Part 4: the magic and the mystery
As a teenager, I was pressured into taking a class at church about how to “witness” to people. This was a step-by-step program designed to have you meet a stranger and engage them with questions about their personal beliefs about the afterlife in a matter of minutes. The conversation was invasive, pushy and very uncomfortable for everyone involved. The class taught any wannabe pushy Christians how to not only engage in a conversation about eternal judgement, but also argue for a belief in God. The entire premise was that you could learn to prove that Jesus was the only way to Heaven. We were given talking points and potential arguments so that we could prepare for these conversations. While I was far too introverted to ever follow any of the class advice, I did come away with the idea that religious beliefs could be argued and proven like a scientific equation.
Later in life, I came to understand that faith is the opposite of proof. You actually don’t have to have faith if you think you can prove it. The very nature of faith, at least as the historical Jesus presented it, is that it is magic. I can’t prove to you that God is real, but I can feel the magic of God in my life. Sure, I can teach you dogma and doctrine and lay out proof in historical documents about why those beliefs are held by a certain group, but I can’t make you feel God in this Chili’s. Only God can do that. Or Chili’s. I’m honestly not really sure who would be responsible for that.
I believe in magic. Not the weird guys making the Statue of Liberty disappear, but the gut feeling you have about something without any facts or data. The coincidence of meeting a specific person at a specific time. The feeling of a comforting presence in the darkest night of your life.
If you hold Christian beliefs and believe the Bible, how could you not believe in magic. What do you think a miracle is anyway? When water was turned into wine, two guys walked on the surface of the water, thousands of people were fed by a basket of food and a couple of dead guys just got up and walked out of their graves, how is that not magic? Where’s your data and science in those stories? You can’t prove those things to anyone, especially when they don’t naturally accept your book and beliefs. And please stop with the shroud of Turin and Noah’s ark. No, you can’t prove that cloth was wrapped around the historical Jesus and they didn’t just find Noah’s boat. Just like you can’t prove the walls fell down in Jericho or that a huge group of people crossed a large body of water and then a desert. Proof is not why those stories are important. Proof is not a part of the narrative. Faith is. Get yourself comfortable with magic.
So I have magic, but I also have mystery. This may be my favorite part about what I believe now.
When you hear the word “God”, what do you imagine? I realize I’m a visual person, but I was conditioned to see a white haired older man, Caucasian, in a white robe. “He” was usually above me looking down and he never quite seemed happy. I probably even saw him with a judgy expression on his face. He was stern and serious. He didn’t laugh. If you’re not a visual person, I’m truly interested in what you imagine when you hear the word.
Church taught me to use words like “Father”. This meant God was not only some sort of man-like thing, but that he also had a definite form. A body. I imagined this large man-like form, very similar to Michelangelo’s God figure floating on clouds and whipping his hands around while casually creating the Universe. All of this, of course, is nonsense.
A true God, who was whatever God was before the known Universe was created and is limitless in power, presence and knowledge, will not be contained in anything like a human body. The Bible tells us that God is love (1 John 4:8). That’s interesting, especially if you choose to take it literally. Love is a feeling, an emotion and a chosen action. Does this mean that God is your choice to love others? The Bible also tells us that God is light (1 John 1:5). Even more interesting if you choose to take that literally. What do you know about light? In the scientific world, there’s been a good bit of talk about photons in recent years. Photons are light, or, they are the bits and pieces that make up light. They’re puzzling though, because they sometimes behave as particles and sometimes behave as waves. Even cooler, repeated experiments using the double slit method have suggested that photons behave differently when they are observed. Right? That’s just ridiculous. How could these atomic level things know they are being watched by humans. And why would they care? HOW would they care? What if it were true that God is light? Atomic level things beyond description, defying rules and doing whatever they want.
Everything you see as a human is because of light. Your very existence leans heavily on the presence of light. What if God is the very presence that allows you to see and experience life on this planet?
Is this what I believe? Well, not exactly, but can you even allow yourself to wonder, what if? You see, I believe that God is not anything we can think or imagine. Everything about our human experience is limited by the fact that we are human. We know for a fact that there are things that we cannot see, hear, smell, taste or touch that do, in fact, exist. There is more to our world than our limited senses. “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” to quote the Bible, just kidding, that’s Shakespeare. God, too, is beyond our comprehension. I don’t know much about spirituality for certain, but I am certain that whatever God is, is something you can’t be certain about. God is a mystery.
If you are the kind of person who hates questions and hates mystery, true belief in God may not be for you. Maybe it’s better if you stay in a subculture that assures you that everything can be proven and everything makes sense. You’ll enjoy arguing with people and judging them. I believe magic and mystery is a better, more loving way to live.
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