Sentient consciousness is a marvelous gift; I’m really glad I exist.
I would be happy to thank Someone for every glorious breath that life grants me; I just can’t quite figure out whom to thank. God? Which one?
I’m a devout deist because my Creator has endowed me with the type of brain which renders me incapable of experiencing a connection to an anthropomorphized God. I can’t imagine ever giving myself over to the God of the Christians, for example. First of all, a God who wishes to be exalted by the likes of me would be all too human for me to take seriously. Moreover, there are billions of people on Earth who believe in reincarnation while billions of other people believe in heaven. These are two mutually incompatible outcomes of existence. Maybe billions of people are right and billions of people are wrong. Who knows? Fortunately, it’s not my task in life to figure these things out.
To be clear, I am not one of those New Atheists who hates God for not existing. On the contrary, I encounter many things in Christianity that are good and beautiful. I’m all for fellowship, good works, humility, and forgiveness; furthermore, the Peace Christians are my heroes. (And I really don’t think grownups should have heroes.)
But the universe got along just fine for a long, long time before human beings came onto the scene, so it’s obvious that Existence really isn’t about us.
For some reason or another, human beings have developed the capacity to appreciate the fact that we exist. At any rate, for me, life remains a blessing, as W. H. Auden notes in “As I Walked Out One Evening,” his bleak and lovely meditation on Christianity
This brings me to the Christian concept of grace. Although there is much bickering over the theological specifics of grace within and between Christian denominations, grace is basically the notion that human beings have done nothing to deserve the love and mercy bestowed upon us by God. Instead of arguing about how loving and merciful God actually is, I will simply concede that our existence is unearned. Life is a mysterious take-it-or-leave-it proposition. And griping about how life should be different is a silly waste of our precious time on Earth.
As Robert Pinsky notes in “Family Values,” his bleak and lovely poem about resentment and cupidity,
nobody gets what they/ Deserve more than everybody else.
Does anyone deserve to have an unhappy childhood? Of course not. But this world is not about fairness.
The universe wasn’t built for us. But it’s a spectacular privilege to be granted the slight and brief glimpse that our limited consciousness affords.
I don’t “hope for higher raptures, when life’s day is done.” The physical world is sufficiently marvelous for me.
I’ll leave the final word on grace to Kris Kristofferson.
by Richard W. Bray
Tags: As I Walked Out One Evening, Christianity, Christopher Hitchens, deism, Family Values, God, grace, Kris Kristofferson, Religion, Robert Pinsky, The Church of The Brethren, The New Athiests, The Society of Friends, W.H. Auden, Why Me Lord?
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May 22, 2016 at 4:15 am
[…] As an ardent nonbeliever, I don’t see how human existence signifies anything beyond itself. But our existence is nonetheless pretty awesome when considered on its own terms. […]