[StBernard] God Squad for Thursday October 13, 2011

[Westley Annis]

I felt this was worth passing on to everyone, especially if you have kids.

Westley

-----Original Message-----

 God Squad

By Rabbi Marc Gellman, Tribune Media Services
Q: My 12-year-old son has been telling me he's having doubts about the
existence of God. He says there's no proof that there is a God. I tell him
that when you look around and see the beauty of the world and the wonder of
the universe, you have to imagine that God is behind those. Even Einstein
believed! I tell him some things are "unknowable" and can never be "proved,"
and that's where faith comes in. He seems to be struggling with this and has
brought it up many times. I really don't know what else to tell him. Can you
help? 

By the way, thanks for the beautiful summary of your High Holiday sermons
last week. I've kept several of your columns over the years, and this is one
of them. -- Anonymous, via godsquadquestion at aol.com 

A: Thank you. Several of my congregants asked me during High Holy Day
Services if reading the summary of my sermons in the paper meant they could
leave early. I told them all prayers had to be over 900 words for God to
hear them! 

As for your question about your spiritually-questioning son, let me suggest
several "moves" (that's what I call answers to questions we can't really
answer). I've previously offered these moves to others with the same
question. 

The first move is to answer his questions with a question. I must give
credit to the Buddha for this one, since it was the answer he gave to his
disciples when they asked him if the world was created or eternal. He
answered, "Of what significance is this question for you?" 

I understand that your son is questioning the existence of God, but why is
that question important to him? You need to discover the question behind his
question. Perhaps his question is about morality. As Dostoevsky supposedly
wrote, "If God does not exist, everything is permitted." 

I say "supposedly" because Dostoevsky never wrote those words in his novel
"The Brother Karamazov." They do however express the view of Ivan in the
novel and those words are wrongly quoted by the French existentialist
philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, which gave rise to this tradition. 

In any event, the point is that many people struggling with the constraints
of the moral life feel that one reason to do good is that God is watching
and taking names. If that's your son's view, remind him that doing the right
thing just because it's right is enough of a reason. Leave God's punishments
out of the calculus we make about our moral lives. 

Perhaps your son's question is about life after death. He may be wondering
if death is indeed the end of us. In a choice between heaven/hell on one
hand and worms on the other, I choose heaven/hell, but even here I'm open to
a world where I'm wrong and the worms are licking their lips waiting for my
demise. 

I hope for heaven, but I don't live what I hope is a moderately virtuous
life just because I want my heavenly ticket punched. I live a decent life
because it's right to be kind, and it's even more right to be kinder than
necessary because everyone is struggling with something big. 

Your son says there's no proof for the existence of God. Ask him, "What do
you think would constitute such a valid proof?" Seeing a watch proves to me
that there's a watchmaker and seeing the world and our bodies and the
perfection of nature proves to me that there's a world maker in exactly the
same way. If that doesn't work for your son, ask him how he explains order
and hope and love and self-sacrifice and courage. 

There's a tendency among all adolescents and adults who are stuck in
adolescent adulthood to become frustrated when the great mysteries of
existence are not amenable to instantaneous solutions. The antidote to this
intellectual impatience is intellectual patience and the simple wisdom
gleaned from a life lived in a noble manner. 

To this very point, have him read, or read to him this letter, written by
the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke (d.1929) to a young poet, (trans. by
Stephen Mitchell, Random House, 1984): 

"I would like to beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your
heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms
or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers,
which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live
them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps
then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing
it, live your way into the answer." 

Here's hoping that someday all of us, including your son, will be able to
live our way into the answer. -- God bless, Marc 

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