A case of the blahs?
I’m
not making an “argument” against unbelief so much as making an
observation. Harry Emerson Fosdick quotes a brilliant physics professor
of some years ago by the name of Tyndal, an atheist. Tyndal said he
noticed that atheism seemed more compelling to him when he was feeling
depressed than it did when he was feeling buoyant and optimistic. That
doesn’t in the least surprise me because I notice that I’m more inclined
to be critical of the ways of God when I’m experiencing a case of the
blahs than when I feel on top of things.
Our
rational capacity is one of the marvellous things about us and only a
fool despises it but it’s astonishing to see how many other things about
us that can interfere with our reasoning capacity. A famous London
preacher called Joseph Parker said that when his wife died, he who had
never had a moment’s doubt in all his life became like an atheist almost
overnight. And wasn’t it Martin Luther who confessed “sometimes I
believe and sometimes I disbelieve”? In the middle of a bad dose of “the
blues” 2+2 still equal four and apples still drop down from trees
rather than fly up from them but while we can’t walk away from
mathematical or empirical realities they’re not the dominant things in
life.
A
blistering headache, a very sick child or an honourable but unpayable
debt can drive out of us any desire to consciously worship God.
Confusion, lack of energy, deep personal loss or the week in week out
sameness of life can hobble a non-believer and keep him or her from
thinking clearly. The atheist Blackham, I think, spoke for a host of
people when he said that he thought the strongest argument against
unbelief was “the pointlessness” of it all. He said, “It’s too bad to be
true.” He insisted, of course, that whatever the truth is it is
and if we must face “unyielding despair” (the early Bertrand Russell’s
phrase) then so be it. This is right and proper. Just the same I can’t
help thinking that as believers and non-believers we think and say silly
things not because we’ve rigorously thought them through but because we
feel disappointment or think things should be better than they
are. And so, weary more than convinced we turn to things that are very
doubtful to say the least and passionately reject what should have been
given a fairer and a prolonged hearing.
Feelings
of impotence and rage and pity can all combine to rule God out of
existence but maybe…just maybe they are the very things that should make
us look up. Maybe these very feelings are as they should be in a world
bent out of shape by what the Hebrew-Christian scriptures call “sin”.
Maybe God is pleased when we feel such things, things such as rage
against injustice and oppression, against the poverty and pain of
countless millions. Each of us can make a difference to someone
but our impotence rises up and jeers at us when we think of the vast
numbers of our fellow humans and maybe it’s then, especially, that we
should talk to God about it all and to listen to him as well.
You might remember the song from the stage musical Pickwick called If I Ruled the World.
In it Samuel Pickwick (the Dickens character) is mistaken for a
political candidate and the crowd wants to know what kind of world
they’d have if he was elected. It’s a great song (usually connected with
Harry Secombe but popularised too by Tony Bennett and Stevie Wonder)
that expresses what every sensitive soul would like to see but
knows he or she can never bring about. In that world, sings Pickwick,
every day would be the first day of spring and every heart would have a
new song to sing about the joy each new morning would bring. Every man
would be as free as a bird, every voice would have a right to be heard,
people would dream wonderful dreams, everyone would know his neighbour
was his friend and there’d be happiness that no one could end.
How could we not
want such a world if we had a grain of humanity in us? And a vast
number of us—believers and non-believers alike—do want such a world and
we want it not just for ourselves or the West or for many of us or even
most of us but for all of
us. If we think noble things of God we’ll know that he too wants a world
like that for us all. And the good news is—the good news centred in the
glorified Jesus Christ who stands as the representative of the human
family—that God not only wants it but is able to bring it about and is
even now moving to that breathtaking completion. The Christian Story is
that the resurrected and glorified Jesus is the standing proof of it.
Even to disheartened non-believers the living Jesus would say, “Take heart, I have overcome the world.”
Trust yourself to him and his agenda and let your sad heart find peace and hope.