Losing Faith: When Belief is all of Religion

Poking around the arts and crafts store this weekend I saw a series of Christian-themed craft kits. A cross, a dove, and a cheerful little thing that just said “believe!” It struck me then how vital faith — as in belief — is to Christianity. I probably should have noticed it before, but then again I used to be Christian and it’s probably like a fish noticing water.

Often in church we would recite the Apostles Creed, little of which I actually believed and almost none of which I thought was central to Christianity. Here it is, de-versified:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.

The third day he rose from the dead; he ascended into heaven,and sitteth at the right hand of the Father Almighty. From thence he shall come again to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

Notice that there’s nothing in here about compassion, service to those in need, humility, living on only what you need, not being obsessed with worldly goods. There’s not a damn thing in the Apostles Creed that has anything to do with anything Jesus ever taught. In one ear and out the other for two freaking millennia.

I think this causes a lot of problems.

William Lobdell, a Christian who worked the religion beat for the LA Times, has been reconsidering his religious faith because of the Catholic Church’s response to the priestly molestation of minors. William Lobdell still admits that the religious experience and conversion he had straightened out his life and gave him a lot of happiness. It made him a better person.

We read too that Mother Theresa seems to have lost her faith in the face of so much poverty and suffering. It’s hard to imagine the impact she had as she went about doing Christ’s work even while doubting God was listening. She touched many lives directly and many more lives indirectly, making the world a better place as she did so.

From where I’m sitting, these people were genuinely moved and changed for the better by religion. I am sure there are many more like them, and many of those who have watched the behavior of those in charge of their religion and lost faith because of it. Despite the very real effects it has had on them and those around them.

So we return again to that pointless statement of belief that is the Apostle’s creed. What does it mean? Why this, and not “I believe Christ fed the hungry and healed the sick?” Why the emphasis on torment, resurrection, and judgment? Why is belief, not action, more important?

I think it is because orthodoxy and obedience to clergy is more important than actually reading, understanding, and living the gospel. Most of Christian theology — mainstream Christian theology — has become about obedience and acquiescence to the Heavenly Royal Family. While Christ preached Communism, practically every religious leader since Constantine has used the cosmology of Christianity to keep everyone in line, in a kind of celestial bargain: believe, and God will make your life better. Obey, and be rewarded with an eternity in Heaven. God’s love protects you because you chose the right freaking side.

It’s no wonder that people lose faith when that fails. When their houses are destroyed by hurricanes, parents lost to disease, children lost to drunk drivers. That’s because their faith is faith in the bargain, the celestial good-old-boy network, the heavenly back-scratching. But what else is there?

Ali, who is trying to reconcile Druidry and Christianity in her own life, asks:

Perhaps there is a way in which faith and doubt coexist, and the experience of utter emptiness and the most poignant pain of longing are not symptoms of a lost faith, but a sign of its fruition, its completion in union with a Divine which, as macrocosm, suffers each pain and isolation and fear that shudders the frame of each microcosmic creature longing still to realize its own divinity.

The Christian path is to seek to become “Christ-like” ourselves, to “put on the mind of Christ,” to seek Christ-consciousness. But what does this look like? Is it really the self-satisfied, warm-fuzzy glow of the ever-loving mother coddling us all our lives? Or is it, perhaps, what we see in Mother Teresa? A process by which inner doubt and suffering are transformed into loving action, not through faith but through the pure tenacity of the divine spark insisting that it manifest–a love that is truly selfless in having not even a God to justify it. That doubt can inspire faith, that suffering can be transformed into hope… Isn’t this a glimpse of the Divine about its work? [ On Faith & Its Loss ]

And Maha, the Buddhist, says:

In Buddhism, for example, faith is a means, not an end. Faith in most of the Asian religions is faith in practice, not faith in doctrine or God. Doctrines are not to be “believed in,” but understood. Faith and doubt working together can lead to wisdom, or not, but faith is not wisdom itself. In fact, faith without doubt is a dead end as far as the quest for wisdom is concerned. Faith without doubt means you’ve given up the quest and filled your head with an ideology instead of genuine understanding. [ Taking Faith on Faith ]

Faith is where you start. If it is where you stop, then you are not religious. You are a member of a political movement. And when that movement fails you, as it did Lobdell and Mother Theresa and who knows who the hell else, you can get paralyzed with doubt. At that point, perhaps your doubt becomes so deep you refuse to accept the validity of your own experiences, the value of your own actions. And you lose the inquisitiveness which fosters wisdom and spiritual growth. You say “this is all there is,” and “even the things that have happened to me I can not believe.” I think you get stuck, and I think you get bitter.

The great failing of the religions of the book — the “civilized” religions — is that it encourages either questionless belief or paralyzing doubt. You recite the apostles creed and you either believe it, and get to keep your friends and your community, or you deny it and lose your friends, your place in society, and who you are.

Because no one has bothered to teach you how to religion; they have only taught you belief.