Always being interested in spiritual journeys, I found A. N. Wilson's particularly fascinating. He has written it in an article "Why I Believe Again" for the New Stateman (a U.K. publication.) It is particularly insightful in relating the inner thoughts and journey of one converted to atheism. But alas, atheism offers so little in life, that Wilson has journeyed back to faith. Remarkable story, really.
There are themes that remind me of G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy - the experience (and evidential power) of language, love and music.
What do you think? What does Wilson's journey suggest regarding the modern atheistic resurgence?
4 comments:
I just found about about wilson actually from a friend's facebook link, and kind of laughed to myself. I picked up his "God's Funeral" from the campus bookstore about a year after I became a Christian and thought, "how horrible" and "how amazing" in a twistedly honest reaction to his musings on the descent towards atheism in the 17th-19th centuries. I was horrified to think that I might end up like that someday. It was my doubts that led me to Christ, but they didn't go away. And I was amazed at how much the anxieties and loss felt by Hume and Carlysle and others he wrote about felt honestly familiar to me. I can never get rid of my doubts, no matter how bad I'm told they are. But I've found that they're not so terrifying now either, something I owe quite ironically to Bertrand Russell who offered a proof that nothing is beyond reasonable doubt. He was so busy running away from theism he hated that I doubt he took the time to realize he couldn't really have satisfaction in the atheism he was trying to justify either. So I came full circle to the issue of faith, almost like Wilson without the rejection, or like Lewis without the reserve. Now I rather wonder if it isn't better to have people who can't commit to Christ have a taste of faithlessness, so they can know what they miss. If they're honest and really want truth, won't they really find God? Makes me wonder, too, if wandering the desert or eating grass or being "deserted" by God doesn't offer more healing and life than it does "punishment." And provoke life from those who would be honest and humble?
You don't seem to get a lot of people chatting on here, but in academia I have a dearth of good conversation about things I really need to talk about. Hope you don't mind the intrusion.
Your journey is fascinating and your reflections insightful. Allowing others to "taste faithlessness" may be a severe mercy, but mercy, none the less. And there is hope and healing for the honest and humble. Unfortunately, how many are truly characterized by those two attributes?
Re: this blog. You are right - there is not a lot of "chatter", but alas, that is primarily self-inflicted. I know (at least a little) what it takes to create a more robust site, but haven't had the time or will to pursue it (yet.) So instead I dabble occassionally, more to pacify my interest than to make much of a contribution to the blogosphere. Perhaps this summer I shall rethink and engage more seriously.
I don't know. Honesty is hard, humility harder, in my experience. Exhausting. I felt pushed there or I'd never have gone. And truthfulness always felt like a gift, and a curse--what C.S. Lewis' description of Aslan ripping Eustace's layers of dragon skin off in *Voyage of the Dawn Treader* never sufficiently conveyed, in my opinion. Truth is an acquired taste, perhaps. Maybe people have moments of both, but just don't know what to do with it? how to act on it? My first real prayer was in high school, just after I read a rather badly written story about a girl who very selfishly "sacrificed" her happiness and goals to spite her family and sister, extending a grudge from childhood years into her adult life. I remembered thinking with real horror, "That's me!" and feeling afraid that I couldn't change myself. And the most honest prayer I could think to pray was, "God, please save me before I get to be that bad!"
I suppose I wouldn't want anyone to taste faithlessness in order to find mercy. But there does seem to be a general reaction in our culture of mistrust against believing or exploring the reality of what you're told is true or right. In my classroom I see it, even when the topics are as mundane as history. It's hard to challenge thinking patterns long since set in place, or a deep-seated disinterest in history, without moving the conversation into shocking or sometimes hard to comprehend "versions" of the story. I suppose I was thinking that, for people like Wilson who have already abandoned grace, pushing them further toward faithlessness, toward the logical ends of their beliefs in a Francis Schaeffer sort of way may be more beneficial than pleading the case for Christ. This is what Lewis' and Wilson's stories both have in common--a rejection of what they gradually came to see atheism espousing, the inability to see the answers or explanations in it for things they were convinced existed and held value. For my generation and others, this is a breath of fresh air, even if drawing breath is agony.
Well said! "...pushing them further toward faithlessness, toward the logical ends of their beliefs in a Francis Schaeffer sort of way may be more beneficial than pleading the case for Christ." I like the image from Schaeffer of "taking the roof off" the un-believing world-view, exposing the inconsistency of one's presuppositions with the way life is experienced. Hmmm... Have to think about that again!
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