Inconspicuous

 

I was listening to Dr. Joshua Bowen’s deconstruction testimony. What’s deconstruction you ask? It is a phenomenon within American evangelicalism in which Christians rethink their faith and jettison previously held beliefs, sometimes to the point of no longer identifying as Christians.

Dr. Bowen was a very committed pastor that has spent most of his life preaching Christianity with the same passion he now preaches atheism. In his testimony he was sharing how he was accepted into John Hopkins for his doctorate in Sumerian studies, and he saw it as an opportunity to share the Gospel with the academicians. But things didn’t work out that way. By his own admission, it took him 45 minutes to deconstruct his faith. I thought “that’s absurd!” but kept on listening. At some point, to better illustrate the journey to his conclusion that The Scripture is all nonsense, he gave this little ‘parable’ of a married man that keeps coming home late. The wife asks him, ‘why are you coming home late every night?’ he answers that it’s for work. The wife doesn’t like the explanation, but she concludes it’s reasonable, so she takes it. Then he starts coming home both late and smelling of perfume. She gets more suspicious, but he reassures her that the colleague siting at the desk next to his puts on way too much perfume. She doesn’t buy it, but she thinks it’s possible, so she accepts his explanation. In a week he gets home late, smelling of perfume and with lipstick marks on the collar of his shirt. She confronts him and he answers that he had dinner with his mother, and she had tripped and fell on him and thus the lipstick marks on his shirt. She’s had enough. She’s no fool. The explanations are silly, and she decides to break it off. In Dr. Bowen’s mind that’s him and Christianity. The silly explanations Christianity had to the bigger questios just weren’t cutting it anymore when faced with better evidence for a different world view. Dr. Bowen then proceeds to berate the morality of a God he doesn’t believe in and wishes all Christians would wake up from this fantasy.

I have no problem with Dr. Bowen’s atheism. I have no issue with the happiness and freedom he finds in his belief in ‘non-belief’. I don’t subscribe to blind faith. I believe in careful investigation and weighing things until they either add up or they don’t. If that’s his truth, then so be it. What I do find issue with is that little story of his. I don’t believe Dr. Bowen realises that even in his parable, he chose to illustrate a relationship between two beings, not between a person and some inanimate object or some mathematical theorem. In a very tragic sense, I think he views himself as the poor wife that has been cheated on because he thinks God has somehow cheated. I think that’s truly sad. 

It's a little fantastical to me that a well educated, well read, well articulated person, can give up a whole belief system in 45 minutes. I am quite mediocre in my education, but still my first instinct when I hear a well constructed oposing argument, isn't to throw out every notion under the sun, but to go and look if there might be something I've missed while forming my opinions. I always asume the Truth is true no matter what, so if I feel lied to maybe I need to look deeper. In Dr. Bowen's case, he's not the only Christian scholar faced with akkadian writings, ugaritic texts and summerian studies. How come they haven't lost their faith while translating tablets and inscriptions? Why wasn't his first instinct to go look what they had to say? What minimalistic conviction do you have to posses in order to be shattered that fast?

I wish I could say that he’s a special case, an exception. There are hundreds like him out there. Their stories sound very similar. They’re all so disappointed and disillusioned with the whole notion of God and they all regret having wasted their time on this matter. You’d think they all suffered some immense tragedy that led them to their disenchantment, but no, most of them have just stumbled upon something they read or heard that rang very true within them and that’s that. God doesn’t exist. What’s more they think their assertion makes them brave. With a public announcement they’ve erased God, poof!

While I was listening to Dr. Bowen I kept seeing in my mind the apostle Paul while he was stating his case before Festus, King Agripa and Berenice in Acts 25, 26. Them with all their pomp and him smelling like only a caesarean jail can make you smell, in chains, trying to defend himself and his faith from accusations that were calling for his death. He was telling the truth, but this truth did nothing for them. He was a living illustration that the Truth can do nothing for you. Their world was a world where you have your little amulets and household gods and you do your little rituals and they reward you with health, money, love, luck. If one god doesn’t provide, no worries, there are a million others to appeal and one is bound to work. No need to suffer, and what kind of loving God would allow His protégé to end up in chains, in a dirty prison in Caesarea? No god worth his salt would just observe and do nothing while risking to lose your devotion.

Truth is there in front of you. You can sit on your throne and look down on it as much as you like. You might recoil from its modest apparel. It might look ridiculous in its chains and dirty clothes. Its appeals to your conscience might sound unsophisticated, but that’s because it’s not trying to impress you with its eloquence, but rather point you where to run for safety. That’s the tricky part, to recognize Truth. It’s not easy but start by looking for the humblest looking thing. Hint: it’s the only one not out to deceive you while everything else is.

“And Agrippa said to Paul, “In a short time would you persuade me to be a Christian?” And Paul said, “Whether short or long, I would to God that not only you but also all who hear me this day might become such as I am—except for these chains.”” (Acts 26:28-29)

By Cristina Pop