Faith v. Love: Two Paradigms for Living

Two of the most beautiful chapters in the Bible are the Twenty-third Psalm and First Corinthians 13. While many of us learned both as children, we may not have realized that they offer radically different views of what life should be about.

Recall the image created in the Twenty-third Psalm: a solitary person searching for guidance and comfort. The metaphor is man as sheep and God as shepherd. Man needs food, water and protection from enemies. The psalmist is completely alone. There are no references to society, to friends, even to family. The message is this: Our time on earth is lonely, frightening and painful, but if we have faith and follow God’s laws, the reward comes later when we are freed of our earthly struggles and “dwell in the House of the Lord forever.” Psalms 23:6. This was a message for a desperately poor and oppressed people, who expected to experience far more suffering than joy. It still resonates with many people today.

Contrast that view of life with the one described in I Corinthians 13. Faith is important but clearly secondary. The highest value is “charity” (in the King James version) or “love” (in the American Standard version). “And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.” I Corinthians 13:2. While the Twenty-third Psalm is inward looking, this poem could not be more outward looking. There is a very different framework for living, one that puts compassion for others above understanding of mysteries, even above faith.

In The Uncertain Believer, I argue that the God of the Old Testament is something like Zeus: jealous, temperamental, and occasionally unfair. I argue that we should no longer think of God as the anthropomorphic being imagined by our ancient ancestors. But, assume for a minute, that there is an omnipotent, omniscient God who is truly “perfect” and is drawing up principles for living. Where do you think He would put outward displays of homage and devotion, even belief in Him, on the priority list, compared to showing compassion for those around us? If I Corinthians 13 is a good guide, and I think it is, displays of worship and faith would be far down on this list, if they were on the list at all. He would more likely begin his guide for living with the way I Corinthians 13 ends: “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, but the greatest of these is charity.”

How Would Jesus Feel?

Almost everyone has heard a Christian propose answering a difficult problem by asking: “What would Jesus do?” In many cases, that is a useful starting point, but it has its limitations. For one thing, if we have in mind the actual historical Jesus, we have to understand the context of his life. Even though he was remarkably progressive and insightful for his time, he was a wandering rabbi in a desperately poor society, with many of the superstitions, biases and intellectual limitations of his culture. Like most Jews, he believed an apocalypse was near, probably within a generation or two. (The Gospel of Mark records Jesus as telling listeners that some of them will not experience death but will see the Kingdom of God. Mark 9:1.) Admonitions to listeners to sell all their goods and give them to the poor have to be understood with this apocalyptic vision in mind.
A second problem is this: Figuring out what Jesus would do is difficult in the case of modern problems. What would Jesus do about sending more troops to Afghanistan, taxing the bonuses to AIG employees, or bailing out the auto industry? Still, this can be useful question if we can capture the timeless principle involved. I suggest backing up one step and asking: “How would Jesus feel?” Again, it doesn’t make sense to be too literal and speculate about what the historical Jesus would feel about any question – whether it is the role of women, homosexuality, pre-marital sex, or anything else. Instead, we should apply the central message of Jesus: loving God and loving our neighbors are the highest laws of life. This message then becomes a guide for a basic perspective on life. As I explain in The Uncertain Believer, committing ourselves to a principle of compassion for others gives us a framework for living. Asking how Jesus would feel is a metaphor to remind ourselves about the importance of starting from a compassionate perspective.
Committing ourselves to the principle of compassion still doesn’t give us complete answers to what we should do about Afghanistan, AIG or the auto industry although it does provide a starting point. For more personal questions – how should I treat my spouse, my children, my co-workers -- it can take us very far toward the answer. It’s a good bet that today one or more of the following will happen: someone will say something offensive to you, someone will treat you unfairly, or someone will need your help. In the few seconds you have to figure out how to respond, try asking: How would Jesus feel?

A Thought Experiment about Constantine

The Roman Emperor Constantine became a Christian in 312 A.D. and legalized Christian worship the next year. His endorsement of Christianity set the stage for the Council of Nicea in 325, which declared Jesus to be divine and co-eternal with God. Emperor Theodosius issued a decree in 380 making Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire and the Council of Rome approved the books of the Old and New Testament in 382.

There is nothing like the power of the state (an emperor no less) to grow your organization. From a fringe religion, subject to persecution by Roman emperors, Christianity became the dominant religion of Europe within a span of 70 years. The Great Schism that broke apart Catholicism, the Reformation, and the proliferation of Protestant denominations meant that Christianity would no longer be a unified movement under a European Pope. However, the basic elements of Christianity had fallen into place by the end of the fourth century and remain with us today.

Let’s do a thought experiment and imagine that Constantine had decided he didn’t want to become a Christian after all. Reportedly, he had a dramatic experience in 312 at the Battle of Milvian Bridge when he looked at the sun and saw a Christian cross. If the battle had gone badly, things might have been different. Imagine that, without the endorsement of Constantine, Christianity continued to exist but was only one of hundreds of other religious movements. Consequently, the Catholic Church never became the powerful source of Christian doctrine with the power of the state behind it. As a result, imagine that we in the twenty-first century feel free to study many religious traditions, both in Europe and in other parts of the world, and develop our own ideas about God. What would we decide?

We would probably maintain the core idea of monotheism, inherited from Judaism. We might study the life of Jesus and conclude that he was remarkably progressive and insightful for his time. Although he never disavowed Judaism, he stressed that the most important principles of life have nothing to do with dietary laws or rituals. Instead, these highest principles are to love God and love our neighbor. Perhaps we would be attracted to ideas of the Buddha, which focus on finding meaning by overcoming the desire for material pleasures. We might choose to borrow from Mohammed and passages in the Quran about social justice. We might be interested in the beliefs of indigenous peoples in the Americas regarding the sanctity of nature.

