On Kindness 6

One area where kindness really needs to be present, but seldom is, is in the way we communicate with those with whom we disagree.  I am sometimes faced with this challenge when listening to various current affairs programs on CBC Radio. Generally I enjoy the content: it is always well-presented, well-researched, timely and thought-provoking. 

However...

I have noticed, to my dismay, that the various journalists who work on the CBC are not just secular.  I am okay with secular.  I approve of and endorse secular.  It keeps everyone equal, neutral and safe.  Secular is public fairness in action.  However, it is not the same as atheism and many of the journalists, eggheads and learning gurus at the CBC appear to be atheists. Strong and fervent atheists, almost the same ilk as Richard Dawkins.  There is a tendency to mock and deride religion, especially Christianity.  They`re not all like this, and some appear downright sympathetic if not in agreement.

There is nothing wrong with this, as long as it is handled respectfully.  This morning I heard something on the Sunday Edition that I found sad to the point of depressing.  It was not a disrespectful approach to religion but still a rather dismal and unquestioned acceptance that this life, without God, is all that we have, is all that there is.  The theme of the segment was about how atheists, or people who don't believe in an afterlife, cope with the idea of death.  I couldn't listen to all of it, it was just so sad.

I was also wondering, on the strength of my Christian faith and my experience of death and dying through giving palliative care, how I could best approach the host of the Sunday Edition through an email.  A whole number of ideas ran through my mind, but nothing really stood out as being particularly kind or tactful.  I only wanted to attack and undermine their belief system without considering how they might have arrived at their conclusions about life and death and God.  I wondered, in the theme of kindness, how to best speak to them without alienating them while clearly delineating my position based upon my own life experience.  While, of course, respecting that their position also comes out of their own personal life experience.

So, I'll give it a try:

Dear Michael:

I listened to some of your program, the Sunday Edition yesterday, and to the early part of the segment on coping with the idea of death when you don't believe in an afterlife.  It was interesting but I couldn't go on listening as I also found myself getting increasingly sadder.  I understand that many educated people do not believe in God.  I also respect that you have all arrived at this conclusion very thoughtfully and carefully and likely not without some personal struggle.  Some of you might have grown up in religious homes.  Others might have had some notion of faith and the afterlife but after considering that any God of love could not be possibly involved with such a sad and sorry planet as our Earth, have opted to not believe.  For some it just doesn't make sense.

I understand this, accept and respect it.  I do have one little question to ask here.  How do you know?  How can you prove there is no God and no afterlife any more than I can prove they exist?  I ask this because there is something I find very sad and final about the atheist position.  It is like a voluntary closing of the mind to the possibility of anything that is too wonderful to be logically or rationally understood or codified.  Are you aware that you are really cutting yourself off from the possibility that you could be mistaken and that this could be for you a very costly sacrifice?

What I am saying is that ultimately we cannot say that we really know anything, regardless the evidence, unless the evidence is absolute, concrete and conclusive.  Right now there is snow on the ground and ice on the sidewalks.  All you need is to go outside, see it, feel the cold and slip and fall.  Conclusive evidence.  If there is no evidence of snow and ice, and you have never seen snow or ice, and someone tells you about it, you read about it, you see pictures of it, then you will accept by faith that snow and ice do indeed exist.  By the same token, you say there is no God when there is no conclusive evidence to either affirm or deny his existence.  In the negative sense, you have taken a position of faith about the nonexistence of God and that there is no afterlife.

I have been around a lot of death and dying in my time and I have worked in palliative care.  While I have mourned the passing of many dear people I have never despaired that their passing is something final.  I have had paranormal experiences that have left me more than convinced that there is an afterlife.  No, this is not conclusive evidence, at least not for those who would make a scientifically statistical inquiry.  But I will provide one example:

Some years ago a friend died, in her forties from cancer, leaving behind her husband and three children.  While praying for these people with another friend at home I had a strong visual image of this woman.  She looked about fourteen or fifteen years old in this "vision."  Her hair, always short in life, was long and flowing.  She was wearing a peasant like blouse and skirt in different shades of white and brown.  She was running uphill through grassy meadows and woods with a radiant smile on her face as though reaching and running towards God.  A couple of days later we had a visit from her widowed husband.  Without further ceremony he began to tell us about a friend of their family, a Christian woman, who had been praying for them.  Then he described to me, to the very last detail the vision his friend had of his recently deceased wife.  Detail for detail it was exactly the vision I had of her.  This woman and I did not know each other, by the way, and neither had I communicated any details of this vision to anyone.  We have never since known, met or communicated with each other.

This is of course, far from conclusive evidence, though to me it is very reassuring and at the end we all have to make our own conclusions and live by them.

I do have a lot of compassion for those who don't believe.  And, no, I do not believe that it is possible to be good without God.  We can be good without believing in God, but all goodness comes from God, whether we believe or not, and simply by opting and consenting to what is good we are connecting ourselves to God, even if we don't know it at the time.

To those of you who cannot accept that a good and loving God would consent to the cesspit we have made of the world I have this to say:

We cannot blame God for our own mistakes.  He made the world and us to be something good and beautiful, and in many ways we are.  But we have in many ways perverted and degraded this beauty, by giving rein to our selfish and destructive tendencies.  God has given us free will, he will not have robots, he wants to be in a relationship with us and you cannot have a relationship with a robot.   We cannot expect him to intervene and clean up the mess that we have made.  That is our job.  When you consider that almost all of our species' problems come out of human greed and selfishness, I would say that instead of waiting for a supreme being to take care of our problems and wipe our behinds for us, it is our responsibility to reclaim the nature of love, goodness and kindness that we were originally created to embody and express.  By fully reclaiming and ratifying our very best humanity we will have played our role in fixing this world while also restoring our original relationship to the divine. 

For those of us who still don't believe that God is interested or moved by our suffering, let me condense here in a couple of sentences the Christian message:

God, moved by the misery we have made of ourselves and our planet, became one of us, a vulnerable human baby born to poor parents in the humblest of circumstances.  He grew up and lived among us as one of us and touched and healed the lives of many.  He was unjustly tried, convicted and executed and died a miserable and ignominious death.  We believe that he rose from the dead and has since sent us his Spirit to inhabit guide and empower us, those of us who will accept the promise and hope of his love for us.  We believe that it is through our relationship with the divine that we can bring healing and restoration to our broken and damaged humanity and planet.  I am not saying that the Christian message is the only relevant message, of course there are others, but ours still needs to be thoughtfully considered, even if the church has done so much damage to the beauty and integrity of this message.

I do not expect that in a few words I am going to persuade you to believe, but I would like to conclude by saying this:

If you cannot bring yourself to believe in God, but you still believe in the good, then please do this: reach and keep reaching for the highest possible good you can conceive, and embody this good in your life, in every detail and every facet of your life, and even if you don't believe you will still be releasing the power of God's goodness and love in your life and in your world.

Can you accept my challenge?