Faith for atheists. Part 4

Faith for atheists

Part 4: The wonderful gifts that faith brings are a simple reality, waiting to be experienced

So, we need to refocus the appeal of religious claims, and in my view, living a life of faith is the best possible way to live this life – regardless of whether there is life after death or not.

The religious claim is that there is an inexhaustible source of strength and guidance, freely available to us. No-one can take it away from us, block or restrict our access to it, or reduce its effectiveness, against our will. There is a never-failing spring of love, peace and joy that is always to hand. There is a sense of overwhelming acceptance and affirmation given to us, not because we deserve it, but as a gift. There is a means of seeking and finding forgiveness for even terrible faults, achieved, not through self-seeking delusion or selfish refusal to face up to the deep reality of the harm and pain we have caused, but by finding an even deeper source of healing and renewal than our failure. There is amazing clarity of thought, and the ability to embrace the full heights and depth of existence that comes to us, granting us meaning and purpose in life. There is the faculty of finding the precise vocation for us that will bring us that maximum fulfilment that human beings seek. There is the opportunity to immerse ourselves in a value system and principles that strike us as the ultimate that a person can aim for. There is a sense of relationship with someone who loves us utterly, is always on our side, and is always striving for our renewal even when we have given up on ourselves. There is a faculty of union with the absolute, ultimate and eternal such that, in those moments, we could die happy because we know that we have experienced the very fullness of what life is capable of offering us. There are grounds for community that enhances us as individuals, is a template for a just and compassionate society, and which empowers truly moral living in the wholeness of what it means to be human.

In simple summary, our initial issue of what can we do to fulfil our potential is answered. All these things are the natural outcomes of a life of faith.

There is no appeal here to a fairy-godmother sort of God, who waves her magic wand to “make everything alright”. There is no pleading for a miracle to rescue us. There is no fantasy, wishful thinking, or sticking our head in the sand. This faithful way of life is completely consistent with a clear, open-minded acceptance of all the facts of reality in a scientific, material universe. It achieves this because faith is a way of life. But it is a way of life that – as well as accepting the external realities of the material universe, also accepts the internal realities of what human beings are capable of. I am not sneaking religious wishful thinking in by the back door; I am simply pointing out what is available to us through our natural faculties as human beings. It is the testimony of all the great world religions that there is a wonderful experience of the transcendent that brings overwhelming peace, joy and love to the believer, and there is ample testimony that this faculty that human beings have can be nurtured through practice – condensed into particular practices that can be understood as “the life of faith”.

To return to the fundamental issue we posed ourselves: the vital importance of fulfilling our potential, then it seems a bizarre and tragic failure not to follow the way of life that has the best prospect of enabling us to do just that, and achieve the highest of which we are capable.