Easter Post, Belated

I consider myself a spiritual being. This is because I sense an ongoing conversation between myself and whatever it is whose essence permeates existence. Or maybe I’m just neurotic.

But I was raised to be open-minded about the nature of God. My father is generally atheistic, and my mother generally pantheistic (so far as I can characterize the beliefs of others, if I may do so) and raised me in an Episcopal church. God can be described in many ways, and since I sense my parents are supportive of any description so long as it’s come to honestly, my tendency is to project that acceptance across the rest of the human population and assume that very few people really care about my take on the matter. Of course I’m wrong about that when we speak of the entire globe, but I have no plans to be a diplomat in the Middle East (or a businessman in the Midwest) so it’s just as well.

But I hate sitting on the fence and saying, could be this, could be that, so my rational mind, through which I observe and process the experience of living, disavows the existence of God. I agree with the countless individuals who have opened their eyes and minds and come to realize there is literally no evidence for His existence. He may exist, but if so He has made the world such that believing in Him requires faith in Him. If you lack faith, He simply isn’t there. Absolutely everything that is used by believers to support their belief can be otherwise explained.

Especially, for me, the evidence within heart and mind. Scholars today hypothesize how belief in God may be an artifact of evolution. I haven’t yet read any of their stuff, but I accept the premise because it’s simple and makes sense. Evolution is not about achieving some ideal of perfection and thus, for humans, of perfect knowledge and understanding. That’s not the point at all. Evolution is merely the process by which random miniscule heritable variations accumulate and define the characteristics of species. If those accumulations and traits lead to a statistically significant survival advantage, the traits are passed on. If not, they don’t. Absolutely nothing is at play in evolution except that some species survive, and some do not. It is truly arbitrary, constrained only by ever-changing environmental conditions, and only looks to us like design because the pieces fit together so well. Of course they do. Otherwise, some other critter whose pieces fit together a little better would out-compete. And so they do, and so it goes.

My spiritual sense, my need for religion, is a gift of evolution as well. For whatever reason, we became dependent on our packs and tribes to survive. Nurturing by the parental generation gave us an advantage of some kind, such that it became necessary. Community and fellow-feeling gave us an advantage and thus became necessary. As humans developed the ability to think abstractly – a clear advantage – they also drew parallels between their experiences as children and their experiences with Nature. In time, regarding Nature as something with a Presence, as something not so terrifyingly random, as something that can be negotiated with, accrued an advantage. Further down the road, we de-Natured the gods and made them, or Him, an absolute, a pure mind and heart. This allowed a direct relationship between a man and the cosmos without animist intermediaries, giving us strength even when everything, Nature and Man, seemed to be against us. When a man is convinced through his partnership with God as imagined within his mind that he cannot lose, even when every rational mind would say he must, there’s a good chance he will not. Faith accrues an unquestionable advantage to human survival in a difficult world.

But does that mean it’s based on something real? Of course not. Evolution is not about truth. Evolution is about survival. Whatever happens to work.

So I found myself at Easter Service. The church was a beautiful redwood structure built in about 1860. Sunlight filtered through stained glass and illumined the flowers. Musicians populated the northern transept and filled the air with song. There were singing and readings, families and children, the baptism of an infant whose bawling made every mother smile (except his own), and from a very personable rector, simple messages of love and of hope. It was thoroughly enjoyable.

But, hope for what? I always wonder. I have no need for resurrection or for salvation. I don’t even know what they are, other than parts of a bizarre system set up by a capricious God for sorting people after they die. That He would create this immense universe simply as a means to compel spirits in human form to jump through some very specific spiritual hoops strikes me as ridiculous. But I keep that to myself and listen and sing and enjoy the sights and the fellowship, because it can be just about that if I wish: A sense of place and belonging while celebrating life on a beautiful day in Spring. Hope? Hope is for people who want to tease themselves that their existence, before or after death, will get better. It might – it probably will in some way before the end – but not in connection with an instrument of torture consecrated with flowers pinned onto it by children.

Still, for all that, there is something there that I need. I know that because I feel it, deep down inside, at some point in the service. The faith binds people together – an evolutionary advantage by any measure – and together they are joyful. Together they are joyful and being apart from them, I am not. Indeed, there’s nothing like a gathering to make me feel alone. Deep in my heart there is sadness, and the light and the music want to draw it out, let it burst out in tears as they speak of saviors and sacrifice; that sense of loneliness that comes as a result of having, so far as I can, thought it through. I cannot raise my hands in praise; I cannot dance to it (not that Episcopalians ever do, but there is a spirit in the air); I cannot surrender myself to the instant tribe formed within the walls. I cannot surrender, and that makes me alone, and that makes me want to weep. I sit in the pew, suppressing the feeling, willing my tears to remain unshed.

I know it’s just evolution calling me. I am, after all, human, and as needful of faith and religion as anyone. I’ve just thought it through and away; or as a Christian would say, I’m too proud. Maybe so; but pride in our integrity keeps us from doing all kinds of terrible things. Joining a system that in other incarnations inspired imperial conquest, enabled slavery, and encouraged unimaginable slaughter could be among them, if we let it. Modern, non-apocalyptic, nurturing Christianity is far removed from any of that, but that doesn’t mean that surrender to it is ultimately a good thing. No harm, you might say; but that leads us to Pascal’s Wager, and only a fool or a hypocrite takes that seriously (a fool, if one does not believe in freedom of will, and a hypocrite if one does).

I guess speaking of fools and hypocrites means I am too proud. Well, so be it. If I’m too proud to bow my head to something that is only as real as each human mind and heart makes it, then that’s fine. Evolution does not require that I be happy. It requires nothing of me. Only my requirements count, and they are that I am honest about the wonder of existence as it is and don’t go pretending to believe in things just because they make me feel better. There are other, truer communities to join. It’s another peculiarity of my life that so far I haven’t been able to find them; but hope springs eternal.

I feel uncertain, though, of the effect of my agnosticism on my children. I never tell them what to believe or what is true or what isn’t. I always say, some believe this, some that. Naturally, they pick up on my attempt at a humanist approach, my interest in history, on human mistakes, and they make up their own minds. I’ve been very influential. But when I look at the different influences of my parents on my faith, I understand and accept my father’s, but am more grateful for my mother’s. Sometimes I wonder if it would have been better to raise them churched and keep everything to myself until they were adults.

But of course it wouldn’t. It would only teach them I’m a hypocrite. On the other hand, it would then have been even more wonderfully inappropriate to rent “The Wicker Man” on Good Friday, as we did. What an excellent film is that!