Regular readers, of which I now know there are a few, will know that I have a daily battle with faith. The people I admire and am attracted to intellectually are Ben Goldacre, Brian Cox etc and Marcus Brigstocke for humour. What they all have in common is - they are atheists. I love "Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People" - Google Nerdstock and you will see where I am coming from. I've attached the video from youtube for part one from last year and hopefully you will find your way to the next parts.
There are Christians I am admire such as Desmond Tutu. However, when I watched Nine Lessons last year I recognised a group of people that I felt familiar with, if that makes sense.
However, I am trying to be a person of faith. I wonder where all this fits in? My recent reading of "The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman has helped. Did I think that faith was going to be a bit like falling in love? Have I had unrealistic expectations of faith that somehow the high octane head rush of falling in love was faith and if I wasn't feeling anything then there was no faith.
Perhaps faith is a love relationship with Jesus and like any relationship it has to be worked at, sometimes it can feel mundane and sometimes it can feel transcendent. People truly committed to a marriage learn to understand that they will feel different things at different times and those feelings are valid and perfectly OK.
Well, I tend more to the agnostic camp. Stephen Jay Gould is my favourite writer there. Unlike out and out atheists, he makes a space for religious belief with what he calls NOMA - non-overlapping magisteria, such as science and belief.
ReplyDeleteI find there is a lot of superficial thinking with Christianity, but some Christians are very deep thinkers - I'd cite John Macquarrie, John V Taylor, Frances Young, Rowan Williams, Tom Wright and Jurgen Moltmann as 20th century examples. And then Jonathan Sacks is also very worth reading on a number of issues.
There again my 1980s dissertation was on "Dogma and Doubt: The Logic of Religious Discovery"
It's the first time i've read your blog so forgive me if I sound ignorant.
ReplyDeleteI don't know why you have chosen to be " a person of faith" but it seems like a battle to you so why not chose to be faithless instead?
Hi Heidi
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting. I don't think there's a simple answer that fully answers "Why?" but I suppose I've tried to do things my way and it hasn't worked out that great. Victor Frankl describes our desire to search for meaning in our lives.
Jennx