Faith

“Religious existentialism”

We can’t accept the notion that our experiences of the Good are meaningless, just a narrative our brains tell us to keep us busy while they run our lives.  Nihilism is no answer.

And I find secular idealism insufficient to support my sense that we are called upon to act to change the behavior of others in favor of the Good.

What happens if, when you find yourself in the Box, you orient yourself in the other direction, towards faith?  This is the existential moment.  And this is the source of hope.   In this position, I must accept that life is not perfectible, but I can also believe that it does have meaning, even if I can’t be certain that that meaning exists or what that meaning is.  This is the position of the “religious existentialists” who most of you never read in college: Kierkegaard, Bullman, Tillich, Borowitz.  (Not your fault – most philosophy professors only assign the atheistic existentialists.)

I can not be perfectly Good, but I can orient my life to a source of the Good.  I can seek and possibly find some ground for Goodness.  And I can therefore, standing on that ground, begin a dialogue on what it means to lead a Good life. 

Small “r” religion

Will I know for sure that my orientation is Right?  No.  We have already seen that the human condition, because it is not perfectible, must always involve uncertainty.  Therefore, it is impossible to be certain I am right; all I can do, in this existential moment, is to seek out experiences of meaning and strive to orient myself to them.  These experiences of meaning, this intrusion into our every day lives of transcendent meaning, is probably what most people mean when they call a moment in time “holy.”  This is what William Barrett, in The Illusion of Technique, means by the “religious hypothesis,” that we can adopt a view that says “there exists meaning to life.”

I find, in the Box, an opportunity to orient my life to this small notion, that there exists meaning, and that that meaning transcends the material.  I call this “small ‘r’ religion.”  (You could call it spirituality, if you like.  But we aren’t going to be talking about crystals.)  I have no certainty of what that meaning might be, but most of the time, I feel its intrusion into my life, it is consistent with my everyday experiences, and I choose to orient my life to it.

Temptation

If you are like me, there are days when, sitting in the Box, holding on to that fragile faith is just too damn difficult.  Why bother?  I am probably a fool, teaching other fools how to explore their foolishness. There are days when I am tempted to “give up.”  Days when I have done a poor job of responding to my calling, when I have made abundantly obvious to myself that I am imperfect, days when the corruption of the systems in which we all operate mediate against the Good.  In these times, I wait for the weakness to pass, or I reach out to others to borrow some of their strength.  Usually the faith returns.  But there are those days. . . .

One might be tempted by secular idealism.  But I have to reject it. If there is Good, there must be a ground for this Goodness.  If we reject faith in transcendence, if we deny small “r” religion even in our minimalist definition, then the only available home for this ground is the material world.  To be Good must be something that is producible out of our biological and social conditions, nothing more.  Values are, then, either nature or nurture. So, secular idealism wishes to be idealistic, without acknowledging a transcendent basis for the moral priorities of that idealism, but comes up short, as its secularism provides only dust as a basis for its idealism.

If, at the existential moment, you answer that there is no transcendent ground for these values, then you’re going to adopt either a nihilistic position or call yourself a secular idealist.  The first gets you no where, stuck with “No Exit.”  The second does not take you much further, as you try to establish the validity of your moral values through materialism alone.

The inevitability of uncertainty

As we will see in later postings, post-modernism says that there is no privileged position from which to be certain that you can judge behavior.  How, then, can we be sure that there is a ground for those values that we think transcend culture?  We are now back in “the Box” on Figure X.  (If you are just joining the blog, you will find this Figure in earlier postings.)  We can not know for sure, we can not be certain that there are transcendent values, but we believe there are.  That belief is consistent with our experiences.  We hold that belief as an article of faith.  We can’t be certain, but we can orient our lives to that belief.

(Remember, if you believe that life has meaning, and that you know exactly what that meaning is, then you aren’t actually on that path towards faith, or even in the Box.  You are back down the path towards fundamentalism, where certitude over meaning takes you.  You have “given in.”)

In a post-modern world, uncertainty is inevitable.  Therefore, doubt is unavoidable.  The challenge of the Box is to attempt to maintain one’s faith in a transcendent source of Goodness, while avoiding the temptation of “giving up” to Nihilism or “giving in” to fundamentalism.
Leading an imperfectible life empowers our will, but for that we pay a price of never-ending uncertainty.  That is why our lives lived in the box are a constant struggle to orient ourselves to faith.

So, I find that I am a religious person, that I have faith.  Most of the time.  But faith in what?  Ah, another problem.  There always seem to be problems.  In fact, I can’t know for sure what it is that I have faith in.  It is a complete and ineffable mystery.  I can’t tell you what I believe is contained within transcendence.  I can only tell you that transcendence exists, and that my experiences of the Good are real and grounded.  And that is what I have faith in.