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Part IV

Faith and Hope



No Easy Grace

Looking back on some of my more recent reflections I see a tentative hope that the idea of God

may still have some meaning. But is this coming from guilt that my on-line musings could be

hurting the faith of my friends who follow me in the blogosphere? Or is there in fact something

more positive going on? Perhaps it’s simply that I am healing from the loss of my son and I am

experiencing a space opening up in my heart for the possibility of God.

Was it God’s hand that had held me all along, supporting me through all my losses? Was it just

good timing that I found the right therapists at the right time, making sure I received enough

therapy that I could survive the next major loss in my life? Was it just luck that I left teaching

when I did and took a job in a small office where people really cared and supported me and gave

me space to mourn, while holding me close with their compassion and affection?

During the Katrina months I felt God’s presence; as I struggled with the Catholic Church I felt

God’s presence. But then there was the absolute silence of God that followed Malcolm’s death.

What was different about that experience of loss? What changed, me or God? And is there

something new happening now? If my whole journey has been an experience of Grace, then

there is indeed no easy Grace.



It’s Only Human to be a Mess

In the conclusion of his book on existential philosophy, Irrational Man, William Barrett credits

existential philosophy with trying to bring the whole human person, “the concrete individual in

the whole context of his everyday life, and in his total mystery and questionableness” into

philosophy. This is in contrast to other modern philosophies that tend to define the human person

primarily in intellectual terms, “an intellect that registers sense-data, makes propositions,

reasons, and seeks the certainty of intellectual knowledge.”

The whole person, on the other hand, includes all the messy stuff: anger, remorse, despair, doubt,

fear, and lots of uncertainty. We may not want to acknowledge the darker aspects of the human

person, but Barrett cautions against denying the existence of this darker side - what he calls “The

Furies.” According to Barrett modern society is intent on doing just that: encouraging us all to

flee from the shadow side of the Self and thereby deny our full nature. And he suggests that we

do so at our peril, because like it or not the furies are real.

I find Barrett’s insights about the whole person including doubt and despair somehow

comforting. He lets me off the hook. I don’t have to be certain; I don’t have to be serene. I don’t

have to experience an epiphany, or discover the 7 Secrets Of … success, or weight loss, or a

fulfilling post-menopausal sex life. I can accept that I’m just a mess. Thank you Mr. Barrett!



On the other hand how do I reconcile myself with my shadow self? How do I befriend my

“furies?” And how do I integrate this knowledge into the big picture? Does the fact that the

human self is such a mess belie the belief that we are the apex of evolution, or that we are

created in the image of the divine? Maybe it just means that God isn't the perfect, omnipotent,

omniscient, immutable Being put forward by classical philosophy and Christian theology.

And so to the God question.



Evolutionary Theory and God

Can we find an answer to the question of the meaning of life through science? It is tempting to

think that science can provide answers that religion cannot, and certainly it can to some extent:

the How rather than the Why of life in the universe. But if you look into science more, you

discover that there are some very basic questions that science is still grappling with. How is the

universe shaped, for example, or what is the nature of time, and are there multiple universes?

And then there is the issue of the “One Theory.” Scientists have been trying to reconcile the

theory we have used with great success to explain how things work on the large scale – The

Theory of General Relativity – with another theory that explains how things work on a sub-

molecular level – Quantum Mechanics. And so far they have been unable to reconcile the two.

That is no small matter (pardon the pun).

Religion and science; religion versus science. Is there one universe or many? If there is a God, is

God the God of all universes? If God is how theism traditionally describes God then, yes: there

can only be one Supreme Being. So are there other universes with other beings made in God’s

image? You know like how all the aliens in the Star Trek series look human with a few extra

nose ridges or forehead bumps. In fact I think there was a Star Trek story line to the effect that

the same “Being” had seeded various locations in the universe. But Star Trek aside, does it

really matter if there are multiple universes? All we are experiencing is this one. We don’t need

to do anything more than engage in the now that we know. Can’t we leave the rest to speculative

cosmologists and theoretical physicists?



That might work if the physicists kept to their own corner (and their own language and

paradigms) and didn’t keep claiming to have explained the origins of the universe without

recourse to a God, which was the conclusion of Stephen Hawking in the opening episode of the

show Curiosity on the Discovery Channel. Apparently sub-atomic particles can just appear,

seemingly out of nothing and from nowhere. And our universe began as a tiny particle, so

perhaps it too just appeared. But maybe the issue is not the appearance of particles “ex nihilo”

(from nothing) but the inability of humans to see where these particles were before. After all,

when I was in grammar school no one new about quarks; evidence of their physical existence

was first noted in 1968 and they’ve been around, apparently, since the Big Bang.

I’m not against science: science is great, it’s incredible. I don’t understand much of it any more,

but science does seem to be doing a good job explaining the micro and macro-cosmic realities.

