Faith and sacrifice
My good friend, Eugene, touched on something in a recent comment that I’ve been meaning to write about for some time now: the role sacrifice plays in one’s faith. In his comment, Eugene made the following observation about Senator John Kerry’s insistence on taking communion even though he fundamentally rejects many of the core teachings of Catholicism:
This is something I honestly don’t understand.
If I were Catholic and the Pope and his people kept telling me that my beliefs conflicted with the chuch, I’d probably say “f*** ‘em” and find another religion that better reflects my beliefs.
A couple of questions came (back) to mind when reading this comment. First, don’t many Christians, Catholic and Protestant alike, already engage in such “forum shopping”? And second, if one is looking for a religion that conforms to his personal tastes and policy preferences, then just who is that person worshipping? These are heady questions, and I don’t have time to answer them in any detail right now. I do hope, however, that this post will serve to initiate a discussion on a topic that I believe to be of utmost importance to people of faith.
I will say this though: It seems to me that the impact faith has on one’s life is directly proportional to the amount of sacrifice that faith requires from its adherents. Indeed, it seems to me that a faith requiring little sacrifice is of little value to the one who professes to follow that faith.
June 29th, 2006 at 9:15 am
“Indeed, it seems to me that a faith requiring little sacrifice is of little value to the one who professes to follow that faith.”
But that shouldn’t affect the choice, should it? I mean, to believe something is to think it is true, rather than to say, “If this were true, it would do me so much good.”
Or do you say that the sacrifice, and the benefits that come with it, are evidence that the faith is correct?
June 29th, 2006 at 9:29 am
Joseph-
I think it is necessary to read the sentence you quote in context with the one that precedes it. My point is that any faith worth having will require its adherents to make certain sacrifices.
To answer your question though, I would say that “the sacrifice, and the benefits that come with it, are evidence that the faith is [impacting that person's faith in a profound way].” I don’t necessarily equate sacrifice with truth because there are plently of false faiths that require a certain amount of sacrifice.
My point is simply that if your faith requires little to no sacrifice, then perhaps you should reexamine whether you really have any faith at all.
June 29th, 2006 at 9:46 am
But didn’t you just switch religions not too long ago?
Why did you do it? Was it not done in order to find something that more closely resembled what you wanted or thought your faith to be?
I don’t know - I am just asking.
As for the question of sacrifice, I’d argue that atheism itself requires a great deal of sacrifice. It is not easy, especially at first, to cope with the thought that there is no afterlife or rhyme or reason to life on earth.
June 29th, 2006 at 10:03 am
Eugene-
That’s an excellent question, and one I anticipated.
And yes, there were obviously things that attracted me to Catholicism–the deep sense of reverence at Mass, the actual presence of the Lord in the Eucharist, etc.
But this seems to me to be much different than leaving a faith over say abortion. I mean, if it were just about lining up my public policy preferences with my faith, then the Southern Baptist faith suited me to a tee. Indeed, Catholicism has changed me in many ways that I never would have though possible a few years back. It has softened my heart, and made me much more amenable to social policies that I previously would have rejected out of hand. This is in no way to imply that the Baptist faith cannot do the same thing for someone else. I am only speaking of my personal experience, and nothing more.
June 29th, 2006 at 10:17 am
I would assume that anyone who leaves one faith for another does so for a variety of reasons - though there is probably one key catalyst for such a decision.
With Catholics who believe in choice, I assume that they also don’t like the Church’s stance on contraception and a variety of other things and so switching to another religion would not be done for one single reason, but for a host of reasons.
But that is probably different than switching to a new religion because one is looking for a more spiritually meaningful experience - though one could argue that finding a faith that welcomes your views would probably lead to a more meaningful spirituality.
As an atheist, I can speak for myself and say I find it hard to understand how one can experience any sort of personal or spiritual enjoyment being part of a religion with which one does not agree.
I think the basic question is: are your beliefs dictated by your faith or is your faith dictated by your beliefs?
In my view, they are pretty much the same thing, but I realize that a lot of people would disagree.
June 29th, 2006 at 11:36 am
Steve,
It seems to me that conservative believers in the Anglican community in America are facing these issues presently in regards to the ordination of homosexual priests. In their case, I think Eugene is right on the money: If the Episcopalian leadership keeps forcing that belief down their throats, I would wholeheartedly encourage those offended to say, “F*** ‘em” and leave and start a new community that conforms to their beliefs.
I guess the point is that “forum shopping” can be both a good and bad thing - it simply depends on the circumstances. In the situation mentioned above, it seems to me that the real “sacrifice” would be to stay in communion with them and ignore their deeply held beliefs.
