LORD I BELIEVE, HELP THOU MY UNBELIEF

Hanns F Skoutajan

“Scientists prove God exists? Two scientists say they have.” So announced the headline  in the Science and Beyond section of the Epoch Times. I pick up this interesting weekly publication at my local coffee emporium. 

“The theory says,” The Times quotes two German scientists, “that God, or a supreme being, is that for which no greater can be conceived. God exists in the understanding.  If God exists in the understanding, we could imagine God to be greater by existing in reality. Therefore God must exist.”

Hmm!?

It reminded me of the occasion when I visited my cousin Gerhard, an international tax lawyer who lives in Germany. One evening we were sitting on his balcony enjoying a glass or two of Rhine wine (Bad Durkheim Feuerberg). Pleasant music was emanating from the spa down in the valley. It created a stimulating background for this evening of reminiscing and conversation. Much of it had to do with our lives before war separated us.

Suddenly my cousin eyed me seriously and he almost spat out the question as if it had been waiting on his tongue for a long time, “ Hanns, do you believe in God?” I was shocked, to say the least, at this turn of our conversation. Gerhard, if not an atheist is certainly an agnostic, not unusual for a revenue attorney, I suppose. 

Gerhard had experienced a hard life, had been conscripted into the German forces, the medical corps for he had had plans of becoming a doctor. He thus managed to avoid active service working in a naval hospital. After returning home to Czechoslovakia  at the end of the war he was forced to work in a coal mine where he became quite ill. Subsequently he and his parents were among the 3.5 million ethnic Germans being expelled from their Czech homeland. By freight train they and a few possessions were taken to a war devastated Germany, the US sector, and temporarily put up in an  empty school building. The Red Cross had set up a soup kitchen and provided sustenance for these many expellees. At wars end 14 million ethnic Germans, mostly women, children and old people, men were either imprisoned or dead,  were on the move in the largest voelkerwanderung in all history. In time Gerhard managed to go to university where he excelled. Instead of medicine, the faculty was full, he studied law which suits his intelligence and temperament perfectly.

I relate all this to give you some sense that my cousin had experienced life at its worst and now at its best. He has a beautiful home on a hill overlooking the spa town of Bad Durkheim and travels the world a great deal.

We are very close and we hold each other in high esteem. His query about my belief was not facetious although he is quite capable of that.  For my first nine years of life we virtually grew up together.  Twenty year after our parting we met again. I had finished my theological studies and been ordained a minister and now was doing post grad studies in Germany. What difference had our life experiences made in our beliefs, is a good question.

I parried his verbal assault, “ Before I can answer your question I must know your definition of God.” But Gerd persisted in true courtroom interrogation style, “ Hanns, yes or no, do you believe in God?”

Because we are good friends the vigour of his cross examination soon abated and I admitted that I believed in a God but not the kind that Goedl and Benzmueller, the two German scientists who believed they had proved the existence of God wrote about. God is not dead, they insisted as Nietsche their fellow countryman  had averred many years  earlier, but is  “a being  for which no greater can be conceived.”

Their argument had some similarity to that of Paul Tillich, the German American theologian, who called God the Ground of All Being. John Shelby Spong, a retired Episcopal bishop in the United States, who is my mentor, agrees with Tillich but goes beyond. He grew up in an evangelical family and church and then through hard biblical and theological studies reached a new enlightenment. By his many books and lectures in the United States and Canada and elsewhere this theologian became the voice of progressive Christianity. To many he seems to have gone too far, but not for me, he makes perfect sense.

In a recent article in the United Church Observer, (November ’13) Ken Gallinger, a well known minister and personal friend, announced that he had left the ministry and indeed the United Church of Canada.  He quotes from a conversation he had with a member of one of his congregations. Roy had challenged him, “ Why have you lied to me all my life? You ministers knew this stuff ( biblical criticism). Why haven’t the ministers of this church had the courage to go into the pulpit and share what you knew with us dumb lay people?” Gallinger thought long and agonizingly about this challenge and wrote, “ So like many others, I lost my church. But lost my faith?  Not so much.

On the previous pages of this excellent magazine, Rev. Gretta Vosper,  minister of West Hill United Church and Rev. Connie denBok of Alderwood United Church in Toronto dialogued about their beliefs. Vosper who calls herself a Christian atheist, scarcely uses the word God in her worship while denBok is much more traditional in her worship, indeed I would call her an evangelical. Both are highly intelligent and honest people of faith, though their faith differs significantly. Vosper is a great admirer of Bishop Spong and I can only imagine that denBok disagrees with his radical theology. All this points to a lively debate within the denomination.

In his book Why Christianity Must Change or Die ( Harper Collins 1998) Spong concludes: “I am first and always a believer. I define myself as a believer in exile. I have lived and worshipped as a believer. I shall continue to do so and to be so until the day I die. When that moment comes, I expect to enter even more deeply into the reality of the God in whom I have lived and moved and had my being.” In these words he expresses my own radical/progressive faith.

His God is a mystery but also very personal. God is within, not above or beyond creation. It is not a God that science can prove or disprove. Nor can I affirm this God with a yes or no  as my cousin had demanded. God is to be lived. 

SQ  15/ 11/ 2013

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