An explanation? I doubt it!

I am in two minds about publishing this since it is so deeply personal. However, if it helps someone out of a dark place then perhaps it is worth the exposure.

I relish my time of prayer on Saturday when I have a little time to disappear into a space within myself and meet with God. Of course I usually nod off, but do so remembering that "He gives to His beloved sleep". However, lately prayer has not been a very pleasant experience.

About a month ago, I sat in my chair trying to bring my latest attempts to demonstrate how wrong Dawkins is to the College, when I first heard a voice that came from my own being say "but really now, there is no God. You're just play-acting, aren't you? You're doing your old trick of taking the standpoint of a minority and argue it, just for the intellectual exercise."

To say that I was deeply worried that such a voice can come from me is an understatement. God has been part of my life since birth - I was Baptised and Anglican and have been attending Mass on Sundays for practically all my life, and here is a voice which is my own, telling me that really it was all play-acting and that God did not exist.

Well of course, I found this occurrence disturbing. When you've put a lot of work into the Church, spent time in training and reading, listening and praying with people and preaching sermons, the last thing you want to hear is that not only have you wasted your time, but you've actually missed out on some of Life's joys such as a lie-in on Sunday morning.

My relationship with God is better (when I haven't fallen into sin and crushed myself with guilt) lately since I've made a little more space for Him during Advent. I still have the little atheistic voice within me, but I'm wondering that it's there because I'm moving into a new way of thinking about God and the old way wasn't good enough. Perhaps that voice has been saying that the idea of "God" that I was holding onto is not God, thus the concept of God that I had been holding in my deeply Thomist/Mathematical fashion was not good enough. In that sense my atheistic voice is right God doesn't exist in the way that I though He exists, and that's actually quite a comfort to me.

I have been tracking the source of this voice, and I believe that I have found whence it comes. If we believe in God because His existence explains things, then we come up against the possibility of other explanations. The way that the Lord walked on water may be explicable through hidden stepping stones, or that due to a very special set of circumstances, the Lord made use of special waves which increased the surface tension of the water - unlikely, but it's an explanation- or that it simply didn't happen and the Bible is wrong in the literal sense of Jesus walking on water.

There are some very convincing explanations as to how the plagues of Egypt followed a pattern resulting from a volcanic eruption which also explains the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night. However, the idea is that any Biblical account has a rational explanation and that it always has to be scientific.

Of course, the phrase "scientific explanation" has the unfortunate association with atheism, when in fact Science properly done is neutral, and it is only our worldviews that give science a theistic or atheistic spin. It doesn't actually bother me whether or not there is a scientific explanation for the Miracles of Christ, or for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. If some occurrence causes me to wonder, or to be struck with awe, or points me to God in any way, then that is a miracle, at least for me. Miracles, like music, are icons in Time, as opposed to Space, windows into the Reality of God.

I remember sitting on a train and being struck by the presence of a hand-hold on the top of the seat in front of me, which brought me to consider its purpose, and the intention of its design, and that brought me to God. In that sense, that insignificant object was a miracle for me. It wasn't there to be explained, or to explain God's existence, it was just there. And God is just there as well.

Sometimes I wonder if using the existence of God as an explanation for why things are is a form of taking His name in vain. The Church has made mistakes in the past in making dogmatic statements about Reality which are untested and never actually stated as articles of faith within Tradition or Holy Scripture. These dogmatic statements can lead us to a "God of the gaps" whereby God explains that which cannot be explained by Science, and as Science probes deeper, God shrinks. God does not shrink, so our concept of God is too small.

There are many exciting questions about the nature of reality that a neutral Science with its truly open mind can seek to answer. It will not find God, because the existence of God is metaphysical not scientific. I have found philosophical difficulties with the Eternity of God in opposition to our free will and His Omniscience. But seeing that Scientifically we do not know what Time is, let alone why we can only move forward and not backwards, our understanding of Eternity leaves us with an Eternity that is only understandable from within Time, and not from God's perspective. Nor do we know all that is to know, because we know that there is truth that we cannot know scientifically but nonetheless exists as being true thanks to Gödel.

Why do I believe in God, then, if His existence is not to be used as an explanation for why I'm here? I believe in God because He's there and there is no vocabulary in my mind that I can use to produce an any more verifiable assertion than that. I have felt Him move within the fabric of my being, and, like Descartes, I do not believe myself capable of generating the sensations that this movement produces. To the outsider, what I am writing is utterly meaningless, but then I'm not writing to convince anyone that God exists.

So, where does that leave me with this voice of atheism still chirping occasionally when I'm trying to pray? Well, I suppose it leaves me exactly where I always have been, but appreciating that I simply do not believe in the same God that the atheists do not believe in. My image of God has been destroyed, and that's a good thing. I've been deliberately trying not to have an image of God for some time. The God that created this universe does not need to explain Himself or to be used as an explanation for why things are. Things are, because He wants them to be and that's all the explanation that a believer needs. I cannot help the unbeliever to believe by explanation because there will always be as counter-explanation which may be more or less convincing.

It does leave me somewhat blinder in prayer, and I suppose the work of the next coming months will be to find out where He has moved to and how I am better to approach Him this time.