Nonetheless, scientists don’t get to tell me about God. If I decide I don’t believe in God I want to

arrive at that conclusion myself, not be forced to find my answer through the lens of particle

physics. I am sympathetic to Hawking, though. It must feel like a big cosmic joke to have one of

the best minds of his generation locked inside a disintegrating shell of a body. Who wouldn’t be

angry? Perhaps it is less painful to believe there is no God than to believe there is a God and this

is what God has determined should be his lot. Maybe Hawking should read some Viktor Frankl –

another great individual who suffered profound tragedy and somehow managed to make sense of

his faith in God, despite living through the Holocaust. Or perhaps more relevant would be John

Haught’s, God After Darwin, or Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man. Both

dealing directly with the conversation between theology and science.



God After Darwin



The Phenomenon of Man



I Have Heard The Song

I have not seen the robin but I know he is there because I heard him singing through my window from the tree-top outside.

I have not seen God. But I have looked at my child’s eyes and have been overwhelmed by the miracle of unfolding life.

I have watched the trees bedeck themselves with new garbs of green in the spring, and have been stirred by the miracle of

continual rebirth.

I have looked at the stars, and have been overcome by the miracle of the grandeur and majesty of the universe.

I know that God exists, because I have heard the song of His presence from all the tree-tops of creation.

“I Have Heard the Song”

from The Gifts of Life and Love, Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser

I don’t know what I think about God right now; my views are shifting daily. Sometimes I feel the

way Rabbi Bokser feels in this poem, then the moment passes. When I read the newspaper the

idea of God just doesn’t seem to make sense. In one day I read: A woman cut the arms off her

eleven month-old baby; A child of three was sodomized by her Grandfather. How can there be a

God if this is the world God created?

But then, in the same newspaper are very different stories: High school boys go shopping at

5:00am to make Thanksgiving baskets for needy families; High school girls collect thousands of

dollars in an impromptu drive to help hurricane victims receive water. At Christmas the paper

runs stories of anonymous donors and heroic parents: A businessman pays the rent for a family

about to be evicted; A father takes on a second job over the holidays to finance his children’s

Christmas; A mother works double overtime to buy her daughter’s Prom dress.



Beautiful stories of altruism and sacrifice, but do they presuppose the existence of a God? No.

What I am confusing here is God and The Good. The motive of the individuals who perform acts

of kindness and self-sacrifice might be eternal salvation, or it might just be personal satisfaction.

They might be motivated by love or even by guilt. All that these stories prove, both the acts of

evil and goodness, are that Evil and Goodness exist and that human beings are capable of both. It

doesn’t prove anything about the natural or original state of the universe or the human person.

And it doesn’t prove anything about the existence or not of God.

So we are left with questions still: Evil or goodness; mindless violence or self-sacrificing love,

what is the basic nature of the human person; What is the ultimate Truth about the world in

which we live; Is there a Supreme Being who looks down and gives a damn, or is the concept

simply a comforting myth?

Even the “looking down” part is mythological, deriving from a three-tiered view of the universe

that pre-dates the New Testament and is dependent on the view of the earth as flat: Heaven is up,

the earth is where we are in the middle, Satan, the realm of the dead -- Hell or Sheol -- is down.

Three layers --a birthday-cake version of cosmology. Hardly a twenty-first century scientific

view of things. Yet people still talk casually and even theologically about God “coming down,”

“sending down,” “raising up.”

Do sophisticated, educated ministers really buy into that? And why do the people in the pews not

wonder about the logical meaning (or lack) of it all? Perhaps people do not really want to look

too closely at their religious belief and their religious language. They don’t want to end up like



me, questioning everything. They would rather stay naively trusting, separating their real-life

understanding of the universe, the solar system, and Space-Shuttles, from their Sunday

mythologies. Sometimes I envy them.

So back to God. God doesn’t require our permission or our faith in order to exist; God either is or

isn’t, and I don’t know which is true. It might be existential cowardice on my part, but isn’t the

world an easier reality to live in if one believes that there is ultimately some meaning and

purpose, some worthy goal for the whole project? Isn’t it easier to get up in the morning if one

believes that Good truly will conquer Evil, that Light will ultimately vanquish the Darkness, that

Love is indeed everlasting? Aren’t we all glad that Harry Potter vanquished Voldermort, and

Frodo overcame the tantalizing spell of the Ring? Doesn’t it make us sleep a little better at night?

Or maybe that’s just me.

Whether we believe in God or not, it’s up to us what we choose to believe about humanity, and

it’s up to us what kind of world we create, and not in our minds, I mean in reality. When we take

God out of the picture, even just for the purpose of a philosophical argument, it becomes clearer

how many good things we take for granted and how much evil we accept with blithe

complacency.

It is all too easy for people who look at life through the lens of a particular religious faith to

dismiss the suffering of others as deserved and not a matter for moral concern. After all, if it’s

part of a Divine Plan, if we are the “Chosen People,” or the One True Church, or followers of the

True Prophet, then who are we to question the ways of God, or the ways of our religious leaders,



for surely their way is God’s way. But if there is no God, it’s all up to us to sort out. If there is no

God it is we who must balance justice and mercy, rights and freedoms. It is we who must feed

the hungry, clothe the naked, advocate for the unrepresented. It is we who must contend with

corruption and evil on all levels and in all corners of society. If we believe there is no God, it can

be easy to become overwhelmed with the task of creating a better world, and returning to a

theistic belief system is very tempting. But wouldn’t it be choosing faith for the wrong reason?



