The Ambiguity of Faith
by John Barich

The Ambiguity of Faith

      To start my discussion the reader should keep in mind that the following ideas are rudimentary in nature, and may or may not be expounded upon in the near future. They are, moreover, personal reflections articulated through the language of existential philosophy and Christian theology. My opinion is that all religious reflection or philosophical exploration must proceeded from the existential context of the individual man and work its way out to embrace the natural world. This is what I seek to do but this task has been complicated by a number of factors.

      Because of the epistemological revolutions which have occurred in the 19th and 20th century, one cannot assume that the erudite theological and philosophical systems of a Thomas Aquinas or G.W.F. Hegel are sufficient to assert the veracity of religious content and describe the experiences of the religious mind. One cannot simply turn to the content of revelation and assume that one has discovered the meaning of life. Numbly mouthing a creed does not insure one's salvation. Fundamentalist religion, furthermore, so prevalent in all denominations, appears to be the expression of intense inner doubt and unbelief: it appears that the angry, vitriolic rhetoric coming from the mouths of our religious leaders signifies their inability to trust, believe, and live by the tenets of their particular religions traditions. Their moralistic anger is really a subterfuge masking a deep-seated doubt they seek to hide.

      On the other hand, the positivistic worldview, or the purely scientific worldview based on the techno-rational manipulation of nature, has been unable to provided people with the sense of order, purpose, and security needed to live spiritually abundant lives.

      The task of man, then, is to find a way out of this spiritual and intellectual malaise gripping Western society. The task is not only to piece together what has been broken, but to find meanings in the depths of our hearts, in eyes of the stranger, in acts of charity and loving kindness, and in the wisdom stored in the receptacle of our common intellectual and religious tradition. The stakes are immense but the reward is priceless. It is nothing short of the wager made by Pascal three centuries ago -- it is a wager for the eternal.

The Brokenness of Man

      Man is broken creature, both in body and in spirit. The history of the twentieth century attests to the physical brokenness of bodies that has occurred each and every day since the advent of the century. Consider World War I or World War II, or places like Cambodia, El Salvador, Rwanda, Bosnia, or South Africa, or events like the Holocaust, the perpetration of mass death is beyond the scope of human comprehension. The number of innocent men, women, and children who have been murdered in the name of communism, fascism, and democracy is staggering. It defies human understanding. On the micro-level, we constantly hear about the breaking of bodies. Before I sat down to write this reflection, I read about an incident that occurred in the Yugoslavian town of Mostar. Apparently, a mob of angry Croatians attacked a group of Muslims who were praying in a Muslim cemetery. The Muslim mayor of Mostar was viciously beaten and one Muslim was killed by the mob. This small incident exemplifies the violence carried out on the bodies of people. Men, women, and children are physically beaten, tortured, raped, and killed. Not a single days passes without at least one human body being broken.

      In America, to bring this reality closer to home, husbands beat their wives; mother's abuse their children; gang-members gun one another down--the cycle of violence is endless. I used to shop at a certain Publix in Tallahassee when I attended Florida State University. I decided to pick up a few items at the store one day. When I arrived at the store, there were several police cars and two paramedic trucks. A crowd of people had gathered, several of its members looking quite distraught. I soon discovered that a woman had been shot to death by her husband in the Publix parking lot a few hours before my arrival. The execution was a murder/suicide, something we either read or hear about all too often now-a-days.

      But man is not only broken in body he is broken in spirit. See the people wandering our city streets; open your eyes to the dislocated and the dispossessed, and you will see what I am writing about. Again, I read in the paper (I prefer reading the news to having it read to me) about the meteoric rise of the stock market and I read about the tremendous affluence that has been created in the United States. If you mindlessly listen to our politicians and captains of industry, you would think that all is well in the realm. Production is up. Profits are up. The market is up. Every economic indicator suggests that the economy is rolling along just fine. But if you look closely at our economic situation, and you look and see what is going on, you gain insight into the unpleasant situation many people face. Simply put, as the economy grows, human beings are broken and destroyed in the process. Human beings are used and manipulated, exploited and abused, and left to rot in our gutters when they are no longer capable of making a contribution to commerce and industry. Capitalism is machine which consumes people in order to assure its own growth. Look into the eyes of a homeless person and you will see a human being buried amidst the dirt and the grime, the stench and the filth -- and you will also see the monstrosity called economy which we have created. A booming stock-market is a mockery in the face of human suffering.

      Other signs of spiritual brokenness are apparent in the rampant use of drugs in our culture; in the tremendous incarceration rate of American citizens (the U.S. leads the world in terms of incarcerated prisoners); in the exponential birth-rate of children born outside of marriage; in the plague of crime which threatens us; in the number of abortions performed and teen suicides (the U.S. leads the world in both these categories.

      Something is wrong with our culture, with our society. What we have produced in this century, what we continue to produce, is remarkably inhuman. We have not learned from the past. Broken men, broken women, broken children, sleep in our streets, in our parks, in our homes. Can the brokenness every be healed?

The Brokenness of Man: Point of Departure

      Theologians throughout the ages have taken various points of departure in explaining their theology. One merely thinks of Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Martin Luther, John Calvin, to grasp the numerous approaches that have been taken to God.

      My point of departure beings with the person. The trials and tribulations assaulting man are numerous. Man is threatened with non-being wherever he turns. The moment given to man to spend under the sun may be taken from him without his permission. Life is not to be taken for granted, because the capricious nature of existence fails to guarantee that man will live to see the dawn after a night's slumber of the night after a day's work.

      The essential condition characterizing man is his brokenness. Both body and sprit are broken by the absurdity inherent in existence. Religious and philosophical reflection, therefore, and a theology which claims to depart from an existential perspective -- ought to take man's brokenness seriously instead of paying lip-service to it. Passing though the brokenness of the human condition is vital to forming a theology which is incarnated in the human being, and makes sense to both the living and the dead.

Implications of Brokenness

      When I look out upon the world, when I see the irrational and destructive forces threatening human beings, I am overwhelmed to the point of impotence. I know mass death is the norm and the rule. Try as I might, I cannot change the massive historical forces which consume human persons. I try to live a good life, a holy life, but my life is nothing but a futile gesture, an infinite resignation to the order of the cosmos. The illusion we live under is that we can instantaneously change what is wrong -- and right the injustices of the world. Our efforts have brought about palpable changes for the better in American society. Still, when I hear of an African American church being burned to the ground out of hate, I realize how far we have to go.

      Man and the society he has created are broken. What once was stable and secure is fragmented and quickly deteriorating. Man soon realizes that his efforts to improve himself and human society ultimately come up short. Man struggles to fight the good fight, and he occasionally makes incremental changes for the better, but his efforts are always insufficient to ameliorate the lot of his fellow man. No matter how much man changes his environment and his society, injustice persists, innocent people are murdered, and the oppressed are beaten down.

      Man in his brokenness and imperfection lacks the capacity to make the world a perfect place. Man cannot eliminate war, greed, famine or poverty. Man all too often is limited by his selfish nature. The most profound implication emanating from the realization of his brokenness is that there is so little he can do to change himself. Realizing his predicament, man searches for a way out.

Response to the Brokenness

      Post-modern philosophy and theology lack the resources to provide ready made solutions to the problems facing man in his broken condition. Fundamentalism -- both religious and intellectual -- may satisfy the mind, but deep down inside of the person, the human heart knows that fundamentalism is neither an answer nor an authentic response to the plight facing human beings.

      Any honest answer to the question of man's brokenness will assert that no answer is total, complete, and all encompassing. Man's condition makes it impossible for him to create intellectual and religious systems which circumscribe the totality of reality. Man is a tiny creature cast adrift in an immense universe. Reality always eludes him. To grasp the totality of the All is a gift left to the saints and the gods.

      Thus, man is left with partial solutions to his questions, intuitive fragments which man uses to piece together an incomplete view of reality. Man's answers, moreover, are fraught with ambivalence and doubt, with insecurity and despair.