Above all, I think we would conclude that there should be a central unifying idea that conveys the highest purpose in life. I believe we would say that this highest purpose is reflected in Jesus’ statement about the importance of loving God and our neighbors. Out of a desire to continue the historical tradition of those who have gone before us, we could choose to call this central unifying idea God. Yet, we would not be bound by the images of God portrayed in the Bible by our pre-scientific ancestors. We would be free to take into account our vastly increased knowledge about science and the nature of the universe and think of God in a very different way.

This is more than an idle thought experiment, of course. It is the spiritual challenge we actually face. The number of Americans who say they have no religion is now 15%, up from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey. While some regions, such as the northern New England and the Pacific Northwest, have higher percentages of persons with no religion, the number of Americans with no religion rose in every state. Fewer Americans want a religious marriage or funeral. These percentages in Europe are already much higher. The numbers of persons abandoning religion will to continue to increase unless we move beyond doctrines that were developed in the fourth century and reconcile our beliefs about God with the science of the twenty-first century.

What Does God Have to Do with Life on Other Planets?

Last week I called attention to a recent analysis by mathematicians at the University of Edinburgh, which estimated that there are hundreds of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy and thousands in the universe. This plausibility of this analysis is strengthened by the discovery that there may be 100 billion earth-like planets in our galaxy alone.

In response, the Chaldea blog on the Scholarly Study of Astronomy and Religion noted that the Vatican’s chief astronomer has said that there is no conflict between believing in God and the possibility of intelligent life on other planets, including beings more highly evolved than ourselves. "In my opinion this possibility exists," said the Reverend José Gabriel Funes, head of the Vatican Observatory and a scientific adviser to Pope Benedict XVI. “The large number of galaxies with their own planets makes this possible.”

It is encouraging that the Vatican acknowledges that there may be intelligent life on other planets. Does that mean that humans are not a special species, but simply the result of natural selection, along with potentially thousands of other intelligent civilizations? Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict (as a Cardinal) made statements generally supportive of evolution. However, a 1996 statement by Pope John Paul takes the position that God controlled evolution of the human species, not that it proceeded solely on the basis of natural selection and random mutation of genetic material.

But if God controls evolution, has he intentionally created thousands of intelligent civilizations? Does God love all these intelligent beings equally? If so, has God revealed himself to all of them? Has some version of the Jesus story been repeated thousands of times through the universe? If not, why?

If we try to come up with answers that are consistent with Catholic doctrine, we may conclude that the intellectual gymnastics required to do so are not really worth it. Doesn’t it make more sense to have a different starting point and rethink our conception of God? If we imagine God as something other than an anthropomorphic being who created the universe and controlled evolution, we don’t have to invent implausible scenarios about divine intervention on thousands of planets. As I explain in The Uncertain Believer, we -- and other intelligent civilizations, if they really exist -- have the capacity to conceive of God as a power that inspires us to be as perfect as we can be, yet has nothing to do with evolution on this planet or any other.

How Will the Church Respond to Discoveries about the Universe?

In 1543, Copernicus published his major work arguing that the earth revolves around the sun, rather than the reverse. The Catholic Church required modifications of his conclusions and placed Galileo under house arrest because he endorsed the idea of a heliocentric solar system. When Benjamin Franklin proposed erecting lightning rods on buildings, the Pastor of the Old South Church in Boston declared that there is no point in trying to resist God’s wrath in the form of lightning. And, when William Scopes taught science in a Tennessee high school in the 1920’s, he was prosecuted for violating a ban on teaching evolution, which had been passed at the urging of religious conservatives. Far too often, organized religion has been at odds with scientific discoveries because they conflict with religious doctrine. Rather than modify doctrine, the church attacks the scientists and their discoveries.

Science will continue to tell us more about the universe, and the church must decide how to respond. For example, a new book, The Crowded Universe: The Search for Living Planets, by Alan Boss, an astronomer with the Carnegie Institution, suggests that there may be 100 billion earth-like planets in our galaxy. If any of them have liquid water, they are likely to have some type of life. A recent computer model developed by researchers at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland estimates that at least 361 intelligent civilizations have emerged in our galaxy alone since the Big Bang. Across the universe, the model estimates that there are thousands.

Star Trek episodes have made us think that we can zip from one inhabited planet to another in a few days. However, if we stick with realistic assumptions about rocket ship speeds, traveling beyond our solar system to the nearest star would take about 100,000 years. Even if we develop the technology to make the trip, would we go? The trip would last about twenty times as long as recorded human history. The same limitations apply to other civilizations, which mean their inhabitants are not likely to come here either.

What are the implications of all this? Perhaps some day, we will hear a radio message from a distant planet that has traveled thousands of years at the speed of light to reach us. For practical purposes, however, we are alone in the universe, not because a supreme being created us as a special species, but because the distances in the universe are so vast that we will never be able to interact with other intelligent life. If our species becomes extinct, the Edinburgh analysis suggests that advanced civilizations will continue to flourish in the universe.

It would be helpful if organized religion could help us understand the significance of these findings and find a conception of God that is consistent with them. The odds are, however, that the church will urge us to ignore today’s scientists and mathematicians and to rely on the accounts in Genesis, which were written by people who thought the earth is flat and the sun goes around it.