No relationship is possible, if it has any value or depth at all without some degree of trust. It can also be said that all relationships that are meaningful will have times of crisis, in which the relationship can either die, or deepen, after a rift has been made. Those who drop out too quickly, I feel rob themselves of growth in trust of another, which is not only healing, but also enriches life.
With God, it is also about relationship. Rifts come, sometimes from feeling betrayed by God, perhaps through loss of a loved one, or through personal suffering, or simply put, because of the chaos and pain that is so easily seen in our world. Again, one can withdraw, perhaps even rejecting the existence of God, or move forward in trust and experience the relationship with God on an ever deeper level. Those who stay the course are often stymied at the arguments that atheist make about God’s non-existence. They often sound hollow, at least from a faith perspective and seem to flow from the fact the forgiveness is kept back from God, so any further journey into trust is impossible. Doubt can be helpful for it causes us to delve deeper in trying to understand, but to reject belief altogether, well one is stuck with ideas of God that are often childish or at the most adolescent. That may be the reason the atheism makes so little headway in the world. They have nothing to offer.
I am not saying this out of disrespect for those who do not believe, for it is often a painful choice to make and perhaps many are better with no God at all, than to have the one they have rejected. Idols fall, if they are not let go of, then we can spend our lives fighting something that really does not exist, for ideas about the infinite or by necessity limited and can imprison if clung to. That goes for theist as well as atheist. Believers cause trouble when they also fail to let go of ideas about God that they perhaps do not believe themselves but are afraid to admit. Fundamentalism can often be (though not always) a flight from doubt, a desiring for answers that perhaps come to easily and lead to just another tribe fighting others clans who are different. I believe that we are supposed to be kept off balance in this world, to seek, to doubt, to probe and to grow. One can grow into the mystery or away from it…..I believe it is always a choice.
Br. Mark Dohle, OCSO