      If man was to look honestly at his life in relation to his existence, he would realize the utter inability of people to create absolute systems of meaning. Man struggles to find the truth, to coerce the true from concealment: man always fails in this endeavor.

      To realize this, to realize one is limited by one's ontology, to realize one is incapable of forming the world in one's image or of saving the world from destruction -- and when one reaches the nadir of his existence -- when one is filled with feelings of sorrow, hopelessness, and despair -- when one enters the human condition, that is, when one feels and identifies with the brokenness of man -- the world mysteriously opens itself to man and the possibility of making sense of the world, however inadequately, suddenly becomes real. That is the paradox implicit in existence.

The Possibility of Faith as a Response to Brokenness

      When man reaches this point in his life (that he is finite, that he cannot change his world), his options are reduced to two and may be stated in an "either-or" proposition whose form was made famous by the Danish philosopher: Either man believes he may discover meaning in life or he resigns himself to the belief that life is a meaningless phenomenon replete with pain, misery and suffering. Another way of stating the proposition is as follows: either there is a purposeful structure underlying the cosmos or the universe is nothing but ordered chaos. If one subscribes to the "or" aspect of the proposition, then one is left to exist in a cold, desolate world with a diminished chance of finding peace, happiness, and joy. The person whose resides in the "or" aspect of the proposition is challenged to live well despite the void of hopelessness which engulfs him.

      This is a mighty task.

      On the other had, the individual who has acknowledged his unhappiness, who has reached the lowest point of his existence, begins to live well when he at least entertains the possibility that there is more to this life than the suffering which permeates his being. When the individual aspires to live outside the pain of his egotistical existence, the chance of discerning meaning becomes plausible.

      In the traditional language of theology, this is what one might call the first step toward faith because the individual is daring to believe that there if more to life than what has hitherto been revealed to him. The individual gambles, he rolls the dices, he takes the leap of faith. Faith, in this instance, is not necessarily Christian faith in God, but it may called faith in the possibility of faith, or faith in the possibility of God or faith in the possibility of meaning. The ability to see the multi-layered textures of reality is granted to the individual who takes the leap to the possibility of faith. Instead of being imprisoned within the walls of one's subjective despair, one commences the movement outwards to experience the blessings and wonders life has to offer. One sees that there is more to life than anguish. Or what has been presented to him by as reality by the establishment. This experience may be likened to the man who awakens from a deep slumber to see the awesome beauty of the Pacific Ocean before him; it's like raising one's eyes to behold the magnificent splendor of the Grand Canyon or the Grand Titans of Wyoming.

      To put it another way, the man who accepts the possibility of faith merely opens his eyes and sees what is around him. All that is wrong with the world is still there, but he begins to see aspects of reality he missed because of his social conditioning.

      The possibility of faith, though, remains a possibility. Although man's acceptance of this possibility constitutes a type of "metanoia," I doubt that there are any sudden conversions or changes of heart. To learn how to see, to become attuned to the subtleties and nuances of life, is like learning how to play the classical guitar: it takes diligence, patience, persistence, and endurance. There is no such thing as cheap grace. If you take God seriously, if you take the possibility of God with the earnestness which all great endeavors in life require, you will know your relationship to this mystery takes years and years to develop. It is like the love shared between two persons. Love that is lasting is a work in progress.

The Second "Either-Or" Proposition

      Thus, the movement towards the possibility of faith is a process with and undefined goal. One cannot be sure where it will end. As the myriad of philosophies and religions attest to, there is not one single, normative vision of the truth. For some men, truth is revealed by the gods, or God, or by the Buddha, or Lao-Tzu, or Sartre, or Marx, or Freud. The list of men and religions offering their particular version of the truth is almost endless.

      Remember that the leap to the possibility of faith was likened to a wager. Losing the wager remains as much a possibility as much as winning the wager. This leads to a second "either-or" proposition which may be stated as follows: Either the movement of faith --actualizing the possibility of faith -- leads me to the truth of God (even though doubt may be integral to my faith) or it leads me to truth that there is no God, and that there is no absolute truth. Man must make a choice; he must respond to this second proposition. And even if he affirms the former element of the proposition, he may be haunted by the latter his entire life.

