G.K. Chesterton, David Bazan, and All of My Atheist Friends
“When Job asked you a question,
You responded, “Who are you to challenge your creator?”
Well if that one part is true
It makes you sound defensive
Like you had not thought it through
Like you didn’t have an answer
Like you bit off more than you could chew”
David Bazan, “In Stitches”
This powerful song (posted below) encapsulates the seemingly betrayed demeanor of the apostate. The question, “Where was God when….” has haunted humanity for thousands of years. Philosophers have worked God into either a clockmaker that has left the world ticking till the battery runs out while he stands idly by, or as the intimately personal God who has no real claim to the events that reshape the world, neither beneficial or tragic. In all honesty, it’s hard to blend both ideas.
The abysmal dichotomy between both theological and cosmological perspectives is confronted really just a few times throughout the scriptures. David writes songs about being abandoned by the divine, Solomon writes of the purposelessness of existence, Jesus cries out to the one he called father but is left hanging on a cross. But neither seemed to confront God so bluntly as Job.
Why then do you not pardon my transgression,
And take away my iniquity?
For now I will lie down in the dust,
And you will seek me diligently,
But I will no longer be.”
Job 7:21, NKJV
Job was the idealist. He was the barefaced evangelical passion, naive to the gritty questions of life. The blessed life he lived caused him a disservice; he did not truly know suffering on the inside. And once experienced, his perception of a loving God, a divine Friend even, was shattered. In reality, the prayers of Job riddled throughout the story sound a lot like a break up letter. God is angry, and I don’t know why. Job tries to hang on to a fleeting perspective of God as friend, when, as the story is narrated, God ruined and rebuilt the life of Job on a bet with an evil spirit. Job’s theology begins to turn from an intimate friendship with the divine to an irrational, insecure ruler of the cosmos that does what it wills without a second thought to the plight of humanity. In essence he’s defending God, although Job knows that he had done nothing wrong. His last rant lists off all the righteous things he’d done, and all the righteous acts he would continue to do as a last pleading for mercy to the divine.
As G.K Chesterton put it, Job may easily be categorized as a pessimist, but his desire to hold on to a quickly crumbling paradigm may rightfully place him as the ultimate optimist: “[Job] shakes the pillars of the world and strikes insanely at the heavens; he lashes the stars, but it is not to silence them; it is to make them speak.” And God comes onto the stage with not much to answer by. Rather, in true Socratic form, he answers with more questions, pointing to mysteries maybe deeper than why suffering exists, like who hung the stars in their place? God does not answer the question, rather he stirs more doubt. In essence God does not prove a thing, but rather “becomes for an instant an atheist.” He gives grounds to the questions.
This is the basis of the doubter. Of many people that ask the unanswerable questions. Sometimes there are no answers, otherwise I think the book of Job would have ended a little less frustratingly. And silence or more questions is not satisfying. You begin to doubt any altruistic motive, you begin to doubt the very existence of the divine, you begin to doubt the foundations of society, and then finally you begin to doubt yourself. And maybe that is the point God drowns humanity with questions; is to end up not believing yourself.
I’m going to get a little personal now. I don’t know, but this is the reason it’s frustrating to me when “friends” tell me not to hang out or indulge in conversation with “doubters.” Many of my Christian friends speak of the atheist or the agnostic like a plague, to be avoided because they may be “intelligent” but that “intelligence has gotten the best of them.” It’s demeaning and patronizes the very questions God himself continued to ask right back at Job. Rather, I say to my dear atheist and agnostic friends: “I don’t have an answer. I just have a hope. And I think that’s the point. I hope things are going to be made right one day. I hope that the life lived like Jesus, after all the death and destruction this body may suffer, will be resurrected again. The good news is that there is hope. And that hope is being made here on earth slowly, sometimes painfully slowly. I’m sorry for ignoring your questions, because I ask myself those same questions everyday. I think you are closer to the kingdom of God than many of my “Christian friends.” And I think my “Christian” friends really do ask these same questions. They play the atheist in the secret conversations in their heads, trying to dilute them with mystic notions of “blind faith…” I say let’s not hide the questions, but rather taking God’s example, let’s continue to ask.
One of the greatest tragedies of the 21st century and the last decade erupted from the cradle of civilization. The release of Britain’s colonial grip on Sudan 55 years ago initiated a gruesome religious take-over of the country, incited by the Muslims of the north in attempts to cover both the north and the typically Christian south with Sharia law. This week though, after several breakthroughs and frustrations during the turn of the new century, the nearly autonomous south is getting what it’s waited half a century for; a vote for independence from the northern government based in the capital, Khartoum.
“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” I have always found this passage intriguing, yet almost contradictory in its nature, until around two years ago. Growing up in Christian fundamentalism, I had an inadequate view of biblical eschatology; due to this view of eschatology, I never found a reason to take care of the environment. Everything that I was taught on biblical eschatology was interpreted through the framework of Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind dispensationalist views, which of course included some kind of nuclear missiles, huge machine guns, and the death of trillions (okay, maybe only billions) of people and animals. After this, God will one day blow up the entire cosmos, just as He spoke it into existence. I remember vividly leaving my youth group one Wednesday night when I was 15 years old, the youth pastor talked about trying to lead people to Christ, to make the world a better place, and so on, but it never made sense in my head. “Why if this world is getting dramatically worst day by day (as his theology taught) would I labor to bring a difference here and now, if it will ultimately do nothing”, I said to myself. So when Jesus said He feeds the birds of the air, I could never make sense to why He does. The only reason it could be, was of course, for me.