Imagine for a moment a man who has never before seen an airplane. His friends might try to explain what one is like to him by making analogies to birds and other flying beasts, but at the end of the day, the man may reasonably insist that he will need to see an airplane for himself. Now, if his friends really want to convince him that airplanes exists, they might invite the man to come with them to a field over which planes routinely fly. Then, the man’s friends might point skyward and the man might get some sense for the aircrafts above him. However, if before they set out, the man insists further that he must first gouge out his eyes, when the party finally arrives at the field, the man’s friends might point to the airplanes flying above as much as they’d like and the man will still be unable to see them.
If Christianity is correct, then we have all already partially gouged out our eyes. This, I think, is the fundamental difficulty that needs to be overcome when we discuss whether or not there is continuing evidence for the truth of Christianity in our modern world. Absolutely correctly, the non-believer says, “I cannot see Christ walking out of the tomb”. This, however, is not to say that Christ isn’t right in front of him. Just as in our imaginative example above, it may be the case that it is not more evidence that is required, but rather a doctor who can fix our vision.
To ask questions like, “How do you know that God exists?” or “What evidence is there for the Resurrection?” is to get everything backwards, for faith in God is not an end unto itself. Instead, it is the starting point from which we begin on our quest to break ourselves free from the blinding practice of examining our experience purely in terms of an isolating sense of self. It is how we start to see the world differently. To paraphrase Thomas Aquinas and the 13th century hymn Pange lingua, faith is the thing that “befriends our outwards senses” and “makes our inward vision clear.” More concisely, it is the thing that allows us to see the things that really matter.
At least in my own experience, I feel most at home in the world when I am struck by beauty, touched by kindness, or loved by someone else. I think it’s a mistake to ignore this evidence simply because it’s emotional. There may be scientific correlates to our emotions, but that doesn’t explain them away or make them untrue. Rather, those chemical correlates imply that humanity is called to love at a very basic level. If, as I suggested in a previous post, we call our purpose here “God”, then it’s not a far leap to say that “God is love.”
In the epistle of John, the evangelist writes, “Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. … No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” (1 John 4:7,12) And so it us that we meet Christ in our modern world. To me, the experience of love is both mystical and transcendent. Those experiences turn the usual order of things upside down. When I am capable, ever so briefly, of loving someone else as myself, my life seems to take on a purpose that is otherwise lacking (despite my near continuous efforts to involve myself in projects and to work towards particular goals). Moreover, that purpose itself feels quite odd. Instead of being directed towards some distant future, it is immediately present. The point of existence becomes the joy and fullness of the moment itself. This, to me, is so different from how I otherwise experience the world that it seems obvious to distinguish it as something otherworldly — even though its source is clearly present here, as a part of our embodied existence.
It may seem a leap to go from a fleeting sense of love to a belief in Christ, but again, the point is not to “prove” the merits of Christianity. Rather, Christianity is meant to orient us such that we can see that perfect love in one another and in the world around us. Insofar as it helps us more fully experience that love, it is proof of itself. This reality, I think, is most fully articulated in the sacraments of the Church, which are, at the end of the day, all about transformation.
When a believer receives a small round wafer on his tongue and experiences not just bread but a profound sense of both love and yearning, the Church says that that believer is really and truly experiencing the presence of his risen Lord. Admittedly, this point of doctrine was a stumbling block for me for a while. Now, it seems to me obvious. In fact, that Christ can be found in the sacraments is not all that different from a scientific fact. Many hundreds of thousands of people report having encountered Him unfailingly in an experiment that is conducted multiple times, every day of the year. This shared and repeated experience goes beyond mere aesthetics. It is one thing to listen to a brilliantly composed Mass setting and hear in the beauty of the music something that points one towards God. It is quite another to encounter mundane things like bread, wine, water, and oil and experience them, in themselves, as a truth that goes beyond the mere elements that compose them.
If our theology is right, the sacraments are themselves a path to knowledge. They are the way that we meet Christ for ourselves here and now, and through Him, learn to live again. Then, they are the vehicle by which we come to be Christ to each other and to the world. Faith is the jumping off point, but once one takes the plunge this conversion and the feelings that underly it become themselves justification for continued faith in an omni-benevolent God who is remaking mankind in His own image.
And so I come to the point of this series of posts: When we hear a story that is self-consistent within a logical framework and that story comes to us through an unbroken chain of sources who’ve believed so passionately in its truth that they’ve been willing to die for their beliefs, then it seems to me that we have a responsibility to approach the story on its own terms, with an an open mind. If in asking “what if this is true?”, we begin to have intangible experiences that point beyond the physical reality with which we directly interface, then that story seems to me a story worth believing. Even more so if, in belief, we grow to find that our lives are both transformed and enriched.