questions — Questioning The Faith

He answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” Luke 10 : 27

As you could read from my previous posts, I am a big fan of seeking meaning in life. Like everyone else in this planet I am just trying to be a better person and seeking for meaning of life is one of my way to be that person. Questions like who am i, why am I here and what should I do to be a better person, are questions I try to answer with my belief system which is heavily influenced by my faith.

I inherited my faith from my parents and they inherited theirs from their parents. It may began with an inherited faith but at the age of 16, I personally accepted the faith as my own. Since then, I have my ups and downs in my journey of faith. During difficult times, it was my faith that helped me get through even though it was stretched very thin. I would be lying if I say all is well and my faith came out stronger than ever, because I was not stronger at all, I barely survived. Maybe you would say what doesn't kill you will make you stronger, I really hope so. But, in my case, it had given me the seed of doubt about many things in my life, especially about my faith. Like never before I started to ask questions. It wasn't like I lose it or suddenly I don't believe in God. I do believe in God. But I couldn't take my mind off some things. Things that need answers and when I contemplated to search the answers based on my knowledge (experience) about my faith, I discovered what I have aren't sufficient enough to provide the answers. It turned out what I thought I knew about my faith, I knew nothing at all.

We live in the post truth era where the culture is highly saturated with all kind of different world views and ideas, where subjective experience holds higher value in society, and objective truth is fading. We live in the "you do you, whatever works for you" mentality. It's 'normal' if I say that my faith is based on my personal experience. Almost everybody with faith would say that.

But,

If people experience different things in their search for higher being or walk of faith, and because it’s totally subjective, in the world of relativism and emotivism, where the experience could be the truth for the person who have it and may not be the truth for others, does that mean there are many ways to God? If there are many ways to God, why I choose this way? How could I be sure this is the best way? If it’s only based on experience, how do I explain that my experience is reliable? Am I reliable to even testify about my experience to others? Could it be just some neurons reacting or chemical releasing ? Could it be just a matter of luck? If it’s just a matter of luck, then does that mean my knowing about the truth is not exactly knowing because I don’t use my cognitive ability to know the belief? If I know it’s the truth based on my subjective experience, does that mean my subjective experience become absolute truth? If it’s the absolute truth, why ‘you do you, whatever works for you’ mentality? If it’s objective truth then it’s the truth no matter people believe it or not.

So, why do I believe what I believe?

Let me give you one of many examples that makes me question about the 'experience'.

I love music very much. I am that type of a person who focus in working better with music in the background. I listen to it everyday. I just love it so much and one particular genre that I love is religious music. I would listen to it during my work, even during my travel (I have people who could testify about this). I love listening to it because it made me feel something. I would go to Sunday Service and when the music was playing I would feel closer to God, sometimes I cried, felt overwhelmed, and for so long that experience made me believe that what I feel was the presence of God. But during difficult times, I would do the same and sometimes I felt it and sometimes I just felt nothing, and during those times I believed that I couldn't FEEL the presence of God, and I remember thinking maybe the worship leader didn’t prepare well or one of the people in the worship ministry did something sinful that they weren’t able to perform the duty to lead the congregations to be in the presence of God.

On the other hand, I still pretty much enjoyed listening to music. Classics like Vivaldi and Bach are always succeeded to make me happy. So, I asked myself, does that mean I experience God within Vivaldi and Bach numbers? Or the presence of God was just my feeling? If it's only my feeling how I supposed to say that my experience with God is real? My feeling changes easily so it scared me, if my entire belief system is based on my feeling than I got nothing to hold on. I would be like a boat forever drifted and lost in the ocean. That thoughts scared me, I don't want to believe just based on my experience or my feeling.

I started to ask the questions to people around me. When I asked I started with why you believe what you believe? Most of the people would answer because they've experienced God so they know He is real (most of the experiences are similar with my music experience). Some showed their concern about the state of my faith and tried to share testimonies about miracles God had done in their lives. In the past it would be enough. Even though, I, myself, have my very own miracles that I experienced too, now, the answer is not enough. It even brings me more questions, if the experience with God is the reason why you believe, what about other people who never experience God, does that mean God doesn't interact with them? Does God even like them ? I mean, in our social life, we are not only interacting with the people we like. So, how could you say God loves them if God doesn't even talk to them? How do you know it really God that you’ve experienced and not just some feelings or coincidences or a matter of luck that you interpreted as miracles?

So you see, for me now to say that personal experience is enough to answer the question why you believe what you believe would be like saying to people who are equipped with intellectual mind and cognitive ability that it's okay to throw away all the reasonings and just blindly believe and accept something as the belief based on feeling, subjective experience. I don't think I could do that, well, not anymore, if it would take me thirty minutes of research to decide from which restaurant I'd ordered my dinner than it would take more effort and maybe a lifetime from me to dig deeper to provide me more than just a feeling to answer why I believe what I believe.

If knowing means to use the cognitive ability, to require the true belief, that can be justified and not based on false assumptions (reliable) then that’s how I want my knowing about God to be.

I am sure everyone would do anything they can to know more about the thing or the person they love. And that’s why I think it’s fair for me to say that the purpose of all the questions is not to deconstruct and to let it be scattered and finally losing the faith, but simply to grow stronger in my love for Him and to have a relationship with Him not only based on feelings. I ask questions to know more because I know He is more than what I knew all this time and I know He’s the one that will guide me in my search of the answers (to be continued). (V)

“ The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” - G.K. Chesterton