Murder, Suicide and God’s Plan

Someone posted a letter on-line with news of the death of a Benedictine monk – his abuser. The

death may have brought “closure” for his abuser, he reflected, but not for him. Over the years he

had planned then rejected both murder and suicide, but now he expressed sadness -- for victims,

but also for his abuser who, he realizes, must have been a troubled and twisted individual. The

writer ended the letter with a blessing for his abuser! I was shocked. To have moved from

considering murder, not so many years ago, to offering a blessing was incredible, I hesitate to

use the word but -- miraculous.

In his words:

“Today I visited Montserrat Abbey, the oldest Benedictine monastery in existence. I went into

the Church. I don’t know God’s plan for me, I don’t know God’s plan for Fr. Roger, but in my

own simple way, I said – And May God bless him.”

C. Michael Coode (SNAP Tennessee)

Here was a victim who had retained his faith in God and was now dedicated to advocating for

and supporting other victims through the National Survivor Advocates Coalition (NSAC) and

through leadership in his local branch of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and

religious (SNAP). He had maintained his faith in God despite the overwhelming proof of

negligence, deceit, and denial by the Catholic Bishops. He could still enter a monastery and not

run out shaking and crying. He could still pray to a God he believes has a Plan.



I know one thing with absolute certainty: If there is a God and if there is a Plan it doesn't involve

abuse of children. What makes most sense to me is that God's plan -- call it "the best of all

possible worlds" -- is thwarted every time someone chooses to reject God in favor of doing evil.

And so God has to adjust the plan. My heart tells me that in responding to evil with a blessing

Michael has more than lived up to what God would hope for. There is NOTHING more powerful

and more loving and healing in the world than responding to evil with goodness, offering a

blessing instead of creating more suffering -- by hurting oneself or others.

So, I responded to his post and offered Michael a blessing:

May you be blessed and comforted, may the light of Goodness shine upon you and bring you

peace, and may you be filled with the healing power of Grace. You are my hero today.



Doubt and Despair – Just an Age Thing?

Are doubt and despair simply a factor of being middle-aged? Are we just at that point in our lives

that we’ve accumulated so many tragedies and losses that we cannot raise our hearts to hope?

Psychologist Erik Ericson identified eight ages of human development each with its own

particular challenge expressed in the form of opposites. For the last stage of one’s life

(approximately 65 plus) the challenge is: Integrity vs. Despair . I seem to have arrived there a

little prematurely. From about 40-65 the challenge is: Generativity vs. Stagnation. Facing the

major changes of the empty nest or the lack of children - and for women the end of one’s ability

to ever have children - and heading towards the middle of one’s life expectancy, we are apt to

ask ourselves: What have I done that has any meaning and do I have anything else left to offer?

How will I be remembered ?

I wonder if my drive to find meaning is simply part of my psychological profile as a 50+ adult.

Maybe. But that’s too simple. High School students are already asking these questions with an

immediacy deriving from their experiences of grief and loss: the loss of a boyfriend, the loss of a

grandparent, the loss of safety following parental divorce. College undergraduates are drawn to

courses that hold out the possibility of answers to the Big Questions.

Erikson suggests that the very first psychological challenge is Trust vs. Mistrust , and this task, if

incomplete, carries over into the rest of one’s life, as does unresolved issues from each stage.



The virtue associated with the Trust vs. Mistrust stage is Hope. It is very clear to me that I did

not develop a strong sense of Hope as a child. Experiencing the abusive treatment of trusted

adults and not receiving the needed nurturing and affirmation from trusted adults is a

psychological handicap, certainly. But it is not, sadly, uncommon.

Spiritual Idealism vs. Despair may be partly a generational issue. But what is happening in the

60+ community of Catholics is not simply symptomatic of their age. Many grew up trusting in

their Church and have only recently lost that trust. Perhaps that is a sign of maturity not despair.

Then there are the teenage Catholics who attend World Youth Day in ever increasing numbers

each year and express a piety and commitment to orthodoxy that has been compared to

Evangelical Protestantism. They still trust, they have not (yet) been personally disillusioned by

the Church. Is that a sign of their immaturity? Or maybe I’m just being cynical.



A Holy Different God?

Working in a synagogue has provided me with access to a wholly different (I would also suggest

“holy/different”) view of God. I have borrowed books from the library and picked the brains of

two different rabbis in the congregation, and along the way I have discovered a way of relating to

God that is a refreshing change from the Parent/Child relationship of traditional theism, with its

nearly exclusive anthropomorphic image of God as “Father.” Instead of describing God using the

titles that fill the Hebrew Scriptures – Father, King, Judge (even Mother in a few instances) –

Reform Judaism is more likely to use descriptions that express God’s unique and very non-

human role as Creator and Sustainer of the universe.

In general, Reform Judaism is characterized less by the rituals of Judaism and more by an

emphasis on the improvement of society and the eradication of injustice and social evils. In fact

in my experience, involvement in social action is more common in the Reform community than

participation in Shabbat (Sabbath) services. Service not services!

One of the most influential Jewish voices in the first half of the twentieth century, Mordecai

Kaplan, moves even further away from traditional biblical descriptions of God. To Kaplan God

is not a “Being” but neither is God simply a philosophical abstraction. God is “all the

relationships, tendencies and agencies which in their totality go to make human life worthwhile

in the deepest and most abiding sense.” Kaplan describes God as the creative life of the universe,

and suggests that we become holy when we express that creative urge. Instead of talking about



Mercy and Justice as qualities of God, Kaplan describes Mercy and Justice as divine in

themselves. To believe in God, he suggests, is to believe that “human life is supremely

worthwhile.” For Kaplan, God is the worth-while-ness that underlies life, and when we are

helping to make life more worthwhile for others we are doing something innately holy.

The Lutheran theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich said something very similar. He wrote that

God is not a Being and does not exist in that sense, but rather God is the “ground of all being.”

Like Kaplan, Tillich was speaking about God in a radically new way refusing to describe God in

our image, the way traditional theism has always done with metaphors taken from human

experience and human society. Both men push our God-language beyond metaphor and analogy,

away from its tethers to the human experience.

This approach to God offers tremendous relief: God isn’t my Father, (or my Mother); I don’t

have to place myself in the psychological role of a child in order to relate to the Divine. But this

new way of thinking about God is also scary: sometimes (often) it is comforting to think of the

Big Daddy in the sky. I totally sympathize with Ricky Gervais’ character in the movie, The

Invention of Lying . He made up the concepts of the “Big Man in the Sky” and a beautiful

“Heaven” because his mother was dying in profound fear of the nothingness that awaited. And

when people heard this “lie” they overwhelmed him with questions about how to get to heaven.

They wanted simplistic answers and foolproof rules. I cringed at the element of truth contained

in this satirical portrayal of people of faith.



People want hope in something other than the life they have, and if their life sucks that is

understandable. However, the life we have is the only reality we can be sure of, and projecting

our hopes and expectations of happiness into a mythical future life after death distracts us from

appreciating the life we have and working to make our lives worthwhile and the lives of others

more bearable.

But can we maintain a hopeful outlook in a universe that doesn’t offer the security of a Divine

Designer, Author of the Great Plan, Architect of History, The Great Decider? Is this concept of

The Holy, The Ground of All Being enough for us to anchor ourselves to, to have faith in? And

what about the millions who still cling to the Cosmic Santa Claus, the Genie with unlimited

wishes – just recite the Chaplet of Mercy or go to mass eight Fridays in a row and your wish will

be granted or at the every least you will go straight to heaven when you die. Not a bad deal!

Surely it is the duty of the enlightened cynics among us to break the rose-colored faith spectacles

of the religiously naive, a past-time many college philosophy professors take delight in. Surely

we are doing these pious idealists a favor: they need to see how awful, how truly terrible life is.

No! No one has the right to attack another person’s faith and religious naïveté. If someone’s faith

provides a structure of meaning that makes life do-able, then they have a gift we cynics are

jealous of. No one has the right to debase another’s view of God or to impose their own –

whether atheist, or Pentecostal fundamentalist. Those who try to do so are being spiritually

violent; we all have our own spiritual path to walk and deserve to do so in our own time. And the



cynics can no more prove the non-existence of God and ultimate futility of life than religious

believers can prove the existence of God and the ultimate purposefulness of life.



What About Bob?

For at least two years after Malcolm’s death my flower beds languished in varying degrees of

weeditude. Sometimes I would make an effort to tidy them up but as to actually taking care of

any of the plants, not so much. My gardens had to make do with whatever nourishment the skies

provided, and in New Orleans, especially in the summer months, that can be a very feast or

famine experience. I lost quite a few lovely friends: Rosemary, Rose, Petunia.

Occasionally, I would take pity on a malnourished specimen and, instead of digging it up and

throwing it away, replant it in the back yard, where it could die without disturbing the neighbors.

Sometimes these re-plants would do better in the shaded back garden under our “family tree” or

along the fence. And so a sort of triage flower bed developed. I even rescued a neighbor’s

discarded rubber plant from their trash. I figured he deserved another chance; my triage bed was

a better proposition than the local dump. But once they were there, they were pretty much on

their own.

The rubber plant froze at least three times and came back just as strong and insistent. I think it

was just plain stubborn. Beside it was a houseplant that didn’t like my house. It too had frozen

and been re-born more than once. But this past winter did them both in. Sadly my husband and I

dug them both up, feeling like neglectful parents. We didn’t immediately put them out for the

trash, it not being pick-up day. And a couple of days later when I went to retrieve them I noticed

a tiny green growth on the root of my houseplant. It’s alive, it’s alive!! So I carefully trimmed it



and placed it back in its hole and tried to make it comfortable. I had nearly trashed a living thing.

Oh, the guilt. Later that day my husband was cutting the grass and had a déjà vu experience,

figuring we must have forgotten to dig it up. So he did. Again.

When I saw Bob…he now had a name…in the trash bin once again, I got a little hysterical. What

was Mal doing? Didn’t he see Bob was alive? How could he abandon Bob like that. Mal was just

a little perturbed by my (over) reaction. But came to understand what I was saying (hollering).

And Bob was gently re-re-planted. I put bricks around him so that Mal wouldn’t forget and mow

him over the next week. Bob was at a very sensitive stage, only just beginning to grow shoots –

there were now two visible – and they were very delicate.

Needless to say, I became a more attentive gardener after that episode, and Bob is now sprouting

every which way and has grown to be about eighteen inches. He is still far from his previous

healthy height of four feet, but he is coming along nicely. I find that plants actually do respond to

daily watering. Although some are more forgiving than others.

So, why Bob? Well, Bob taught me a lesson: even when things appear to be hopeless there is

always the possibility of new beginnings, of Hope. Thanks, Bob.



The Nature of Faith

Leaving aside the question of God for a bit, let’s re-focus on our side of the meaning of life

equation – what we know we know for sure. After all, that is the only “side” we can be

absolutely sure of. “I think therefore I am.” Because I am aware of myself thinking about myself,

I must exist. Thanks Descartes, but I think we would have worked that one out on our own

eventually.

People often place Proof and Faith in opposition: If there was proof that God existed, we are

told, we wouldn’t need to have faith; If there was proof that God existed, rejecting the concept of

God would be irrational. Because there isn’t proof that God exists, does having religious faith

require we suspend all intellectual integrity and accept everything without question? There are

many for whom religious faith involves the setting aside of questioning, but not me. I know

there is no proof about God, but I do require that my religion and my personal faith make sense

to me.

So, what is “our side” of the God question? Faith. And what is faith, exactly? Is Faith a

relationship with God, or is it a set of beliefs – doctrinal tenets to which we have given

intellectual assent? How is faith best expressed – through prayer and ritual, or a moral life based

on religious principles? If a person is evil can they be said to have faith? If a person is moral but

an atheist where do they fit in a religious worldview?



The Bible contains a variety of views on faith. Among both ancient Jews and early Christians

there were those who wanted to reduce faith to either religious rituals or to mere verbal

expressions of belief. In both situations Prophets or Apostles spoke out against such

reductionism, emphasizing that neither empty ritual nor vacuous blessings constitute real faith.

“I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies.

Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them.

Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them.

Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps.

But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Amos 5: 21-

24

Anyone who listens to the Word [of God] but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face

in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.

James 1:23-24

"My brothers, what good is it to profess faith, without practicing it..."

James 2:14-17

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices–mint, dill

and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law– justice , mercy and

faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.

Matthew 23:23

In recent times the Catholic Church has been criticized for its over-emphasis on the rubrics of



correct ritual, and for its zealous commitment to ancient laws and practices --regarding the role

of women, for example. Pentecostal or so called “born-again” Christian denominations have

been criticized for their over-emphasis on the importance of “professing” Jesus as one’s personal

savior as the basis for salvation and then ignoring or underplaying the necessity of a committed

moral life. So much so that any moral lapse is blamed on the devil not the individual. And

Pentecostal ministers, because of their profession, are understood to be “attacked” by the devil

more insistently, which seems to give them a convenient excuse for immorality and failure. But I

digress, and to be fair I have read similar opinions trying to excuse the behavior of abusive

Catholic priests: they are under attack from the devil because they are so “holy.” Um, no?!

So what constitutes true faith: beliefs, a trusting relationship, or moral action? Head, heart or

hands? This is how I used to present the question to my students. Amos and Matthew are both

concerned with the “doing” aspect of faith, specifically the quality of the action: acts of justice

and mercy, not pious, empty ritual. James, on the other hand, was concerned with action in

general: “walking the walk” not just “talking the talk.” In contemporary moral theology, James

Fowler supports the emphasis on action when he describes faith as a verb.

The great Lutheran / Catholic debacle in the 16 th century, although usually explained as the result

of Luther’s (very understandable) disillusionment with a corrupt papacy, also had a theological

agenda: faith alone. Was faith in Jesus enough or could one “earn” salvation through good works

– in particular the good work of buying Indulgences and thus releasing sinners from punish hall,

in the form of Purgatory. It is clear that sensible Protestants and Catholics, including Luther,

would readily admit that living a moral life was a necessary response to the “gift of God’s saving



grace.” Moral license was not what Luther had in mind. His issue was the type of good works –

not empty, superstitious, financial transactions, but acts of justice and mercy: we need to be

Christ. Sadly, the Vatican didn’t give good Catholic, Augustinian Luther a hearing, and hence

the Reformation resulted. One of the great tragedies of Christian history.



Faith without Religion ~ Religion without Faith?

Is it possible to have religious faith and not claim allegiance to a religion? In surveys the

majority of Americans and Europeans still typically claim to believe in God and even to pray,

but many don’t belong to any formal church. On the other hand it is also possible to practice a

religion publically and not have a personal commitment. Any given Sunday the pews are filled

with uncommitted individuals: pre-teens who are there because their parents make them, or

because their friends are going to meet them for Youth Group; parents who are attending out of a

duty to raise their children in the faith they were raised in, even though they have no personal

confidence in any of it; adult children who drive their house-bound elderly parents to receive the

sacraments.

Have you ever wondered if your own issues with the Church are a factor of your age and not just

a reflection of the state of the Church? Is it a coincidence that Catholic liturgies are attended by

young marrieds with small children in preschool through 8 th grade, and members of the AARP?

Where are the middle-somethings - those of us with teenagers or college age kids, those of us

with working kids and recently emptied nests? Is it our age or our stage in life that keeps us too

busy or makes us too ready to criticize? Are we too easily disillusioned now, having been around

long enough to personally know corrupt members of the clergy. Or do we have a hard time

hearing “wisdom” preached to us by someone younger than our own children? I found the

relationship between Clint Eastwood’s character and his pastor in the movie Gran Torino a very

real portrayal of this latter dilemma.



Struggling with religious belief and practice typically begins in early adolescence, as part of the

normal separation that must occur as children grow into their own identity and question and

challenge their parents’ values. When I taught high school seniors I presented them with theories

of human development, including theories of faith development. Human development theories,

like Stages of Grief and Loss, provide a framework within which to examine our experiences and

emotions, and tools with which to better understand other people. Faith development theories are

not as well known in the academic community as moral, intellectual, and psychological

development theories, but they are just as useful. In fact it is because of these theories that I can

still consider myself to be a person of Faith, even though I’m still trying to figure out what I

believe about God. I find that very consoling.



A Faith Development Theory

Theories of human development have been around since the development of psychology nearly a

hundred years ago. Famous ones include Sigmund Freud’s psychodynamic theory, Erik

Erikson’s psycho-social theory, Jean Piaget’s cognitive development theory and Lawrence

Kohlberg’s moral development theory. Less well known but prominent in the field of Christian

Religious Education is James Fowler’s theory of faith development, which is greatly indebted to

Kohlberg’s “Six Stages of Moral Development.” But I don’t find Fowler’s theory very useful.

One that is both simpler and more descriptive of a wider human experience was developed by

John Westerhoff, an Episcopal priest and retired assistant professor from Duke University.

Westerhoff first presented his theory of faith development in, Will our Children Have Faith?

(1976), and simplified it later in, A Faithful Church (1981). Typically, human development

theories talk about moving on, stepping up to a higher stage, leaving behind different

characteristics as we grow. Westerhoff’s theory is not like this. He compares faith development

to the way in which a tree grows, each ring building on and adding to that which has grown

before. Faith development is seen as “adding to” something we already have and retain rather

than as moving on or letting go of “childish ways.”

Westerhoff provides a framework in which doubt, trust, childlike joy, and mature intellectual

assent, can all exist within a person’s faith life. To doubt is not to regress or to lose one’s faith.

Far from it, having doubts is natural, sort of like one flavor in the gumbo that is our faith life.

(Okay, I am hungry right now and food metaphors always surface when I’m hungry.) Also, in



Westerhoff’s theory there is no judgment about the type of beliefs we have: If we are a Christian

or Moslem fundamentalist our faith is not judged as immature as it would be according to James

Fowler’s theory. So I’d like to explain Westerhoff and invite you to reflect on where you connect

to it.

John Westerhoff: Faith Development Theory

Experienced Faith

At the core of the faith “tree” is the experience from our earliest years of exposure to religion, as

a child or as a convert in a new faith tradition. We receive the faith from those who nurture us.

We observe; we gain sensory experience; we develop feelings towards religious behavior, but we

don’t yet have the vocabulary or understanding we will need later on to express this experience.

This sense experience becomes the core of our faith. As a child in the Catholic tradition the

experience of my faith involved candles, incense, beautiful music, dramatic costumes, glorious

architecture. I felt uplifted when attending mass, long before I had any real understanding of the

beliefs and practices of Catholicism. In fact I once confused a visiting Bishop, who sported a full

white beard, with Santa Claus and announced that to the whole Church as he processed regally

up the aisle in red and white, “Look Mum it’s Father Christmas.” Everybody laughed but my

mother turned as red as his vestments. I was delighted as she held me up for a special blessing as

he passed our pew.

It is not just children who access their faith through their senses. Someone who comes to religion



as an adult might do so as the result of a profound and emotional conversion, an experience that

has nothing to do with doctrine and everything to do with one’s heart and soul.

Affiliative Faith

As we gradually learn and then display the beliefs, values, and practices of the tradition we have

adopted, another ring is formed. As children we imitate the behaviors and characteristics of those

who have nurtured our faith and initiated us into the tradition, and we become an active

participant, but not usually through personal choice rather as a result of following family and

school expectations. Typically, we will participate in rituals of initiation such as baptism or

confirmation. For adolescents especially, this style of faith is associated with “fitting in” with,

and being accepted by, a community. My students often complained that Confirmation into the

Catholic Church had not been their personal choice but their parents. Or that the grammar school

did not allow for anyone to “opt out” of confirmation class.

Adults who convert to Catholicism often have more interest in and commitment to the rituals and

doctrines than those raised in the Church. This may simply be because those of us raised in the

Church haven’t yet really made the kind of personal, adult commitment that a convert has made.

Searching Faith

Faith development reaches a crucial juncture when we become aware that our personal beliefs or

experience may no longer be exactly the same as those of the group (family, church), and we

begin to question some of the commonly held beliefs or practices. Do we actually want to



practice what our parents practice? Do we want to be committed to a faith community whose

leadership has been shown to be shallow, corrupt, or simply out of touch?

