own life, I had been looking for the assensus and bypassing my heart, occasionally the heart was touched but not often.]

Faith as Fiducia: Instead of believing in a set of propositions about God, it is just trust in God. Borg an illustration from Kierkegaard 'faith is like floating...If you struggle, if you tense up and thrash about, you will eventually sink. But if you relax and trust, you will float.

Faith as Fidelitas: faithfulness or even better fidelity. Not faithful to some sort of doctrine or creed but to God. A faithfulness to God and also what God loves.

Faith as Visio: A way of seeing the whole, seeing it as 'what is', nourishing, bringing us into existence and a giver of our abstinence. Filled with beauty and at times 'terrible' beauty.
The way that I look at it as 'If all things turn out for the best' and a trust in this.

[comment:: This for me Vissio is the most difficult to understand, I'm still not sure I get it.
This part of the chapter was a bit of a revelation for me. One of my constant struggles was with faith as 'assensus'. I think if people had an understanding of these broader definitions of faith then the amount of 'doubt' would be reduced.]

Borg dosn't  write that we need to eliminate altogether the idea of assensus; it is still a very important part of what it means and defines Christianity to be. Borg gives his own broad 'Assensus' of what it is to be a Christian these are::

Being a Christian means affirming the reality of God
Christian faith means affirming the utter centrality of Jesus
Christian faith means affirming the centrality of the Bible

[Comment: I like the broadness of this, it is what I can affirm]

 -Borg goes onto discuss the word 'Credo' the giving of ones 'deeper self' not just intellect.
-premodern understanding of faith is a relational understanding of Christian life.

I like the last paragraph it sums up what it means to be a Christian

...the central meaning of faith. Given the premodern meaning of "believe," to believe in God is to belove God. Faith is about beloving God and all that God beloves....'

Faith

One of my favourite theologians at the moment is Marcus Borg. This is an excerpt from a sermon which he gave and is on the Church of Christ gadfly blog::

The Hebrew word for faith in the Old Testament is emoonah. What makes that word interesting is that it’s the sound that a baby donkey makes when it is calling for its mother. To appreciate that, you have to say emoonah so it sounds like that.…I sometimes think to myself, if you say it soft, it’s almost like braying. The point being that faith in the Hebrew Bible is like a baby donkey calling out or crying for its mother. There’s something kind of wonderful about that. There is an element…I don’t know if you want to say of desperation in it or not, but there certainly is an element of confidence also that the cry will be heard.

What I really want to emphasize…are the four meanings that faith has come to have in the Christian tradition. The first of these four is, I am convinced, a modern distortion, even as it is probably the most common meaning on the popular level. The other three are ancient and traditional and wonderfully complementary. You can have them all, but let me begin with the modern distortion.The modern distortion of faith is the one I think I learned growing up around the middle of this century. Faith as believing. Faith as believing the doctrines of the Christian tradition, faith as believing that there is a God, faith as believing that Jesus is divine, faith as believing that Jesus died for your sins, faith as believing that…and then fill it with almost anything. Faith as believing certain statements to be true.

There are a number of reasons why I say that’s a modern distortion. First of all, try to imagine what faith was like before the Enlightenment, that great period of Western history that began in the 17th or 18th centuries. Prior to the Enlightenment, in Christian culture of the Reformation or the Middle Ages and so forth, nobody had any trouble believing that the Bible came from God, that the Genesis stories of creation were true, that Jesus walked on the water and so forth. It didn’t take faith to believe any of that, that was simply part of the taken-for-granted understandings of people living in western Christendom. It’s only when those things started to be questioned that suddenly faith came to mean believing what otherwise doesn’t make a lot of sense to you. And faith came to mean what Bishop Robinson called some 35 years ago, believing 49 impossible things before breakfast.

It makes a lot of sense Borgs understanding of 'Faith'. The 'modern day' understanding of faith is something which I always struggled with and is easily equated to doubt.  I think Borg is pushing on something which is a lot more freeing than doubt. Doubt as I've come to understand it is seasonal, but this 'Faith' is forever.

