DEAR DR. E: Isn’t agnosticism frankly the most honest position? After all, none of us can ever hope to understand God. He may be out there, but no one really knows anything about anything other than his or her own unique experiences and personal realities. — HONEST DOUBTER FROM OKLAHOMA
DEAR HONEST: While I commend your vulnerability, the only conclusion I can come to on the question of agnosticism is that what we are dealing with here is pride — pure and simple. When we boil it down, the agnostic is essentially saying, “I am the end of all that can be known.
All truth starts and stops with me: “I am wiser than all those who came before me. People such as Augustine, Aquinas, Wilberforce and Wesley were simply imbibing the opiate of the masses. Arguing that all of human existence can be explained by something you can’t prove is wishful thinking at best.”
My point is that such hubris makes each man a rule unto himself, and we make very poor yardsticks.
The lessons of history as well as revelation tell us that God laughs at this misplaced “confidence.”
In fact, such “wisdom is no better than his foolishness.” Or as St. Paul says, “We sometimes tend to think we know all we need to know … but sometimes our humble hearts can help us more than our proud minds. We never know enough until we recognize that God alone knows it all” (1 Corinthians 8).
C.S. Lewis once scolded the young agnostic in “The Great Divorce” by saying: “Our opinions were not honestly come by. We simply found ourselves in contact with a certain current of ideas and plunged into it because it seemed modern and successful. … You know, we just started automatically writing the kind of essays that got good marks and saying the kind of things that won applause. When, in our whole lives, did we honestly face, in solitude, the one question on which all turned: whether, after all, the Supernatural might not, in fact, occur? When did we put up one moment’s real resistance to the loss of our faith?”
He then goes on: “You know that you and I were playing with loaded dice. We didn’t want the other to be true. We were afraid of crude Salvationism, afraid of a breach with the spirit of the age, afraid of ridicule, afraid (above all) of real spiritual fears and hopes.”
Finally, Lewis says, “Having allowed ourselves to drift, unresisting, unpraying, accepting every half-conscious solicitation from our desires, we reached a point where we no longer believed the Faith. Just in the same way, a jealous man, drifting and unresisting, reaches a point at which he believes lies about his best friend.”
He concludes: “Once you were a child. Once you knew what inquiry was for. There was a time when you asked questions because you wanted answers and were glad when you had found them. Become that child again. … You have gone far wrong. Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth.”
George MacDonald tells us in “The Curate’s Awakening” that to know Christ is to do his will. And by doing so, we will finally come to know Him. If we want to learn of faith and refute the agnostic within us (and I believe there is one in many, if not all, of us), then we must simply and humbly look to the story of Christ and start by practicing what Jesus says to do. Then, as the Curate says, “In our attempt to obey the words recorded as His, we will see grandeur beyond the realm of any human invention,” and we can boldly “cast our lot with those of the Crucified.”
Again, from Lewis: “We know nothing of religion here: we think only of Christ. We know nothing of speculation. Come and see. I will bring you to the Eternal Fact, the Father of all other facthood.”
Please read our comment policy before commenting.