Without Certainty, Where Do You Find Hope and Purpose?

LUKE MOON (Evangelical Christian): A question for you. If everything is relative and we can’t actually know anything for certain, where do you find hope and purpose?

FRANK SCHAEFFER (former Evangelical Christian): In the intense experience of what I call the “off stage chorus” that seems to serendipitously direct one’s path. I think the goodness of life is there as a reminder that the purpose of life is life. I just took my three youngest grandchildren home after caring for Nora (2) for the day and having picked up Jack (6) and Lucy (8) at school. I fed them salmon and rice, read to them, played a great production of Midsummer Night’s Dream, and walked them home. I see God in those moments more than in a book.

Luke: That’s beautiful. I think we all can appreciate what it means to love and be loved. To participate in beauty through artistic expression. But what about those moments where it doesn’t seem there is much goodness of life?

Frank: I hear you…what about those moments? They remind me we are semi-evolved primates. I’m not joking here. I was in Africa shooting two movies for a year (Hollywood trash) and for several months lived next to a troop of baboons in Namibia. They were too much like me for comfort: dominant males bossing females, threatening everyone in sight, violence and all that. The lesson I took from a very non-scientific observation is that empathy is fragile! A fragile gift…it is all we have.

Luke: A gift from who, though? There is more to us than semi-evolved primates empathizing about life and pretending that dog fighting is bad. I much prefer believing that we are beings created in the image of a God who is good and wants us to do and be good too. We empathize because its the right thing to do.

Frank: Maybe… But given that you are honest enough to use the words “I much prefer believing …” rather than telling me you know this to be true gives us a chance to talk. My problem is with the defensive stance of certainty about anything cosmological. I can’t even figure out Word 10 or my iPhone and how to not fill up all the memory when I shoot videos.

By the way, just to go back to one thing you said about purpose: I never get why anyone thinks that because humans like to have a purpose that that means there is some actual overarching purpose out there. Just a thought. I mean we all crave immortality too, and that’s not working out too well either.

Luke: I agree…kind of. There is a point at which everyone believes something by faith. The atheist faith in the godless material universe and the Christian faith that God created the universe and everything in it puts us on equal ground. So, I agree there is a point of faith for everyone, especially on cosmological matters. However, that faith matters in how we live life and what we think of the experiences we have. Love, beauty, spirituality, and justice only matter if there is more than just matter.

Frank: I agree. I just see that “more” as to be discovered–not revealed. That discovery is the true spiritual journey. From what was written about Jesus (whatever he said or not otherwise in reality) that report of his sayings and life put him at odds with the Jewish traditions — then and now. If what was written about him is accurate (I don’t know if that’s the case), then apparently Jesus decided that he was going to say and do some new things.

In hindsight, Christians try and weave it all together, much as Mormons want to still be fictionally rooted into more traditional Christianity. Those presenting themselves as followers of Jesus therefore have to be open to evolving, and in fact working to evolve. Why pretend otherwise? The journey of discovery, like evolution, is ongoing. Put it this way: In ten thousand years, or fifty thousand or a million, will there be anyone still waiting for Jesus to “come back,” presuming he hasn’t and won’t? We always want everything in our timeframe.

My missionary grandfather was convinced to the day he died he’d be “raptured” before he had to taste death. He was no fool. Grandfather Saville spoke 7 languages, taught Hebrew and Greek, was well read, lived to 102 years old and – sorry – was delusional. So am I. So are you. Being finite equals delusion. Deal with it.

Luke: Well, given humanity’s current fertility rates, there won’t be any human beings left on the planet in a thousand years, but that’s a topic for another post.

Frank: Good point actually. Put it this way: where in the North American evangelical religion does extinction come in? It’s more likely than anything “predicted” in the “End Times” scenarios currently in whatever form they are in this week.

Luke: To state the obvious, it seems that the only certainty at play here is the certainty that evolution /discovery is progressive and positive.

Frank: I don’t know if that’s a jibe or not, but you have a point. Here’s something we don’t hear much about: things actually do sometimes improve. I know religionists and some environmentalists too seem to be rooting for some sort of apocalypse, but what if humans actually figure out how to live and let live?

Luke: There’s an interesting book on the subject of fertility and religion by a UK author named Eric Kaufmann titled, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Again, we’ll need to pick up this subject.

It was not a jibe. There is improvement to a point, but not in the human heart. The Internet helps connect us with friends, but there are also countless things that the Internet makes worse. To butcher a Solzhenitsyn quote, “The line between good and evil runs through the heart of every human being.”

Frank: Since the most secular countries in Europe are in Scandinavia and they (compared to the recently Catholic countries like Italy & Spain) have the highest birthrates (compared to other European countries), religion doesn’t seem to be all that’s needed to make babies. As for human hearts, agreed. But I also note that the lowest crime rates and highest scores on (okay they are silly) “Happiness Measures” are in the northern European post-religious societies. Don’t want to hit low, but compare that to the American Bible belt.

(That was mean, so you get the last word tonight!)

Luke: The question, though, is whether those post-religious countries can survive in the long term? A wise teacher referred to these countries, and in many cases, as “cut flower countries,” which means that they are beautiful because they are living off the society built by people of faith, particularly the Protestant Christian faith. Now, let’s have a drink and beat up on Trump and Hillary.

Frank: You have a good point there. But somehow they don’t have 50,000 gun deaths a year and bad education. Maybe that’s just “living off the past,” but it compares pretty well to the American “Christian” present.

Okay, you still get a comeback and this time I’ll shut the F– up! :- )

Luke: Nah, I already opened my beer. See you next week. 

Schaeffer & Moon is written on the fly in a real-time chat room format and lightly copyedited by Patheos editors.

Photo by Jordan Whitt via Unsplash