thread: 2006-09-08 : Salvation, damnation, justification, a la Sydney
On 2006-09-11, Vincent wrote:
Sydney, you believe in God the way you believe in your wife.
I stopped believing in God that same way, before I stopped believing in Him as a real entity. I kept faith with God until it became clear that He wasn't keeping faith with me - and only afterward did I realize that, duh, of course He wasn't keeping faith with me. It was my expectations that were the problem. Santa Claus won't keep faith with you either, no matter how sincerely you expect him to.
And you're right that I'm not going to go into the details here. I probably won't ever tell you them - not because I wouldn't, just because we will always have more interesting and more important things to talk about. But I'll try to explain why you should accept that it was God who let me down, not some non-God.
Say I'm an atheist, but it comes into my head that I should pray, so I do. If I sincerely pray "Lord, Heavenly Father, I know that I am a sinner; I know that Christ died for my sins and so that all may come to You. Please forgive my sins and give me strength in the face of temptation. Please bring me to a surer knowledge of You and Your will, so that I may be a better servant to You. I pray this in Jesus' name, amen," have I prayed to the wrong God, or according to garbled instructions? Having asked God sincerely for bread, will He give me a stone?
Say I'm a Mormon. I sincerely pray the same prayer. Same questions: have I prayed to God? Will God hear me?
Obviously I'm not asking you to make promises on God's behalf. I just hope and expect you to agree with me that, if God is as you believe Him to be, praying that prayer, I might reasonably expect God to hear me.
I imagine that C.S. Lewis would say, and I imagine you'd agree with him too, that having heard my sincere prayer to be brought to a more sure knowledge of Him, God would lead me out of my false beliefs and into truer ones, until I woke up one morning and became an Episcopalian or something. As it happened, I led myself out of my false beliefs and into truer ones, until I woke up one morning and set God aside.
My expectations were not exorbitant. "Dear God, please give me laser-beam eyes and a pony or else I'll know you're not real, love Vincent." I asked God to bring me to a surer knowledge of Him and to strengthen me against temptation, and I expected Him to keep faith with me, that's all.
Now, I still haven't forgiven God for giving me a stone instead of bread - witness my rancor - but I'm getting there. Things fall into place and into peace, gradually. Soon one morning I'll wake up again and I'll realize that no, everything's worked out great despite my really broken expectations, and I'll forgive God for not existing (not His fault, really), and after that I won't even remember what we were fighting about.
