PART 3: Faith as a Decision to Trust Reality
Faith-Trust
in God is a Decision to Trust Reality
What I would most like to highlight here
though is an aspect of faith-trust in God that Hans Küng emphasizes above all
else in his reflection. He points out that both belief or unbelief in God has
actually to do mostly with a decision on the part of humans (individually
or collectively) to adopt either a fundamental attitude of trust in
reality (or life) or its opposite – a fundamental attitude of skepticism and/or
pessimism about reality. In light of that, having faith in God is,
I would like to propose, a matter of having an attitude of “fundamental trust
in the fundamental goodness of reality.”
Let me further qualify that description
to this: What is called “faith in God” (in the monotheistic religions) is actually the decision to continue to
trust that reality (=life) is fundamentally good despite all the uncertainty,
suffering, absurdity that are part of it. You can call this by whatever
name you want. This might even be tantamount to what Camus means by encouraging
living life to the full despite its “absurdity.” But this, I maintain, is
what FAITH-TRUST in God fundamentally means. Moreover, this trust in
the fundamental goodness of life should necessarily translate into an active
commitment to action, that is, to respect and honour and, if needed, to fight
for LIFE (taken in a holistic sense that involves positively struggling for
justice, peace, equality, freedom, etc.; or [in the negative sense] struggling against
injustice, oppression, destruction, calamities, etc.).
Küng on Atheism/Agnosticism
as “Unjustified” Trust in Reality
Küng makes another important point about
atheism-agnosticism that merits some discussion. He thinks that suspending
belief in or “denial of God implies an ultimately unjustified fundamental
trust in reality (emphasis mine). Atheism cannot suggest any condition for
the possibility of uncertain reality. If someone denies God, he (sic) does not
know why he ultimately trusts in reality”(571). In other words, many
people continue to live life believing it is worth living and they even do
heroic things in order to uphold life (such as healthcare workers in the
frontlines of the fight against a pandemic). While living with such a
“fundamental trust in reality,” many of them do not explicitly believe,
however, in an Ultimate Reality such as God. They just believe that all life is
good and sacred and has to be upheld. However, if one were to dig deeper and
ask “what is the deeper or ultimate reason why life is sacred?”, many people would
not be able to answer that. They would simply stop at the level of “the goodness
& sacredness of life itself” as the reason why they continue to uphold,
defend, and honour life.
(This is my interpretation of Küng and I
may be wrong here…) For Küng, if one does not believe or one actively refutes
belief in—what he has called—“a primal ground, source, and goal” of life and
reality (traditionally called “God”), then one does not really know the
deeper reason why one believes and trusts in the fundamental goodness of life—the
reason that makes it worth struggling and even dying for. I think this is
what Küng means by “an ultimately unjustified fundamental trust in reality”
quoted above. I also think that Küng believes that if you are going to trust
that life (= reality) is worth living well and even worthy of struggling and
dying for, then, it’s better for you to know the deeper reason why you believe …
and that reason lies with the Ultimate Ground, Source, and Goal (often called
“God”). In short, it would be better if you can properly “label” the source of
your belief in the fundamental goodness of reality. Of course, he means that
the proper label is “God.”
Is
“Labeling” Our Fundamental Trust in Reality “God” Always the Best Thing?
Truth be told, I do not entirely agree
with Küng here. In other words, I DO NOT think that <“labeling”
our ultimate reason for believing and trusting in the fundamental goodness of
life and reality as “God”> is always the best thing to do. My many
reasons for that can be summarized as follows: Many meanings acquired by the
word “God” over the centuries and now prevalent in the popular imagination are
just unhelpful and even dysfunctional because they are naïve, childish, too
anthropomorphic, and, most importantly, too simplistic to respect the
fundamental fact that “God” is first and foremost an unfathomable mystery and
that “God” should be treated more as a summons to action (to help realize the Kingdom
of justice and peace that God, we trust, dreams of), i.e., a verb rather than a
static noun. I therefore generally agree with theologians who have proposed
that the word (and many popular ideas about) “God” might need a kind of
moratorium until we can truly learn what “God’s” deeper meaning is. (See Gregg
2012).
It is obvious that, unfortunately, “God”
and “religion” have been associated with many negative things throughout
history in western societies. Much of it, again unfortunately, is
institutionalized religion’s own fault. When many come in contact with those
notions in the West today, they cannot help but link religious believers and
religion itself with awful things such as irrationality, bigotry,
narrow-mindedness, arrogance, self-righteousness, racism, elitism, lust for
power, abuse of many kinds, and so on and so forth. Even if people as
individuals have not experienced personally the dark sides of religion, it is quite
possible and arguable that society as a whole (in western contexts) has just
become so sick and tired of “religion,” “God,” or “religious believers” that many
quarters of the society as a whole have just explicitly or implicitly (such as
Quebec’s “quiet revolution”) rejected or walked away from religion.
This distancing from religion on the part
of many westerners is not necessarily a bad thing. (If I sound like a
hopeless optimist, I am guilty as charged!) It does not necessarily mean that
non-religious people are immoral and depraved, as some religious people are
wont to believe. Philosopher of religion Don Cupitt has proposed constructively
that “we should learn to see our belieflessness not as a state of being
derelict and damned but as a clean sheet and a challenge to be creative”
(Cupitt, 2015, 48-49). Creative about what? It is remarkable that for all the massive
loss of interest in religion in western societies, interest in “spirituality”
remains at an all-time high. So, this contemporary context of disillusionment with religion but heightened thirst for spirituality could be an excellent
opportunity to be creative about paths that could lead people into a deeper
spirituality, which is, after all, the heart of all religion.
