About Ignorance And Faith
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We human beings aren't really able to comprehend the nature of God. That was as
true of ancient people as it is true of us today. Even if some ancient myth did
happen to characterize God correctly, it couldn't do so fully, and we wouldn't be
able to tell, anyway. So to seek an understanding of what God "really" is, is
pointless egotism on our part. It's born of a refusal to acknowledge our own
human limitations.

Once we face the fact of our own limited comprehension as human beings, we can
stop looking for the "real" God, and either let go of the idea of God all
together, or look for an idea of God that works best for us individually (knowing
now that our ideas of God are not really what God is). And it's at this point
that our healing can really begin.

Over the years, I have watched people in addiction recovery move through the
various stages of awareness regarding their understanding and relationship with
God, and some general commonalties become evident. When they were active in their
addiction, they tended to see life as a 'battle for the goods'. That is that we
human beings are all competing with each other to get what we need and want for
ourselves and if God exists at all, he/it is either not meddling in the reality
of our struggle to survive, or is meddling unfairly and therefor no better than
we. Life is chaos. God is irrational and immoral if God exists at all, and
whatever morality we happen to possess is just a personal quirk of our own. As
people in this early stage of awareness become exhausted by it and the rampaging
desires that fuel it, they begin to seek a new idea of things: a new awareness of
God, life, themselves and everything else.

In many cases, as they seek relief from the pain and suffering of their addiction
to the objects of their self centered desire, they move from a world view of
chaos to it's extreme opposite. They become moral and theological authoritarians.
Having experienced the horror of selfish survivalism, and then the relief of self
control that came with letting go of that selfish survivalism and placing their
well being in a belief in an all mighty God, they tend to go overboard. They have
exchanged one form of excess for another one. Granted, their moral
authoritarianism is a healthier version of excess, but it's still excess, and is
still ultimately unhealthy. They're like smokers who having just quit smoking a
few weeks ago, begin going around telling every other smoker they see that they
should quit, too, and just how to do it. Some become addicted to this
proselytizing and never get past it. But most eventually become aware of how
silly and self righteous they're behaving, and are eventually humbled by the
realization.

With this humility comes a lot of questions. Difficult questions. Once we have
gotten out of a life of selfish survivalism, and gotten past the self
righteousness of having done so, we end up face to face with the phenomena of
faith. Faith by nature is about questions that don't have easy or obvious
answers. Faith is about living life by an idea of God that we can't know or prove
is true. Faith is an awareness of our own ignorance with a willingness to
proceed, anyway. Faith has nothing to do with proselytizing. Faith is very humble
and quiet, and very easy to lose. Those who have come face to face with it know
that it's something we struggle with constantly. Sometimes we have it, sometimes
we don't, and the harder we try to hold on to it the more elusive it becomes.
It's a constant contradiction. We have little control over our own faith yet it
begins with our own free will, and our choosing of it. It can't be given away or
forced on anyone and we can't even force it on ourselves.

The real difficulty we have with faith is that it's integrally tied to our own
ignorance. Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we here? What are we
supposed to be doing here? Is there a God? What is God like if God exists? Why
does God let bad things happen to us? To be human is to have the ability to ask
ourselves these questions but not to have the ability to answer them. Yet without
these answers we have no idea what to do with our lives beyond survivalism. And
so we have to live by faith. Faith is the direct result of our own ignorance. And
this awareness of our own profound ignorance is very difficult for a lot of us to
accept. Many of us refuse to accept it, and either turn to religion as a culture
of pretend wisdom, or turn back to survivalism in more sophisticated forms. But
for those who are willing to keep struggling with their own ignorance and with
their own faith in the face of that ignorance, life becomes an adventure. God
becomes a profound mystery that is never quite unraveled, but never quite given
up, either.

To me, this is the point where life really begins. This is the real human
experience: the experience of ignorance and faith. And this is why I so often
write about allowing the bible to be a collection of myths and stories and
parables and even the dreams of crazy people. This is why I so often write about
the sickness of religious absolutism, that attempts to stifle the experience of
faith by pretending that we aren't ignorant. I know from experience and observing
the experiences of others that faith doesn't even begin until we become aware of
our own profound ignorance. The bible is a wonderful collection of both human
ignorance and real faith.

We humans don't get to know if or what God really is, but instead of that
knowledge, we get to invent images of God that best suit our needs, and to live
as if these images are true. And we can change our image of God as we grow in
self awareness. In fact, this theological dynamism may be the best and most
accurate relationship with God we can have. And the most healing. Fundamentalist
religion is dead wrong when they claim we cannot change our ideas of God to suit
our own liking. They are stuck in that early stage of awareness that is built on
authoritarianism and absolute moral rule. It works fine for those of us who have
just stepped out of survivalism, but it needs to be left behind us as we grow.

To quote the book itself: "We are wonderfully and frightfully made".

Peace,
Dave