Unbelief

I enjoy getting a new book and diving into the ideas contained in it.  Sometimes I have a fairly good idea of what I will get; other times I have little to no clue what I will read.  A recent read is a book suggested by one of my favorite columnists, David Brooks.  I read Brooks in the New York Times online.  One of his columns mentioned a book by an editor of a poetry journal.  It was a book that was intriguingly religious in Brooks’ estimation.  I became intrigued, too, and jumped into My Bright Abyss by Christian Wiman.

I had never heard of Wiman, so I had no idea what to expect.  The book is very engaging, but not an easy read.  The are ample examples of poetry, which is fun for me, since I don’t know that much about poetry and probably don’t understand and appreciate it like I could.  I feel like I am growing.  I feel like I am learning and being challenged.           

As I work my way through the book, numerous lines jump out and grab me.  I just hit one of those lines, which I will share and upon which I will make some comments.  Wiman says, “Sometimes God calls a person to unbelief in order that faith may take new forms.”  When I read that sentence, my immediate response was to agree with Wiman.  It seems right to me, but I was not sure why or how it sounded right.  That is what I want to explore.             

We could give a great deal of attention to Wiman’s claim that sometimes “God calls” us to unbelief.  Intrigued as I am by that claim, it is not what I want to examine.  I am more intrigued that God might call you or me to unbelief.  I would agree with that statement.  But I also know I probably would not have agreed with it when I was at the beginning of my spiritual journey.  And I am confident there are a number of religious traditions that would hold the contrary position and, in fact, likely warn their follower not to go the route of unbelief.  I suspect many traditions feel that unbelief is dangerous! 

When I look at Wiman’s sentence, I realize it would be a mistake to stop the sentence at unbelief.  While I recognize it might be scary to some folks to go to unbelief and, perhaps, get stuck or lost, Wiman calls us to go forward in the sentence.  Wiman says we are called to unbelief in order that…  The unbelief actually commences a process.  Unbelief is not the goal; it is the means to some other end.  What is the end Wiman envisions? 

The end is “that faith may take new forms.”  I confess I like this idea.  However, it is a novel way for me to think about faith.  I stopped to realize I don’t usually describe “forms” of faith.  If someone asked me, “what is the form of your faith?” would I be able to answer that question?  Then it hit me.  I began to think I understood what Wiman meant.  It would be fun to call him on the phone and have a conversation to see if my understanding matches his intended meaning.  But I don’t have his number, so my commentary will have to suffice. 

In the first place, I do not equate “belief” and “faith.”  Clearly, they are related, but not the same for me.  Belief is more cognitive---intellectual.  For Christians, belief often is associated with doctrine---the things one believes, i.e. believe in God, believe Jesus is the Son of God, etc.  There is nothing wrong with this, but in my estimation it is not faith. 

Faith is more a matter of the heart than the head.  My favorite synonym for faith is “trust.”  To have faith in God or in some other person, I say I “trust” them.  Faith is not the same thing as doctrine.  And this is what leads me to ponder what Wiman means by “new forms” of faith.  My form of faith always depends on the other one in whom I have faith.  I realize that faith has multiple levels.  If I am talking about faith in my best friend, that form of faith may be utter, unqualified faith.  That is a faith that has virtually no questioning in it.  If it is faith in a relatively new person I have met, that faith is likely more qualified, more conditional. 

Faith and belief are related.  I can tell you what I believe about God.  As a kid, I may have believed God was actually “up in the sky somewhere and looked like an old guy!”  My childlike form of faith might have been a kind of trust in a grandfatherly person.  But as I came to unbelief in that view of God, my faith literally had to take on a new form. 

Today I envision God to be much more like a Spirit or Energy.  I might use personal terms, like God the Mother, but I really don’t think God is a person.  That calls for a new form of faith.  How do you have faith in Spirit or trust Energy?  That is my contemporary question.  That is what my unbelief in the “old God” has brought me to ponder. 

I literally feel like a work in progress.  I am learning to trust the Spirit of Life.  I trust that Spirit of God is creative and re-creative.  That Spirit is present everywhere at all times.  My spiritual journey is to recognize it, embrace it and live in the fullness of that Presence.  This is where unbelief has delivered me.