Just a thought…
June 29th, 2006 at 11:38 am
“I think the basic question is: are your beliefs dictated by your faith or is your faith dictated by your beliefs?”
Eugene, I’m not so sure that’s really the question at hand, since “faith” is a sort of belief and any set of beliefs take on some set of unargued (and perhaps unarguable or irresolvable) presumptions. The real question, I’d submit, is one of authority: what do you (or anyone else) take as an authority. In the contemporary world, we tend to think of ourselves as the ultimate authority. In that way, we are all heirs of Luther: we can act only in our (individualized) conscience. Supposing that Kerry and other pro-choice Catholics are acting in a way such that their public and private views are consonant, the way to interpret their actions, it seems to me, is as believing that they’ve decided that the Church doesn’t have “authority” over those subjects. And usually, of course, that denial of authority extends beyond those particular areas.
This is why, I think, those with conservative or orthodox political views tend, at least in the American context, to also be political conservatives. It’s not a perfect match, but it is a pretty strong tendency.
June 29th, 2006 at 11:40 am
I would agree with you. I’m between faiths right now. The one I’m leaving is one that I’m strongly attracted to for many reasons. The one I’m examining conflicts with many of my beliefs, but it has some important claims that have to be examined.
I think both your friend and you are right. At some point the beleifs have to match, but what you’re leaving behind can be very dear.
June 29th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
QD,
My question was pretty much intended to be the same as your question - you just outlined it better.
June 29th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
Well put, Nick.
June 29th, 2006 at 5:01 pm
Steve - Thanks, that’s clearer. Though it seems true by definition. In the modern sense, if you’re doing something you wouldn’t otherwise do, you’re making sacrifices (at the very least, you’re paying opportunity cost). But how can you tell that someone’s life has been affected greatly, except that he is doing something he wouldn’t otherwise do? If he is sacrificing, he is affected; and if he is affected, he is sacrificing (and the more, the more).
The way Eugene described it, the person changing religions wasn’t just moving to one that reflected his preferences, but to one that reflected his beliefs. I was much impressed by part of a 1972 Catechism I used to own…it made the point that you shouldn’t become a Catholic just to fall in line with your community, or agree with your new wife, or for any reason less than a conviction that the teaching of the Church was true. That’s not forum-shopping, but an effort to research the right jurisdiction.
While I don’t agree with Eugene that atheism requires sacrifice in the way that religion does - not unless you are leaving something else that meant a lot to you - I do think it’s relevant to the question you posed. I personally would love to be destined for immortality, and besides that I enjoy devotion and duty. There have been several religions that would appeal to me if I thought the doctrines were true; but as long as I don’t, they simply aren’t available as options.
Aside - I do not understand you when you say that your belief has “softened your heart” into supporting certain social policies…the differences there aren’t between people who do and don’t care about poverty, disease, and other evils, but between people with opposing views of how and in what time-frame to combat these things.
June 30th, 2006 at 9:43 am
I would like to point out that most of the poster’s here are saying that moving from one communion to another, from SB to RC is moving from one “faith” to another. I don’t agree. This is moving from one communion to another, the basic “faith” - as in the Faith - is the same. Now, I would agree that moving from a Unitarian, or even a modern Episcopal “church” to the RC communion is more akin to changing “faiths” (it really is moving from modernism to the Faith). However, the underlying basics between the traditional or orthodox Christian communions are just not that different.
Also, I would like to point out that atheists have a very strong faith. Thiers’ is a faith in the senses and rational mind to delimit the physical/supraphysical cosmos. Almost all modern atheists are neo-Epicureans. If it was not for the deficiencies of modern education, they (and we) would understand this…
June 30th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
Not true, Christopher. Most of us believe - based on a lifetime’s experience, and not simply on faith - that senses and reason are useful for understanding the world around us, on a human scale (and I don’t know any atheist who claims they are perfect and 100% reliable, as your phrase “strong faith” implies). You could define faith broadly enough to make your statement true, but if you do that the word loses its value.
The only people I’ve heard these days who say, “If it doesn’t make sense to me, it can’t be true” and apply that to “the cosmos” have been theistic creationists.
Epicurus believed in teaching natural philosophy in order to promote calm, and his cosomology (and theology) had more to do with that than with reason and evidence. This is a far cry from modern science, which modern atheists respect greatly, and which aims at true and testable facts rather than comforting ones.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
Joseph,
You make my point. You have faith in your “experience” (and your interpretation of that experience) that your sense (and it’s extension - modern science and its instrumentation). You draw certain conclusions from this experience (e.g. that there is not a God, the this God did not create ex nihilo, etc.) As to your instrumentalist view of Epicurus’ cosmology/metaphysics, you could say the same about modern neo-Epicureans or just about any belief system. The question is, is it true? Not sure how this is a “far cry” from “modern science”, by which you really mean (I think) modern scientism.