Because of that, the attitude of <trust
in life and reality as good and worthy to be struggled for> without
explicit reference to God can still be a very good thing. It might be called
the “religion of life” which, I would say, is a spirituality that is dominant
now in the West (as proposed for example by the same Don Cupitt [Cupitt 1999]).
If some people can still label that trust in the goodness of life with the term
“God” in a wholesome way, then, well and good. If not (as in many cases
nowadays in the West), it’s still good and wholesome. If I may speak as
a theologian, I have this firm belief that God (as I believe God to be) is definitely
not a narcissist and does not mind at all not being explicitly acknowledged as
long as the “order” that God is passionate about (Jesus called it “the Kingdom of
God”) is more firmly established on earth.
Back to the
Covid-19 Pandemic and the God-Question
The God-question can be divisive. If we
insist, like I think Küng is doing, that the best way to label our fundamental
trust in the goodness of reality is “God,” that could alienate a lot of people
who do not think so or may have severe reservations about God and religion that
are justified. I think that the best way forward is to prioritize instead “the
religion of life” or, to borrow Küng’s term, the “fundamental trust in the
goodness of reality.” This is something that could be common among all humans
living in a fragile world. Küng has rightly (I think) identified this as the
essence of faith (including religious faith). “Faith in God” is just one way of
labelling it. As long as that fundamental trust is there, it need not be
explicitly linked to God.
This is why I think that “God” as a theme
is actually secondary in importance; in other words, “God” is oftentimes overrated.
Trusting in the goodness of reality and life instead, even without explicit
recourse to God, is PRIMARY! This strategy is to emphasize what can unite us
all as humans in our common humanity. And one of the common traits among us
humans includes the continual effort to go deeper and to transcend ourselves.
That, by the way, is my working definition of spirituality, the heart of
religion. I consider the labelling of that effort (such as seeking for “God”) as
secondary.
When we pursue the journey to go deeper
within ourselves and to grow by transcending ourselves (by different concrete
means and teachings which many religious traditions are so rich in), then along
the way, we will hopefully realize experientially why our ancestors in the past
had to use an all-encompassing term called “God” in order to name the fundamental
goodness of reality. This “God” cannot be just thought of in our minds.
It can only be experienced as we walk along the path of life.
As we go along and try to do our part for
our personal and for the common good during this Covid pandemic of 2020, I hope
we can find it in ourselves to continue to decide every single day to trust
in the fundamental goodness of life and reality and commit ourselves to action
in order to realize it in ways possible to us. Let’s not pursue useless
questions that will yield no fruitful answers. Rather, it is this—the reality
in which we are thrown into and immersed, which counts. We decide to trust
that IT is still fundamentally good and that we can do something in order to
uphold that goodness and to make it flourish more.
In the past, our ancestors (who were almost
never “materialists”) believed that the whole of reality finds its ground in a Being
they often referred to as God. Many of us (such as myself) still trust that it
is so. But that is not the most important thing. If for some reason,
“God” cannot be linked anymore to the effort to choose to trust that life is
worth living and worth struggling for, then LET IT BE … because, through that,
even without any explicit reference to “God” or “religion,” we are still living
our fundamental and noble human drive to “go deeper and beyond ourselves” which
is, I am getting more and more convinced, lies at the heart of all genuine
humanity, as well as all religion and spirituality.
And, if there is really a God, this
Gracious Being who does not have an ounce of narcissism within, will definitely
not mind at all “being forgotten” in the process. But here comes the strange
thing about this business. When people transcend their narrow and selfish egos
by living concretely the effort to “go deeper and beyond themselves” (the quest
for depth and transcendence), they oftentimes encounter SOMETHING deeper and
bigger than themselves; they then find that in the quest to seek depth and
transcendence, they actually experience that they are not alone, that they are
being inspired, supported, carried, led-on, and even finally progressively
absorbed by this gracious Mystery that they have decided to trust and commit
themselves to. As we know, many of our ancestors labeled that deep and bigger
reality as God. Many of us still do. Many nowadays just prefer to rest in the
Mystery without naming it. As long as the effort to uphold and increase integral
human flourishing in our fragile earthly location continues (and at times at
the cost of great sacrifice), all will be well, I trust.
THE END 3/3
******
Works Cited and Other Works for
Further Study
Cupitt,
Don (2015). Creative Faith: Religion as a Way of Worldmaking. Salem, OR:
Polebridge.
______
(1999). The New Religion of Life in Everyday Speech. London: SCM.
Gregg,
Carl (2012). “Do We Need a Moratorium on ‘God’?” Patheos, Published
October 8, 2012. Accessed April 22, 2020.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/carlgregg/2012/10/do-we-need-a-moratorium-on-the-word-god/.
Johnson,
Elizabeth (2007). Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the
Theology of God. London: Bloombsury.
Küng,
Hans (1981). Does God Exist? An Answer for Today. New York: Vintage.
School
of Life (2020). “Albert Camus – The Plague.” YouTube Video, April 1, 2020. Accessed
April 20, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSYPwX4NPg4&t=62s.
N.T.
Wright (2020). “Christianity Offers No Answers About the Coronavirus. It's Not
Supposed To.” Time, March 29, 2020. Accessed April 12, 2020. https://time.com/5808495/coronavirus-christianity/.
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