Atheist

A true atheist is one who is willing to face the full consequences of what it means to say there is no God.

To say there is no God means among other things that there are no absolute standards. For instance, if you are an atheist who believes with all your heart that murder is wrong and you run into somebody else who believes with all her heart that murder isn't wrong as long as she can get away with it, there is no absolute standard by which it can be shown that one view is better than the other, just as there is no absolute standard by which it can be shown that vanilla is better than chocolate.

If you are an atheist who says that murder is wrong because it works against the good of society in general, then you are saying that the good of society in general is gooder than the good of the murderer in particular, and, having thrown out all absolute standards, you can't say that. All you can say is that vanilla is better than chocolate because you like it better and so do most of your friends.

If you say, "In the absence of absolute standards, I declare that murder is wrong in the name of common sense" then you have simply made common sense your absolute standard. What is in accord with common sense is right and what isn't is wrong.

What is American is right and what is un-American is wrong. What is ethical is right and what is unethical is wrong. What works is right and what doesn't work is wrong. These all bring God back under different names: nationalism, ethics, pragmatism. To be a true atheist is to acknowledge no rule except the rule of thumb.

Thus many an atheist is a believer without knowing it, just as many a believer is an atheist without knowing it. You can sincerely believe there is no God and live as though there is. You can sincerely believe there is a God and live as though there isn't. So it goes.

Lots of the time atheism isn't bad fun. I do what seems right to me and you do what seems right to you, and if we come into conflict with each other, society has human judges to invoke human laws and arbitrate between us. Who needs a Divine Judge and a Cosmic Law? We can learn to live in lower case.

Except sometimes. Sometimes it's almost as hard to believe God doesn't exist as to believe he does. I don't mean a baby's smile, which is probably gas. I don't mean the beauty of nature, which is always soon followed by the indifferent cruelty and ugliness of nature. I mean an atheist is about as likely as anybody else to walk into a newsstand someday and pick up a copy of the National Enquirer or some such paper. On the front page is a picture of a dead child. The bare back is covered with welts. The eyes are swollen shut. Both arms are broken. The full story is on page three if you have the stomach for it.

To be consistent with the atheistic creed, the atheist can say no more than that to beat a child to death is wrong with a small w. Wrong because it is cruel, ugly, inhuman, pointless, illegal, and makes the gorge rise. But what is apt to rise along with the gorge is the suspicion that it is wrong also with a capital Wthe suspicion that the law that has been broken here is not just a human law, but a law as immutable as the law of gravity, one by which even if there were no children in the universe and no grown-ups to beat them, it would be written into the very fabric of reality itself that such an act is wrong.

The atheist holds the tabloid in hand and asks the question, "Why should such things happen?" Atheism can reply only, "Why shouldn't such things happen?" But the atheist keeps on asking.

What makes it hard to be an atheist is the feeling you sometimes get in the pit of your stomach that there must be after all, mad as it seems, an absolute good in terms of which such an act as this can be denounced as absolutely evil. Thus the problem of good is a major stumbling block for atheism, just as the problem of evil is a major stumbling block for religious faith. Both must learn how to live with their doubts.

A true atheist takes human freedom very seriously. With no God to point the way, humans must find their own way. With no God to save the world, humans must save their own world if it's going to be saved. They must save it from themselves, if nothing else. A true atheist does not dance on the grave of God.

The laughter of faith in God is like Abraham's laughter when God says his ninety-year-old wife is in a family way. The laughter of faith in no-God is heard in Sartre's story "The Wall": A man is threatened with death if he doesn't betray the whereabouts of his friend to the enemy. The man refuses to do this and sends the enemy on a wild goose chase to a place where he knows his friend isn't. By chance it turns out to be the very place where his friend is. The friend is captured and executed and the man given his freedom. Sartre ends the story by saying that the man laughed till he cried.

~originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words

Avarice

Avarice, greed, concupiscence, and so forth are all based on the mathematical truism that the more you get, the more you have. The remark of Jesus that it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35) is based on the human truth that the more you give away in love, the more you are. It is not just for the sake of other people that Jesus tells us to give rather than get, but for our own sakes too.

~originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words

Awe

I remember seeing a forest of giant redwoods for the first time. There were some small children nearby, giggling and chattering and pushing each other around. Nobody had to tell them to quiet down as we entered. They quieted down all by themselves. Everybody did. You couldn't hear a sound of any kind. It was like coming into a vast, empty room.

Two or three hundred feet high the redwoods stood. You had to crane your neck back as far as it would go to see the leaves at the top. The trees made their own twilight out of the bright California day. There was a stillness and stateliness about them that seemed to become part of you as you stood there stunned by the sight of them. They had been growing in that place for going on two thousand years. With infinite care they were growing even now. You could feel them doing it. They made you realize that all your life you had been mistaken. Oaks and ashes, maples and chestnuts and elms you had seen for as long as you could remember, but never until this moment had you so much as dreamed what a Tree really was.

"Behold the man," Pilate said when he led Jesus out where everybody could see him. He can't have been much to look at after what they'd done to him by then, but my guess is that, even so, there suddenly fell over that mob a silence as awed as ours in the forest when for the first time in their lives they found themselves looking at a Human Being.

~originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words

Balaam

The legend of Solomon's ring, the adventures of Dr. Doolittle, the attempt to decipher the dots and dashes of dolphins, and the attempt to teach chimpanzees to type out their thoughts on computers all reflect our ancient dream of being able to talk with the animals. As fascinating as a message from outer space would be a message from the inner space of a great blue heron or a common house cat sunning herself on the kitchen linoleum. Their mute gaze suggests a vision of reality beyond our imagining. What do they see in their ignorance that we in our wisdom are mostly blind to?

In the book of Numbers, Balaam's ass sees an angel of the Lord barring the way with a drawn sword in his hand and thereupon lies down in the middle of the road with Balaam still on his back. When Balaam clobbers him over the head with a stick, the ass speaks out reproachfully in fluent Hebrew, and then Balaam sees the angel too.

This is perhaps a clue to the mystery. Whereas people as a rule see only what they expect to see and little more, animals, innocent of expectation, see what is there. The next time the old mare looks up from her browsing and lets fly with an exultant whinny at the empty horizon, we might do well to consider at least the possibility that the horizon may not be quite as empty as we think.

Numbers 22:22-31

~originally published in Peculiar Treasures and later in Beyond Words

Baptism

Baptism consists of getting dunked or sprinkled. Which technique is used matters about as much as whether you pray kneeling or standing on your head. Dunking is a better symbol, however. Going under symbolizes the end of everything about your life that is less than human. Coming up again symbolizes the beginning in you of something strange and new and hopeful. You can breathe again.

Question: How about infant baptism? Shouldn't you wait until the child grows up enough to know what's going on?

Answer: If you don't think there is as much of the less-than-human in an infant as there is in anybody else, you have lost touch with reality.

When it comes to the forgiving and transforming love of God, one wonders if the six-week-old screecher knows all that much less than the archbishop of Canterbury about what's going on.

~originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words