Dear Theophilus, 

Much time has passed since I last wrote to you and it gives me much pleasure to hear from you again. These are difficult times (which times aren't) and friendship is very important.

You write to me that you are vexed and puzzled, so much so, that your belief that there is a God and that there is justice in the world seem to be challenged.

You write that it is difficult for you, sometimes, to believe that there is a God. Let me assure you that what you are feeling, what you are experiencing is not unique to you - all people, who are honest with themselves will confess to the feelings that you, at times, experience. And here, let me underline the fact that we must always be honest about our deepest feelings and not try to mould them into what we think we should be feeling and what we should not be feeling.

At the outset, I would like to draw your attention to the two main areas which give rise to the feelings that you are experiencing with respect to your belief in God. The first is the paucity of our language when in comes to describing the reality that surrounds us and the second is, the very concept of God.

It may come as a shock to you, but our faith incorporates atheism. There have been saintly people who have said that God does not exist because we think of existence in a very limited and self-centered way. God does not exist, but He is - "I am" is the name given to Him in the Old Testament. You are probably saying to yourself that these are games that we are playing with words, but in reality they are not and let me try to explain, at least a little, of what it is that I am saying. Keep in mind that words are important for they are one of the most important forms of interaction and exchange between human beings. Governments have come to realize this and have developed ministries to deal with this, be they so-called public relations or name changes such as not any longer having a Department of War but a Department of Defence. Same function, but different words.

There is a constant problem that we try to form God in our image with the attributes that we have and in early, primitive religion there is this strong tendency to image God in our likeness, a tendency that we call anthropomorphism. For us to live, to exist means to occupy a certain space, have a specific body, interact with specific people. This is the only kind of existence that we know and we therefore apply this to God, but this is wrong, and it is strongly condemned in the second commandment - we are not to form idols. We normally think of idols as images or statues or other works of the hands, but the dangerous idols are those that masquerade so well as the real thing that it becomes virtually impossible for us to discern them as false. Thus, when an atheist says that he believes that there is no God, he is only partly right - there is no God who corresponds to our imaginings about what God is like. We should not be too hard on people who claim to be atheists because they serve two important functions. By challenging our position they force us to develop better ways to articulate and defend our faith and secondly, they force us to become more aware of our tendencies toward idol worship. Moreover, we are called upon to be charitable to all and this applies to those who do not agree with us. We should realize that atheists are like orphans - they have lost their "Father" and I need not remind you how we deal with orphans, must I?

It seems that every generation lives through times that seem worse than those of any other period in history. But this is false because every age has its dark side and its light aspects, and so it is with our era. Take heart - others have lived through difficult times and you will also, always remembering the strong support you have in your faith.

There are so many things that I want to write to you about but time and space does not permit this. Maybe, as we exchange our letters, I will be able to touch on those questions which you find vexing and troublesome. But, throughout all our discussions you must keep several things continually in front of you and hang on to them with all your strength because it is from them that everything else flows. Believe that God exists, believe that you are valuable for Him, and center your life around this. If you can do this (and it is not easy to do, I know this) then you are well on your way to being a complete human being. Humanity is still on the "cross" and that is why it is so difficult to be a true human being. This is a very important point and I will be coming back to it time and time again, but for now, I will leave it at this.

You must be saying to yourself - believe in God. Such a short and simple statement and yet it is fraught with such difficulties. If God exists, why doesn't He reveal Himself in an unambiguous fashion and then everything would be different and it would be so much easier for us.

Let us imagine that your wish is granted and God allows us to have unambiguous information about His existence. Suppose He arranges the stars in the Milky Way in such a way that they spell out - God Exists - in every conceivable language on Earth. You can imagine what a sensation this would create on its first appearance - newspaper articles, talk shows, all inundated with a discussion about the miraculous message in the sky. But what you will see is that with time, the novelty wears off and other problems take center stage - inflation, crime, unemployment, wars and the sign in the sky becomes less and less noticed. After some time it is simply taken for granted because the mind of man is a fickle thing which changes continually, like a chameleon, always seeking new ways to titillate itself, always seeking novelty. So you see, your prayer would be answered, but its fruits would not be what you had expected. There is a rather insightful comment in one of the Epistles in the New Testament - the evil spirits know that God exists and yet they do not change their ways. If this applies to spirits, why should it not apply to humans? No, there has to be another way, and that way was chosen by God and that is the basis of your faith, but we will talk more about this at another time.

What I would like to stress to you is that rationality, the exercise of logic and intelligence, is a valuable gift, but as with all gifts, it has its limitations. If our belief were completely explainable in terms of logic and reason, then another problem would arise. How would we know that it is true and not a creation of the mind? I think it was St. Jerome who wrote that he believes in Christianity because it is non-rational. At first this seems a strange statement, almost an affront but on deeper consideration you can see where he's coming from. The faith is greater than the mind and therefore the mind is not what gave birth to the faith. Faith is non-rational, meaning that it can't be contained within the definitions and limits of reason. We do not say that faith is irrational, that is, contrary to, or totally ignorant, of reason. You must realize that we value reason for all the help that it can give us, and we are using it now, but it must always be our servant and not our master, not an idol.

When you are faced with the evidence of the world you are faced with a puzzle which you are asked to decipher: GODISNOWHERE. You can separate these letters in two different ways - God is nowhere and God is now here. Through faith, you choose the latter and this is what centers your whole life and tells you how to live. We have talked, briefly, about God's existence, pointing out that it is ultimately a question of faith, but this faith can be informed, it has a basis about which we can speak reasonably to others and this is what we will look at in our next exchange.

Yours,

Bar-Abbas

Return to Index