Bottom line, the argument that modern neo-Epicureans have a special epistemology (the heralded “modern science”) that puts them above “faith” is erroneous…
July 2nd, 2006 at 10:19 am
You make mine - if you define the word “faith” so that it includes the results of observation and experience, then the word “faith” means everything, and so means nothing. This is the fallacy of equivocation - covering very different things with the same word, in the hopes of establishing equivalence. The man who believes that cows exist is not doing the same thing as the man who believes that Jinn exist (except in a trivial sense).
I do not directly “draw from experience” the view that God does not exist. Rather, since there is nothing obvious about Him, I look at the evidence for His existence. It hasn’t improved since Cicero wrote The Nature of the Gods - in fact, it has gotten considerably weaker - and versions of God that people actually believe in become less convincing with time, leaving the possibility that He does exist so small that I can rightly call it “unbelief.” Again, you can stretch the word “faith” and say that it includes “examining evidence and drawing conclusions from it,” but if you do you’re simply maiming the language.
My “instrumentalist view” of Epicurus’ natural philosophy is Epicurus’ own view - he was quite explicit about it (see 9-13 here: http://www.epicurus.info/etexts/PD.html ). The only reason to study nature was to stop being “troubled” by the mythic versions. You could say it about any belief system, but it wouldn’t be true of most of them.
Thus, when Epicurus taught that “the sun is a big lump of earth similar to pumice-stone and sponge-like, which has been set on fire through its holes,” he wasn’t engaged in serious scientific inquiry as we understand it - he was, however, fashioning a far more tranquil view than the idea that sunlight, and everything that depends on it, is dependent on a strange and whimsical set of gods who needed to be propitiated.
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:32 pm
Joseph,
We obviously disagree on many things, but let me focus on your definition of “faith”. You define it such that it can only mean a systematized (or perhaps not so systemized) belief system about the super/supra natural world. In other words, for you it really means “religion” as found in a sociology 101 text. Problem is, that’s not what it really means. You “have faith” is your particular sense experience and the neo-epicurean system you derive from your interpretation of that sense experience. The idea that because you ’stand aloof, as it were from your assertion of facts (i.e. “scientifically”) that yours is a epistemology different from other “faiths” (’such as the world has never seen’ as Bacon would say) has been debunked for hundreds of years now. Your neo-Epicureanism is confirmed further by your last post. It is your faith, and it give s the meaning you have about life, the universe, and everything. You will not find much sympathy for you trying to privilege it from Traditional Christians…;)
July 4th, 2006 at 4:54 am
Actually, I said nothing of the kind. The definition I’m using here is “Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence” (def. 2 at dictionary.com).
Since the inputs of your senses are themselves material evidence, to take them as a starting point is not “faith” in the same sense that beleving “The Koran is the book of which there is no doubt” is faith. If you are using words at all, you are taking for granted the sense impressions you used to learn the words.
To blur the distinction is to practice selective deconstructionism, which too many modern believers are attracted to: “You rely on hearsay to believe in Julius Caesar, so you might as well believe that Mohammed split the moon, or Jesus withered the fig tree…it’s all faith, it’s all the same…My ‘faith’ that God slew the firstborn of Egypt is no different from your ‘faith’ that mosquitoes bite or fire will burn you, or that gravity obeys the inverse-square law…all the same.” There was a time (Cicero’s time) when you could still build a rational, evidentary argument for believing in gods without resort to this stuff. That time is past.
Epicurus’ argument for the existence of gods was dreadfully weak even in his own day (”Everyone believes in gods, so they must exist. Everyone believes the gods are blessed, so they spend all their time contemplating their own virtue, and don’t interfere in the world.”) It was well designed to make the believer calm and happy; but its evidentiary standard was appalling. It has nothing to do with what modern unbelievers think. So why do you call their thinking “neo-epicurean”?
July 4th, 2006 at 5:23 am
P.S. - To be perfectly clear: When Epicurus taught about nature or the gods, he was looking for whatever conclusions brought the most peace of mind. When unbelievers like me study the world, we want to believe what is actually, objectivly true.
Deconstructionist-style believers (”It’s all faith, it’s all the same, so you might as well believe in my wonderful, invisible world…”) are a lot closer to Epicurus than I am on this point.