Judging by how much ink is being spilled these days on books about the divine, God is alive and well, at least in print. Visit your local bookstore, any will do, and you will likely find titles with God front and centre. Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens may think they’ve delivered the knockout punch to faith in a secular age, but God keeps bouncing back, the ultimate come-back kid. Let me mention just a few titles worth reading.
One of the brightest and best-selling advocates for God these days is Karen Armstrong, a former nun who’s written extensively about religion. In her new book, The Case for God, she argues in favour of something called apophatic theology: “the belief that human categories are not capable of conceptualizing God.” Reacting to all the chatter about God today by atheists and religionists alike, she properly reminds us that God often prefers and merits silence. Not much can be said about God with certainty because the finite can neither contain nor comprehend the infinite. To quote Gregory of Nyssa: “Concepts create idols, only wonder grasps anything.”
In another interesting new book, God Hides in Plain Sight: How to See the Sacred in a Chaotic World, journalism professor Dean Nelson takes a slightly different tact and writes, “For those with eyes to see glimpses of the divine are everywhere.” Nelson suggests that we should seek the Lord where he may be found, in everyday life, in the ordinary means of grace, in the sacraments, the word, and prayer. As one reviewer notes, “Nelson’s stories bespeak the God who revealed himself to Elijah not in an earthquake or a fire but in a whisper.”
For a global perspective you may want to check out God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World by John Micklewait and Adrian Wooldridge. Micklewait is editor in chief of The Economist and Wooldridge is its Washington bureau staff person. They take a look at how and why religious faith is booming around the world in places like Russia and Turkey and India and Nigeria and Brazil and China. Rather than killing religion, modernization has spawned a revival of faith. Whether we like it or not, in today’s world God really does matter.
If you’re up to a more challenging read I suggest The Evolution of God by Robert Wright. The author takes us on a sweeping journey through the histories of the three Abrahamic faiths — Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and tries to show a pattern of evolution in each. He thinks that the faith experienced in these three related traditions points to transcendent ideals with common spiritual and ethical values. In his judgment, this shows that “the religious quest is valid, and that a modern scientific worldview leaves room for something that can meaningfully be called divine.”
For a decidedly Canadian (and somewhat prickly) take on all this you might want to pick up God Is. (the period is part of the title) by novelist David Adams Richards. Better known for his 2007 novel The Lost Highway, Richards writes about his search for faith in a secular world. As one reviewer notes, Richards challenges the trendy prejudices that militate against faith in a Canadian culture that values “niceness.”
Those looking for a direct and critical response to Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens should go to God and the New Atheism by John F. Haught. It gives a clear analysis of the criticisms thrown against religious faith by the new atheists and offers concise (and sometimes compelling) answers to their charges.
After you’ve dipped into the current conversation about God in the world today, you might want to go back and revisit some books by Christian writers, classic and contemporary. You can’t go wrong by starting with Augustine’s Confessions and its stunning prayer “My heart was restless until it found its rest in Thee.” Simone Weil’s Waiting For God is a series of “profound meditations on the relationship of human life to the realm of the transcendent.”
A.W. Tozer’s book The Knowledge of the Holy is an extended meditation on the attributes of God and their meaning in the Christian life. The opening sentence stopped me in my tracks when I first read it many years ago: “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” J.I. Packer’s Knowing God has worn well for almost 40 years now. So has Henri Nouwen’s Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life.
Three books from the last decade might also stimulate your thinking about the presence of God in today’s world. In Reaching for the Invisible God, Philip Yancey explores what it means to have a relationship with a God we can’t see, hear or touch. Can such a God really be known? Really be trusted? Ronald Rolheiser’s The Holy Longing: The Search For A Christian Spirituality describes what happens when human desire is rightly redirected to God. And Marcus Borg explores different ways of conceiving the divine in The God We Never Knew. As this series unfolds I invite you to add your own suggestions to the list by logging on to the website at pccweb.ca/presbyterianrecord and going to the comment section of the series.
One final observation: after I finished reviewing these books and writing this article I sat down and listened to one of my favourite CDs. It’s called Day After Tomorrow and it features Joan Baez singing the songs of Steve Earle. Earle is known for his country rock sound and his outspoken views. He’s a hard-core troubadour who’s battled drugs and alcohol addiction, and in the past has had countless run-ins with the law which occasionally landed him in jail.
As a result of his hard-scrabble life, however, he has interesting insights into faith. The opening song on the Baez CD is called God Is God. Earle’s refrain runs like this: “I believe in God, and God ain’t me … I believe in God, and God ain’t us … I believe in God, and God is God.” Those words echo the theologian Karl Barth almost a century ago: “You can’t speak about God by speaking about human beings in a loud voice.” That’s worth remembering as we look for God’s presence in a postmodern world.
February 2010 Theology Article – Questions for reflection and discussion:
- Discuss a time when God seemed very real and close to you? How did you sense God’s presence? What impact did it have on your life?
- In her book The Case for God Karen Armstrong argues for apophatic theology: “the belief that human categories are not capable of conceptualizing God.” Is there a place in Christian faith for what another writer calls “holy agnosticism?”
- The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor argues that we live in “a secular age” with people of Christian faith, people of other religious faiths, and people of no faith at all. What are the marks of a secular age and what does it mean to have Christian faith in such an age? Is it more difficult to believe now than in the past? Is it different?
- Discuss the following description of western intellectual history:
Pre-modern person: “There is a God.”
Modern person: “There is no God.”
Postmodern person: “I am God.” - What do you make of the so-called global renewal of religious faith? How are the churches of the global south affecting western Christianity?
- “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Discuss the significance of this statement by Tozer.
- Augustine prayed: “My heart was restless until it found its rest in Thee.” Is there what Ron Rolheiser calls a holy longing in all of us?
- What does it mean to see God in the everyday and ordinary events of daily life?
