Believing

 

‘Christianity isn't any less true just because it's less widely believed’

(Sam Wells, priest and theologian)

The other day, in the car, I heard part of a programme on Radio 4 (‘Inside Science’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000cc1v). They were discussing how difficult it can be for us to grasp some of the more complicated aspects of maths and physics. And so, it was said, we explain a lot of it using analogy and metaphor.

Hmmmm.... so it seems that some things in science are so far beyond our grasp or language that we have to explain them in a different kind of way to allow us to understand and grasp the concept (if only a little!). Think of the famous space / time / gravity analogy of a rubber sheet and a ball. But of course all such analogies are limited... even misleading. But we need them to begin to access the deeper truths.

Interesting.

As a Christian I am constantly amazed and bewildered that some of those who do not share my faith reject it on the basis not of what most Christians actually believe about God and life etc, but on some crude and inadequate pictures of God that at best may have had some limited value in a Sunday School class for young children, or at worst are simply the creation of presumption.

So when someone says ‘I do not believe in God’, it can help the conversation to ask in turn ‘And what God is it that you don’t believe in’. How often it transpires that the God they do not believe in, I don’t believe in either!

Analogy and metaphor are necessary in language about faith, but they can too easily limit, distort or mislead, just as they can in science.

This is not to say that we can approach faith in exactly the same way as we do science. It is simply to say that there are some parallels in terms of the use of language to attempt to describe the indescribable.

At this time of year, many people who would not regard themselves as ‘believers’ nonetheless find themselves wondering, questioning and even attending church and singing carols! What is it that draws them?

Nostalgia?

The attempt to engage with what they presume to be a ‘traditional Christmas’ (which is of course nothing of the sort, but a Victorian / Dickensian construct)?

An appreciation of the music, atmosphere, candles etc?

Very possibly.

But is there not something else going on, at least for some? Perhaps it is a longing to believe even although they do not. Perhaps the recognition that at some deep place within, there remains the spark of belief. Perhaps the Christmas Story (even those bits that may be considered by some to be analogy and metaphor) speaks of something beyond the story itself that is ultimately true and this stirs in the heart some brief awakening of faith.

At Christmas there are opportunities for us all to think again about our ‘believing’ or ‘unbelieving’ and ask some questions about these. But we might also look at what is stirring within us... our feelings... our deeper sense...not simply our thoughts.

The child within us may not be wrong! Do we need – at least for a moment – to set aside doubt and denial, cynicism and calculation?

And just because we need to speak of some of these very deep things in terms of metaphor and analogy does not mean that the analogy or metaphor are actually what believers believe! (or at least, not all that they believe!)

And just because, in this moment of our history, because fewer people in Western Society are believers, does not make Christianity untrue. Truth is not determined by majority opinion.