I think about Richard Dawkins sometimes. Do you ever think about Richard Dawkins? Sometimes when I’m thinking about God and about faith, I think about the people out there who think I’m utterly idiotic and perhaps even dangerous for believing in God. Sometimes I imagine having a debate with Richard Dawkins, and I imagine how completely he would annihilate me in the debate (I’m pretty sure he’s smarter than me, and also knows how to debate), and I imagine that I would take it with grace and with poise – at least that’s the hope. Then I think that I would like to be better prepared for this debate that I’m never going to have.
So, I was thinking about Richard Dawkins yesterday and about my belief in God, and I had a moment of thinking about the proof of my faith – which can be dangerous of course, because it’s faith, but these moments do arise. So I had this thought that the only real proof that we might possibly have of God is the tangible experience of the Holy Spirit.
If you don’t know what the Holy Spirit is, that may sound a little odd perhaps, so let me give a brief explanation of the Holy Spirit. I would say that the Holy Spirit is God’s invisible presence with people. It’s a long story, so if you haven’t heard it, I can’t enlighten you here, but as the story goes, Jesus was God and he spent some time on earth, doing some amazing things, but also spending time in person with the people who grew to love him – but he didn’t stay with them – he returned to heaven, but when he left he gave them the presence of God’s spirit to live with them and to guide them.
That’s the Holy Spirit, and when I say that this would be the only proof of God’s existence, I was thinking that if someone like Richard Dawkins had a tangible experience of God’s presence, it might change his mind. As I think about it, I realize that it wouldn’t necessarily change a person’s mind. Spiritual experiences can leave room for attributing them to other things, especially after a little time has passed. This is where faith comes in.
But anyway, this is what I was thinking and so I said to the Holy Spirit as I was looking out my window, “I want to experience you. I want to know you right here.”
Well, for the rest of that day, I had this uncanny sense of joy. It just slowly built up in me right there at my desk and it carried me through the rest of the day and into the next. There was no trigger for the whole thing other than that prayer, and I have to say that it was wonderful. I felt light. I felt alive and free. It was rare and uncanny.
I went to the grocery store after work and I felt like I was walking around in Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. There was a great song playing on the sound system and I could have started dancing and singing right there.
I know that this experience isn’t proof of anything. You might attribute such a moment to any number of things. But it was significant for me, and I wanted to make sure that I took note of it. I wanted to put it into words as a record. In the Psalms the writers often talk about remembering all the things that God has done for them, and I know that I’m not very good at doing that, or even sharing them in the moment.
For instance, when I got home that day, I didn’t even mention to anyone what had happened or how I was feeling. It’s easy to get wrapped up in all the things that are happening and that need to get done, and to simply keep the feeling to myself. But I know that if I do that, the moment will slip away. It can easily be forgotten, even though it was rather an important moment for me. With time it could be minimized and dismissed.
I think this is especially noteworthy considering that the next day while I was at work I felt as if my joy was under assault. I was very conscious of all the different things that were happening that were able in their own special way to undermine that joy and to drag me down into frustration, or gloom, or apathy. I felt like I was actually able to observe it happening and it was striking.
It became very clear to me why people would go away to a quiet place to rest and to meditate and to pray in order to try and rise above all the things that are going on and giving reason for worry or frustration. This world has many opportunities to give us joy. God is not the only source of joy, although I would say that at the root, God is the source of all things that give joy – this is true by default from my understanding of God. There are so many things in this world that we can touch and feel and see and hold that give us joy. But there are also things like that that can steal our joy and send us into much gloomier places. Joy and happiness can be hard work sometimes.
But I think it’s worth it. I suspect that it could be frustrating if I tried or expected to always be in that place of wonderful joy. It would be great if my state of mind always landed there, but I suspect it will not always be like that. It’s more a matter of managing the negatives and not letting them take over. Somehow there must be a way to stop an excel spreadsheet from taking me to despair – Math really does work, and with a little patience I can make those numbers behave properly, but in the meantime, it seems reasonable that I can keep it all in perspective.
The life of faith is such a tricky thing. It’s tempting to think that if I do this and this and then that other thing, then the higher power I have faith in will do these things for me. There are certainly stories and passages in the Bible that can lead to this sort of thinking if you let them. But it never really works that way. There’s too many other factors. Faith will disappoint us when we begin to expect the higher power to behave like a vending machine.
But God is faithful even through the unpredictability – we may not be able to see it or feel all the time, but based on something of our own experience, we hold this to be true in faith. It is also important to remember that God wants something from us – probably not something he needs for any particular reason, but it’s clear that God is moving the people who reach out for him in a particular direction. He wants us to be good and he wants us to trust him. When we combine this with the vending machine thinking it really gets disastrous.
So I think it’s important to let go of that and to let go of predictability and to allow the unpredictability shake us up and remind us of where God is moving us – not like chess pieces, but like a coach, coaxing a better performance out of her charges.
That fleeting moment of bliss was such a gift for me because it reminded me of what is possible and of where I am going, and it was also something I could feel for myself. So I wanted to make sure that I didn’t just let it slip by or forget about it as time went on. It’s something to hold on to, to remember and also to build on.