For teenagers the issue of the hypocrisy of parents and church leaders is often front and foremost

in their minds. There is often a lot of righteous indignation in the criticism of teenagers. But this

can be a smoke screen covering the desire to simply sleep in on Sundays and not be bothered. On

the other hand teenagers can be very altruistic and commit to causes and service projects with

sincere abandon.

Teenagers and adults may try shopping around, experimenting with different belief systems,

different faith communities. It may not be until marriage and parenthood that the issue of

choosing one’s faith becomes a pressing issue, and even then adults may be choosing an

educational system not a religious faith per se.

Owned Faith

The culmination of the faith development is a personal, owned faith. This may be the result of a

conversion experience, or the experience of personal tragedy that reveals the need for something

more, some meaning or purpose to life. An owned faith, according to Westerhoff, is one in which

one’s faith is integrated into one’s life and is not just a compartmentalized into an hour’s duty on

Sundays (or two hours on Friday or Saturday).

But we don’t suddenly achieve absolute certainty. We move between the rings on our faith tree,

continuing to process, question, enjoy, reject…but all from the perspective of adult “ownership”

of our faith journey.



In God’s Image?

Barrett and Westerhoff provide me with lots of good news: not only can I affirm that, like all of

humanity I am a mess, I can also affirm that having doubts and despair is not equivalent to

having “lost” my faith in God, and is certainly not proof of God’s non-existence. I’m normal, it

turns out, and that’s quite a relief. But it’s also kind of a disappointment. I was hoping for a little

bit more of something “spectacular, extraordinary, unique” in my Self. But hey, that can be true,

too. There is room for a lot of truths in the Truth, including the truth about the Self. We have on

the one hand the generic Human Self/Human Nature, and then there are the specific selves we

each develop, and that is where we can be as unique as we can manage to be.

So, if our shared Human Nature includes the doubts and despair stuff, which means these darker

human traits are not just elements of our individual selves, then are we saying that these shadow

aspects of the Human Self are part of how we were created, part of the Image of God? What does

that say about God?

Okay…becoming circular. Let’s jump out of the box for a moment. Let’s assume that there is

Divinity/God but let’s put aside the notion of God “creating” humanity in a fully developed “this

is exactly how we were intended to be” kind of way. After all, the scientific evidence for the

development of species and for the genetic connectedness between species is hard to deny. If we

have developed, like all of creation including the planet Earth and in fact the whole universe,, we

are still developing – or at least changing (I’m not sure we are improving). And if we are still



developing, how can we say that Human Nature as it is NOW is what God created or intended.

Or NOW, or wait … NOW! You get the point.

Then the question arises: if we are made in God’s image and we are still changing does that

mean God is still changing? Are we reflecting changes in God or is God (or our understanding of

God) reflecting changes in us?



What if God is not a Being but a Doing?

Perhaps God is not a Being but the Ground of our Being, as Paul Tillich suggests. Or maybe just

“Being.” In Hebrew the name for God YHWH (Yahweh) is associated with the verb “to be.”

When Moses asked God, Who is it that I shall say is sending me? God answered: Ehyeh asher

ehyeh, which, because biblical Hebrew verbs have no tense, could be translated in many ways: I

will be what I will be. I am that I am. I am all that is. The inference being that the author of

Exodus believed God to be the source of all, indeed the very “Ground of our Being.” In the New

Testament Gospel of John there are seven sayings which infer the divinity of Jesus using the verb

form “I am,” for example: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

In the New Testament Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?” and each time when Peter

responds in the affirmative, Jesus instructs him to “tend my sheep.” Jesus was a teacher but what

he taught was a way of life and he didn’t just talk, he lived it. The triple repetition is a universal

oral story-telling technique (think of jokes and fairy stories with triple repetitions, the story of the

Three Little Pigs; the jokes about the priest, the rabbi and the … fill in the blank). Repetition is a

way of helping people remember something important. Have you noticed all those annoying

commercials on the radio that repeat 1-800 numbers three times? There’s a big reason for paying

for those extra seconds of air time: repetition works.

The point is Jesus was making a point, or the author of John’s Gospel was making a point about

Jesus: If you love me, do something to express that love in action on behalf of others. Nowhere

in the Gospels does Jesus say, “If you love me, worship me.” And I am convinced that the



injunction to “ Do this in memory of me” was not intended to replace social action with

Eucharistic ritual. But it certainly makes it more convenient for us. Forty-five minutes on a

Sunday (or Saturday afternoon) is easier than a life committed to treating others as if they were

each Jesus.

What was Jesus’ attitude to religious ritual? It is clear that he was a man of prayer and that he

attended synagogue. We know that at least twice in his life he made the journey to Jerusalem for

Passover. But the only story of his adult relationship with the Jerusalem Temple and the priestly

worship tradition involves him fussing at the Priests (Sadduccees) and Teachers of the Law

(Pharisees) for their ritualism and hypocrisy, and overturning the tables of the money-changers

who were profiting excessively from the exchange rate they imposed. Is this suggestive of a man

who wanted to institute another priesthood, a priesthood that would go on to incorporate

elements of Roman culture and dress and even use Roman temples until they built their own

using similar architectural design? Or would he have been more likely to expect his Apostles to

become preachers, teachers, and healers like him? In fact, that was exactly what he had been

training them to do.

