a working theory on christianity
This is a rough draft.
I grew up going to church. I stopped sometime in college and had mostly given up on it until recently I visited a church on a whim and decided it’s important to believe in something and that being agnostic is a cop out. So here is a summation of my current thoughts on Christianity, broken up into a series of topics.
a few disclaimers:
- I’m not certain on everything I’m saying here. This is merely a collection of thoughts I find intriguing, and at times convincing, about the Christian faith.
- Feedback is encouraged. I still have more questions than answers and would appreciate your thoughts, and your critiques even more so.
most of what I’ve written is predicated on this belief:
Humans are designed by a designer, and happiness comes from operating in line with that designer.
prayer
I grew up with a distorted perception of what prayer was and what it was capable of. As a child I used it as a yearlong Christmas list and when I grew a bit older I prayed for world peace and all the sick children to be healed. Now I don’t think prayer works like that; I think prayer is much closer to home, much more intimate, and the results much more immediate.
Here is an illustration that may clarify my point. When in a relationship, you might pray for that relationship to be successful. You might pray for a strong connection, meaningful memories, and moments of true happiness. Now, I’m not convinced that God proceeds to dump ladles full of happiness on top of your head. I think the function of prayer is instead designed like this: having prayed for your relationship to be successful, you will go into that relationship with confidence that it will be successful—and that’s it. That confidence is the result of prayer. The peace and confidence you get from trusting in a grand designer is exactly how the process of prayer is designed to work. You pray for a strong relationship, you receive confidence that the actions you make in your relationship will strengthen it, because it’s not up to you alone.
I don’t believe in praying for the sick to be healed. I don’t really believe in praying for world peace. I believe in praying that the good you do will have an effect. I believe in praying for opportunities in life to exhibit good character. If you pray for patience, God doesn’t give you patience, He gives you opportunities to be patient.
The Lord’s Prayer is a great example:
“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.”
We don’t pray this prayer and expect not to be tempted. We pray this prayer, then face our temptations with the confidence to overcome them with the support of the one who created us.
forgiveness
My thoughts on prayer mirror my thoughts on forgiveness. When you can freely forgive you find peace; it seems baked into the design. You forgive, you find peace. It’s like we are hardwired to function that way. This I find convincing because forgiveness is not innate, it’s not my knee jerk reaction. Forgiveness is something I have to learn; it goes against my impulses. The fact that it is hard, yet provides such incredible results, shows a design at play that I must push myself to work within. And while it may feel unnatural, the feeling of peace I receive from true forgiveness is unparalleled.
To me, following a Christian walk of life is all about getting ourselves in touch with our true nature. This requires an alignment of the soul and Christianity operates as our straight edge.
creativity
“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” Picasso, or Shakespear, or some other guy, nobody actually knows apparently.
Much like how prayer provides confidence, and forgiveness provides peace, I believe creation provides happiness. I believe people have to be creative to be happy, that it’s man’s purpose. It seems baked into our design as humans. When we create, we are rewarded with happiness. When we do nothing but consume, we become miserable. To me, Christianity provides a rationale as to why that is. Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image.” And what is God but the creator? I’m not certain God has two eyes and walks on two feet but I am certain that he is highly creative and is ceaseless in His creating. Therefore, I believe that when we create we are accessing a part of ourselves that is in touch with the divine. This, to me, explains the incredible sense of joy I receive when I make something. When I write the perfect sentence, draw the perfect drawing, tweak my website in just the perfect way (fireplace youtube video for the homepage background!), I’m over the moon. Why is that? I believe it’s the result of getting in touch with my “true nature”, it’s when my soul is most aligned with the Grand Design, and thus, the Designer.
sin
To continue with my train of thought on prayer, forgiveness, and creativity, sin operates in the opposite way. Forgiveness gives us peace, and the immediate response convinces me of its designed nature. Sin causes anguish. To lie gives anxiety. To hurt gives guilt. To be mean gives loneliness. It appears to be so obvious. If you lie, you will have anxiety. Christianity provides an explanation. You are not designed to lie. It is against your nature. That is why you feel anxiety; it’s the abrasion of going against how you were designed.
suffering
I don’t have an answer, but I think Christianity at least offers an explanation, and what I find convincing is that this explanation necessitates good action from good people. A non-believer may say the world is random, some suffer, some thrive, and that’s it. Non-believers have no rationale for why suffering happens, and instead use it as a weapon against belief in the first place, and it’s actually a fair argument. I can spend all day believing that doodling in a notebook is the key to happiness, but there is real pain out there I will never understand. So why do I choose to believe that there is a Designer that allows, within his design, heinous unspeakable atrocities?
Because the designer calls us to love. And love can only exist alongside freewill, thus providing a chasm that allows for evil. Evil is the breach in the design. It’s a literal necessary evil. Love comes from the choice to do so, which is so obvious when you consider love in your own life. The minute you’re forced to, it’s no longer love, but something different altogether. So the designer calls us to love, creating the necessary evil, which reveals itself in the design as these huge errors. Major glitches. And it’s obvious isn’t it? When something horrible happens, we can tell. Atrocities are so painfully obvious because they go against how things should go. This “should” we can all imagine but we don’t see in reality is, to the Christian, an echo of the perfect world God created. This world was then marred by the tempting of Adam and Eve, which then birthed evil into the world. Evil now manifests itself into everything that’s horrible. So, the Christian can track an origin to suffering. That’s the origin; that’s the explanation. But what I find convincing about Christianity is not just that it fits suffering into a neat little narrative. It goes further than that and provides a response to this breach in design—we are not hopeless against it. The Bible lists out, in straightforward terms, how Christians are to then go out into a world full of evil and instead, be good.
Matthew 5:44 “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Matthew 7:12 “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”
Luke 6:36 “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”
Matthew 6:14-15 “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
Matthew 23:12 “For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Matthew 22:37-39 “Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Matthew 25:35-36 “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”
Matthew 5:9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”
hell
Either I don’t understand it, I’m not sold on it, or I just won’t let my mind go there because it’s too devastating. Not sure.
closing thoughts
I’m still figuring out what exactly I believe. What I like about Christianity is that it provides an explanation for the signs of design I can see in the universe. And the explanation is weird, and bizarre, and imaginative, and beautiful, and crazy enough that maybe it’s true. The explanation asks for us to connect with the design on an intimate level, and the result of that connection is a life of meaning, peace, and love.
These are my current thoughts. Let me know what you think.
-Tim