      The second proposition elucidates the quest for faith in modern world. Man is always shadowed by the possibility that his faith is an illusion, or a delusion, or is the product of mental illness or wishful thinking. God may be nothing a terrible phantasm of an organic deficiency. Or the product of mass delusion. The man of faith, although he may be gripped by the "thou" of his faith, realizes his "thou" may leave him at any moment., although is faith permits him to be relatively certain that this will not occur.

      The second proposition sums up the intellectual and spiritual life of man as he reaches the end of the 20th century. It asserts that there are alternatives views of reality. To say that faith is shadowed by doubt does not automatically deny the existence of God and the reality of faith, but it is asserting that the man of faith must be honest and admit the limitations of his faith. Likewise, the atheist or the agnostic ought be aware of the relative tenuousness of their worldviews and be open to the possibility of faith in this world. To aspire to truth, however truth is conceptualized, always requires a leap of faith, either on the part of the believer or on the part of the non-believer. Truth, as has been implicitly defined in this essay, is relative, and only partially accessible to the human mind.

The Life of Faith

      The possibility of God, and this is what I am interested in exploring for the remainder of this reflection, becomes a reality in the life of the individual when he orders his life and conforms his life to God. How one arrives at this level of faith eludes me. I can neither judge nor describe how a man arrives at faith. Some common patterns do emerge in the lives of those who possess authentic faith, that is, faith which resonates with one's subjective perceptions of truth, faith which resonates at the core of one's being and dominates the life of the person.

      First, faith is a spiritual state arrived at after a long period of searching. It does not come easily and often involves pain an doubt. Think of the Apostles who suffered in despair at the death of Jesus or of the Jewish people who wandered in the desert for forty years before entering the promised land. Faith is a process, a journey, a quest to answer the questions posed by one's existence. Second, faith involves an experiential element. One feels he is in the presence of an objective truth outside of himself. Christian mystics lose themselves in God and feel as if they have been subsumed by the ground of all being. Moses, according to the Hebrew Bible, stood before God in fear and trembling at the burning bush. Faith involves experiences -- experiences of desolation as well as experiences of joy and liberation. Third, men of faith, although they're often well spoken, claim that one cannot reduce the infinite into human language. God or the truth resides beyond human concepts or ideas. Forth, men of faith possess a rigorous spiritual discipline which involves prayer, fasting, penance, in short, they possess a secret discipline which attunes them to the divine, which makes them present to the sacred, which transforms their hearts and their actions.

      Thus, faith is arrived at after an extended time period. It involves an experiential content, a content ultimately beyond words and concepts. It also involves a particular way of acting and being in the world. Most importantly, the man of faith is honest enough to admit his faith my be wrong: his life is a quest for truth, even if that truth leads him away from God.

      How does one arrive at faith? Or at the truth? Or God? I have deliberately avoided answering this question because its resolution may be arrived at in various ways. I would say, to provide a few suggestions, that one must be true to one's self, to feel the pain and ambiguity inherent in life. One must be human, a man, and feel the fragility and brevity of human life. One must, moreover, open one's eyes to see life in all its dimensions, to see beauty, joy, and happiness against the backdrop of ugliness, despair, and unhappiness. Then, one must consciously embark upon a search to find the truth that is true for one's self. Fidelity to one's heart, to one's soul, is imperative if one is to arrive at any authentic version of the truth. Finally, one must wait for God to cross the infinite abyss separating man from God; one must be willing to wait his entire life for that moment when God manifests himself in an indescribable theophany.

      In order to actualize the possibility of faith, all man can really do is wait and be ready. The Kingdom will come like a thief in the night. To pray, to offer thanksgiving, to cry out to God in laughter and anger -- these activities man can do. But there is no guarantee that he will find God even if he orients his life to Him.

      But if you are willing to enter the depths of your humanity, you will surely discover an inkling of what your are looking for. For faith is forever a possibility, a possibility demanding utter fidelity to an ambiguous promise, but it is a possibility laden with the eternal riches of heaven.