“When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all

demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the

sick .” Luke 9:1-2

It is interesting to point out that this core emphasis on doing for others rather than kneeling and

worshipping a transcendent God is not unique to Jesus. Jesus’ Golden Rule, “Do to others what

you would have them do to you,” is found in very similar form in every major world religion.



Jesus was the Doing of God.

Forget the debates over the language of Trinity and Incarnation (Substance and Person) in the

early centuries of the Church. The Jews and the Taoists have it right…God is the un-nameable

and it’s pointless to try to name the un-nameable. If we name God, God becomes a thing, and

therefore less than God.

Forget creating God in our own image through anthropomorphisms like Father, Mother, or King.

Forget arguments over who is saved, or whether there is a heaven, or if vampires are evil spirits

(does holy water work better than garlic, I can never remember). Instead, how about focusing on

“Doing God” or maybe “ Doing Godness.”

And for Christians, don’t worry about who Jesus is or is not besides who we know he was, Jesus

bar Joseph, (bar means “son of” in Aramaic), or Jesus of Nazareth. Paul has the right idea when

he tells his converts: to paraphrase: You are now the body of The Christ, you are his hands and

his feet. So go be Jesus to others. Maybe this is the best understanding of the resurrection, or

maybe just the easiest to make sense of: The Christ is here with us always only in so far as we,

his followers, incarnate him (make him flesh) through living the way he would have lived, in the

way we treat others and engage in the world professionally and personally – challenging unjust

systems and laws, advocating for the oppressed, feeding the hungry, attending to the sick,

forgiving sinners, forgiving ourselves!



Who Cares?

So, if you don’t care about Jesus and are not sure about God, what does this all have to say to

you? Why bother “being good,” and “working to make the world a better place.” Who cares…

other than a bunch of musicians a few years ago who thought that singing about how “We are

the world” would make a difference.

Okay, good question. I could say that doing good is a good thing to do. Period! But again, why?

Well if you don’t buy into altruism -- unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others --

then how about being selfish? Doing good makes you feel better, or at the very least distracts

you from focusing all your emotional energy on the detritus that is your life. Bit harsh? Sorry!

But it does work to stop focusing on how much life sucks. And science is providing more and

more evidence that forgiveness reduces anxiety and stress and in turn reduces instances of heart

attacks.

Having a meaningful job also helps, I find, as does growing flowers and spending time with

children and friends. And maybe family, if you are lucky enough to have a good one. And by

good I don’t mean totally sane, uninteresting, and undemanding, that would be boring. Sanity is

relative. What I mean is a family that doesn’t hurt you and in whose company you are nurtured.



Back to my story

The message I need to give myself:

• Don’t worry about the Why of tragedies such as natural disasters, evil, innocent suffering,

or loss.

• You can waste your whole life trying to find a satisfying answer or “satisfaction” in the

form of retaliation or redress.

• Focus on the healing – your own inner healing from anger, grief, and sadness, and the

healing of others in the community in which you can make a difference.

• My mother was right: don’t focus on the stink of the horse manure that life deposits

outside your door, go shovel it up and put it on your roses.

There was a manure joke that I always found insightful: twin boys woke up on the morning of

their eleventh birthday to see a huge mountain of horse manure in their back. One twin looks out

the bedroom window with disgust and says, Typical! Nothing good ever happens on my

birthday. The other brother leaps to his feet and rushes outside, grabs a shovel and starts digging.

The first twin shouts down through the open window, Jeez! What the heck are you doing? Are

you nuts? And his brother answers, No… with all this shit there has to be a horse in there

somewhere.



Okay, so maybe there is no pony inside your particular pile of shit, but maybe you can take the

manure and grow prize-winning roses like my mother, or start a vegetable garden and sell your

produce in a local market, then save the money and but your own pony. There are options. That’s

all I’m saying.



Who moved my manure?

Spencer Johnson, the author of Who Moved my Cheese? makes some excellent points about how

people react to change. In his story, Hem is the character who refuses not only to notice when

change begins to take place in his cheese supply, but stubbornly refuses to adapt, preferring to

believe that his cheese would one day come back and life would be as it always had been. As a

result he risks his own health and life. He would rather sit in an empty Cheese collection station

waiting passively for cheese to magically reappear than face the fact that his life has irrevocably

changed forever. The cheese will never come back. Life will never by the same again. He has

suffered major losses: safety, predictability, comfort, sustenance. And then he loses his best

friend Hem who strikes out on his own in search of new cheese.

Hem is like those of us on whom a whole pile of manure is dumped. We are so angry that it was

dumped on us, we are so indignant that the universe or God or Karma mistakenly thought we

deserved it, that we fully expect the mistake to be rectified and everything to return to normal.

Even though logic and science and countless friends and self-help books tell us that such a

reversal of fate is impossible, we sit and wait. Eventually the smell of our manure becomes our

new normal. Then our friends stop coming by, tired of their advice falling on deaf ears, and

really tired of the smell! Our denial turns into depression and self-pity becomes self-destructive.

If that happens, it is time to bury the shit in a garden and do some re-landscaping. Then we can

have our friends over for a barbeque.

working part 4

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