knife-edge

It seems as though faith is a knife-edge between atheism and idolatry.

What is the difference between a man who lives the Christian life in a world in which Christ actually lives, and an identical man who lives the Christian life in a world with a merely metaphorical Christ?  It seems possible to “follow” Christ without him living, in the sense that the Buddha can be followed, or as in following in the footsteps of any number of historical figures.  What we mean is that we act in a way similar to such historical figures, and we use their names as symbols, representative of certain precepts and principles.  So it is possible, it seems, for an atheist to follow Christ if by that we mean loving neighbor as self, etc.  In this sense Christ represents ideals like love, justice, mercy, forgiveness, peace, purity.  All language of scripture, perhaps, can be twisted to be metaphorical.  The kingdom of God is a metaphor for a society that  loves neighbor as self, not a place where a real, physical, tangible god establishes his rule.  The church is identical to the body of Christ; there is no Christ distinct from this group of Christians on the earth.  The Holy Spirit is some kind of collective power, a unity of will and heightened potential, not a comforter, not a personal being, not the very soul of God. I am frustrated by my inability to say what I mean, because it seems words themselves refer to something other than themselves.  Even in description of the kingdom of God as the place where a “real, physical, tangible” god rules, I am already equating “real” with “physical” and excluding from “real” all metaphor and symbol.  Can we reduce any of this to its most basic, non-referential state of existence, something that just IS, independent of any description or analogy?  Is there an ultimate definition, or a fundamental one?

The point I’m struggling toward is this: the life of a Christian in a world with a living Christ must be qualitatively different than the life of the same Christian in a world of a merely metaphorical Christ.  But how?

Perhaps at core this an epistemological question.  How can we know Christ, and know that we know him?  And what do I mean by “know”? Is knowledge certainty, and if so, what kind?  Before we fall into some kind of Cartesian abyss, perhaps we can latch onto the evangelical emphasis on the person of Christ, in having a personal relationship with him.

With this in mind, maybe the confidence of knowledge I can have in Christ is like the confidence of knowledge I can have in people around me.  I know my parents love me because I can mentally recognize their goodwill and good actions toward me.  I know because they tell me they love me.  I know because I have experience of that love and the corresponding emotional feeling upon receiving such love.  Maybe experiential knowledge is the most reliable kind of knowledge we can have.

But if this is the case, then we must also have experiential knowledge of Christ similar in some way to my relationship with my parents.  But do I?  I have no physical Christ who I can wrap my arms around; I cannot smell him, cannot see him, cannot hear him.  And yet I have had experience in which I’ve felt like he is real, that he does love me, that he is working.  But of what does this feeling consist?  What is the feeling?  It is a sense, but not sensory.  So how do I know that it’s not a mere mental development, a momentary resolve to trust in abstraction?

I want to say Jesus is not real.  There is no divine man walking the earth who I can literally follow, whose footsteps I can see, whose actions I can imitate, whose breath I can smell when he speaks to me.  There are no heavenly vocal chords to pulsate the air with the words “follow me”, and so my eardrums remain unmoved.  Following him, so it seems, is founded upon a mental decision to imagine and believe, and then act physically in accordance with the image in one’s brain.  This seems a supremely flawed way of life, especially if God is “real”, or if he expects humanity to know Jesus only through 2000 year old text.  It can only yield idolatry, because our mental images of Jesus will never be perfect.  We create Jesus in our own image.  But since there is no Jesus upon whom my eyes may rest, I must choose a creation of my own imagination or no image at all.

However, even if I must go with my imagination, I can still live obediently according to the image of Christ in my mind.  But this reduces faith to individual choice of one narrative over another, of action rather than inaction, of specific actions rather than alternative actions.

Maybe the reason I, in my arrogance, don’t see people following Jesus is because there is no Jesus to follow.  The best we can do is act upon our imaginations.  We can’t live like the disciples because they looked him in the eye, had their feet washed with his hands, put their fingers into the wound in his side.  We can’t live like them because we can’t sense like them, because we can’t perceive him.

A blind man can follow with his ears and with his touch.  He can grope around despite the darkness.  Take away his ears and his feeling and he can still use his nose.  Remove his sense of smell, and at least he can still barely taste.  Cut him off completely from the world through the subjectivity of his senses and what remains?  Is willful movement possible without tactility?  With no senses, subjective as they may be, there might as well be no world, because one would be powerless to perceive it and act within it.

Are we really to have faith unbased on any senses?  Are we supposed to follow a Jesus who might as well not exist?  This does not sound like a living God.  This sounds like a man who died on a tree 2000 years ago and stayed dead.

Good Friday.

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