Dichroic Reflections

personal cosmogony

I was just reading, in a blog I read regularly, someone's explaination about why she is absolutely, unutterably sure she's going to Heaven. I'm writing my response over here instead of in a comment and am not linking to her on purpose, because I have no desire at all to question or shake anyone else's faith; I just want to delve into why the whole idea seems so bizarre to me.

To start with, not only can I not imagine it, but I have no desire to be that sure. I like the idea that "The Universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." I can understand the idea of debating what happens after death because it's the biggest puzzle we have and so why wouldn't you want to think about it? I can understand trusting in a benevolent Creator* that if you do your best to live a good life things will all work out; I can't see wanting to spoil the grandest adventure by knowing all the details ahead of time. (Which doesn't make a ton of sense for someone who often peeks at the endings of books, but there you have it.)

*My use of the word Creator does not in any way imply belief in a literal six day creation. I suppose it would be possible to create a universe with all the clues to its history ready planted, but 1) Why bother? 2) It seems natural to assume that even if such were the case, said Creator would have placed those clues there to be followed.

Second, one facet of her reasoning was that the way to get to Heaven was to believe in Jesus because God said so.. That theorem derives logically from the postulate that the Gospels are the literal truth. Problem is, I don't see why I should accept that postulate. We don't have independent historical records of Jesus words or even of his life (though we do of some of the milieu in which he existed). If he did exist and did speak truth, there's no way to know it was captured in the Gospels - there doesn't seem to be a solid agreement on their dates, but current guesses put them all from decades to a century after Jesus's death. And then there are all the possibilities of change from early to later versions of the books, either from deliberate theological differences or errors in copying, and the even likelier chance of erros in translation.

There are a couple of other ways to look at it that don't depend on historical record. One is to believe because so many others are sure of the truth of those words - the obvious problems with that is that there are so many people equally sure of the teachings of Mohammed or Buddha or the Rabbis or the Vedas. Even among Christians there are equally fervent believers in the primacy of good works versus faith, or in both. Another is to believe because of the internal proof of truth - C.S. Lewis's point in Mere Christianity. When I read that book, I found his argument for the existence of God compelling, for Jesus specifically not so much. Since those were exactly the prejudices with which I went into the book, I concluded none of the arguments could be trusted. (Disclaimer: I actually listened to an audiobook version from the library, and a few parts were garbled. I really ought to reread the book, in fairness.)

There's also the case that one ought to believe in the teachings of Jesus because many of them coincide with the teachings of other great leaders or with the innate sense of good Lewis postulated in us. That makes sense to me, but I can do that without believing in the divinity of Jesus. Lewis's argument against that was that to believe some of his words but not others is to believe Jesus was a liar, but I disagree. If he was a mortal man, he was prone to error like the rest of us. Or his words could have been misunderstood or mistranslated (I often wonder if "I am the Son of God" was really meant to mean "I am the only son of God.").

These things I do believe: it is worth living the best life you can given the definition of "good" as you understand it; at a minimum you will know you have lived up to your own standards and done good work with the tools you were issued, and at a maximum you may please Someone Else. And if there is an afterlife run by a truly benevolent and merciful God, as some people claim, S/He will not say, "Well, you did your best but you picked the wrong set of books. I hope you like things hot!" because that would betray those very qualities.

Of course if things turn out to be run by Loki or Murphy, all bets are off. But in those cases there's no safe way to bet anyhow, so you may as well not plan for them.

I hope it's clear in all of the above that I am not trying to attack or discredit anyone else's faith, just explainng why some things don't work for me. Feel free to comment politely in either agreement or disagreement. Don't bother telling me I'm going to Hell unless you can prove that one of my points is false, and I mean a real proof with actual logic. Posted by dichroic at January 31, 2006 11:57 AM