Feildings response

Upon last weeks post on Q&A on the ABC I couldn't help feel sorry for Steven Fielding. I was perplexed that his reply to Dawkins question 'was he a creationist?' The reply was a small 'yes' and a loud (and I paraphrase) 'lots of people are allowed to believe different things.' It was if he was rather embarassed by his answer. To be honest I would have been more interested in why he was a creationist. Even if I didn't agree, I think it would have been a better response.


Now where I have empathy with Feilding is that as a Christian there are responses that we will give that don't make much sense to people. It doesn't matter if you are a progressive liberal or a fundamentalist. Sooner or latter we will be embarrassed by our responses. Maybe it is not embarrassment rather an uncertainty? That in uncertainty we need to be honest with our selves and therefore to God.

Faith, hope and doubt

One late, late night shift, I was having a conversation about Christianity and its claims of 'no other way than Jesus'. I find it easy to talk about the existence of God, but the argument of an exclusiveness of Christianity is flawed. It is a loosing battle.

The issues is one of history, archeology and culture. All three reveal religions that are much older than Christianity, with just as much validity in the eyes of the secular.

Christianity also relies on history, archeology and culture, but its main foundation is the 'Bible'. The Bible has an amazing story, of how it came to be collated and surprisingly its final composition is relatively recent. 

It is interesting the Wikipedia's definition of fundamentalism::

Fundamentalism refers to a belief in a strict adherence to a set of basic principles (often religious in nature), sometimes as a reaction to perceived doctrinal compromises with modern social and political life.

^{Richard Dawkins from the same article goes on to include::}

...clinging to a stubborn, entrenched position that defies reasoned argument or contradictory evidence.

^{One argument which I see as disturbing is the correlation between violence and fundamentalism. Supermarket Monkey quotes a 'Dr Becks'}

If statistics are to be believed, a great deal of the violence in the world is due to ideology. True believers are dangerous. Doubters, by contrast, tend to be pretty peaceable. Their self-suspicions tend to throw cold water on the violent impulses inherent in ideology and belief. Doubters will have softer more empathic hearts because the answers they seek are not yet within their possession. The answers are still "out there" to some extent. Thus, the doubter leans into the world with a hopeful expectation.

For me doubt comes easily. But then again so does hope. It is hope the engine room for my faith. It is hope which drives my belief of the narrative of the Christian story. It is hope which pushes aside the hard questions of belief and the ugly side of doctrine. Yet tempered with doubt....

Doubt Continued...

Scot McKnight did a follow up letter to the letter he recieved regarding 'Doubt'. 

His response is worth reading and for its generosity and wisdom. It is something that  I'll kept 'stared' in the google reader.

But I have to begin with this observation: you will never go back to where you were and you will never be the same again and you will never get back to where things were. Instead, this season of doubt, which for some lasts months and for others years and even in some ways lingers for a lifetime, is with you and it changes you and your faith. There is a temptation to seek to go back and find your first feelings or your former way of doing things. That approach to encountering doubt teaches most us one one thing: that's not the approach that "works."

Doubt and Bible college

There was an interesting post on Doubt on Scot McKnight's web site of a person who is experiencing doubt with his faith while going through bible college.

Recently, I suddenly, for no apparent reason, felt "jolted out of my Christian worldview", and I suddenly find it really hard to believe in existence of God anymore. It has been 3 months since I have felt this way now and I have done my best to trace through my intellectual struggles. I don't really know why... 

It sounds a desperate place. The comments are also worth while looking at.

In reflection initial Bible college expectations are never really fully realized.

I can remember the first day when in a group we were asked what were our reasons for signing up. Most, didn't really know. I expect they thought they would end up in some employment with the Church. I think I said I felt called to church plant. One guy who was probably just been honest actually said he was looking for a wife...

Now five years after graduation and knowing a few other graduates. A number have lost their faith. A few have begun 'alternate' life styles. Only one is in 'paid' Ministry. And yes the honest one did get married, but not to another 'graduate'!

I think just as people who have huge emotional issues often study councilling (Yep anecdotal, but it seems that way to me). I also think that those who search deeply for God will often be found in Bible college. You will also find in Bible college those who want there spirituality to fit nicely in a box. Just like an Apple mac is packed.

During Bible college and afterwards.

If you are a searcher, you will always be searching.

If you like your life to fit in a box, it will be unpacked. Rarely put back the same way. (Although the mate in 'ministry', still appears a snug fitting box.)