I spoke to the pastor at my school, the other day.
The impression I got: He is a good man. Burdened with the prejudices of his time, but self-aware, and trying to escape them. Empathetic, intelligent.
He gave up a long time ago.
"I was like you," he said, though this is paraphrased. "I thought there were answers to everything. I searched for years as a young man. I would say I was an agnostic."
"What happened?" I asked.
"I visited a little Jesuit school in the States. They have to go through a great deal of education to get there - philosophy, theology, they know the arguments. And I asked them what the answers were. They didn't know."
"So...you chose to believe in God and the Bible?"
"I chose to have faith," he said.
And tears came to my eyes, because that was the saddest thing I had ever heard.
I chose to have faith.
There are questions in the world that are not answered.
Perhaps there are even questions that are unanswerable.
Do you know why this phrase is so sad, "I chose to have faith"?
Because it represents giving up. It represents an intelligent man trading in uncertainty and honesty and curiosity for faith and sureness and happiness.
It represents a man who never found answers, and so he wove them from the stories we tell about Christianity and our morals as a society. He wore them like a cassock.
He's still wearing them.
He's a good man. When he prays, he prays for small things, and does not expect them to be granted. He lives in service to the Lord, obeying His every command.
And he is a good man, because there is no Lord, there are no commands, there's just a good man in a position of moral authority.
If we were all like him, I think, we would be content. We would be peaceful. We would know the answers to every question in our hearts, and they would spell a code of compassion to fellow human beings, of self-improvement and acceptance.
He is a good man.
And he is terrifying. He is proof that you can wear surety and happiness like a cassock.
You just have to close your eyes.
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