Murray Haar On Religion: Caught Between Faith and Facts

Friday, April 17, 2020

Caught Between Faith and Facts

Whenever an event as evil as the Coronavirus rears its head and delivers its destruction upon us, we religious folk are caught between our deep desire to have faith and the facts our eyes are communicating to us. We are caught between faith and facts.

For Jews this happens because Jews trust the heart of God is revealed in the Torah. God loves his people so much he gave them his only Torah to teach them what it meant to live a human life. Whatever has happened to us across the centuries, we Jews trust against trust that God is for us and not against us.

Christians trust the heart of God has been revealed to all people in the cross and resurrection of Jesus. God loved his people so much he sent his only son to die and be raised. In Jesus, God shows how much God loves humanity and does not leave them alone. And Christians trust “nothing shall separate them from the love of God.”

And Muslims trust God so loved the world that he sent his final revelation through Muhammad and had it written down in the Quran. Muslims trust that everything that happens to human beings is in some mysterious way the will of God. Five times a day Muslims proclaim their hope and trust that Allah is truly God, for us and not against us.

All this is well and good. It is our faith. And we want our faith to be true.

But when the craziness and horror of evil lives among us, people of faith are compelled or forced to live in the tension between faith and facts. And the fact is: despite the Biblical assertions of God’s commitment to justice and love, hundred of thousands are being killed. Despite prayers upon prayers upon prayers, the silence of God lives among us. Of course, we can and will give the usual reasons or excuses to make God not look so bad. After all, look at all those who survive the virus. We can sing more hymns. We can babble on about the mystery of God’s ways. And let’s face it, theologians and religious leaders have honed their craft over the years to disqualify or eliminate any questioning of the deity.

But this is nothing new. Faith and facts collide in the Biblical stories. And those of us who have studied the Holocaust are aware of the silence or indifference of God. Years ago, Elie Wiesel opined that Jesus was most Jewish and most honest when, on the cross, he implored the deity, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

So, this is our predicament. We have just come through two holidays, Passover and Easter, where God’s deliverance was rehearsed and celebrated. Despite all that, if we religious believers are willing to be honest, we will admit we are aware of the tension in which we are compelled to live.

After all, Jews and Christians and Muslims are communities who have always been waiting for God to act like God. In the meantime, believers are caught in the tension between their faith in God and the facts screaming at them in the face. So, I say again, Stay sane out there.

1 comment:

UnknownApril 17, 2020 at 1:00 PM
Good Ideas, Well Said.
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Notes from The Door

Whenever you care for the neighbor in pain, at that very moment, God is real. At that very moment, the Messiah has returned. In every situation where there is pain and injustice do what you can do to stop the pain. Murray Haar
Religion was not created by God but by people. What God thinks of our religions only God can say. If your religion teaches you to love God and to stand with your neighbor in pain, it is a good religion. If it teaches you to hate and to be indifferent, it is a bad religion. Murray Haar
Get Busy livin or get busy dyin (Shawshank Redemption)
The Holocaust teaches us that it is possible to be alive but no longer human. Murray Haar
I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know. Socrates
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good. W. H. Auden
For the most part, Christian pastors and priests are not taught to think but to transmit. They go to a vocational school called a seminary where they are taught how to transmit and proclaim the gospel but not how to teach their people to think critically about what they believe. They do not know how to teach their parishioners that Christianity could be wrong. Pastors and Priests are not prophets; they are religious functionaries who care about people and love Jesus. They themselves are usually nice people, will visit you in the hospital and give you bread and wine but they are not, for the most part, great thinkers. So, to expect them to reform the Church is just not realistic. Occasionally though, pastors show up who can think and believe at the same time and it is in them that there is hope for a reformation. I have met them. They are real and I have hope in them. Murray Haar
We do not believe in the Bible. We believe in God. The Bible is a vector toward God and the neighbor. When the Bible points us toward God and the neighbor, it is true. Whenever it does not, it is not true. We have to learn not only to read the Bible but to argue with it. Then the text will become real. Murray Haar
“In religion, the question is more important than the answer to the question.” A Midrash
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Dylan Thomas
“He who saves a single life, saves the world entire.” The Talmud
“We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, or the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time or conditions of our death. But within all this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we shall live: courageously or in cowardice, honorably or dishonorably, with purpose or adrift. We decide what is important and what is trivial in life. We decide that what makes us significant is either what we do or what we refuse to do. But no matter how indifferent the universe may be to our choices and decisions, these choices and decisions are ours to make. We decide. We choose. And as we decide and choose, so are our lives formed.” Joseph Epstein

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Friday, April 17, 2020

Caught Between Faith and Facts

1 comment: