Wednesday, April 29, 2020

PART 3 - Epidemics and “God”: The Covid-19 Pandemic, Albert Camus’ 'The Plague', and the Question of God



(Link to Part 1. Link to Part 2)

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
(Link to Part 1. Link to Part 2)

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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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