The foundations of faith (4)

God is unknowable, but we can experience him. Part 2: Why worry that we cannot grasp God, just delight in meeting him

Now we need to face up to a big problem – for both believers and atheists. We both tend to start at the cause of the argument, not the fulfilment. Many believers feel, “I love God, and I love everything about being a religious person, but I am so beset by doubts. If only I KNEW that God was real, then I could rejoice in all the good things that my faith brings me, but my doubts nag away at me and all the joys of my faith come crumbling down around me”. Atheists often feel (either regretfully or triumphantly), “You’re not going to catch me signing up to any of this faith nonsense until you can prove to me that God is real”.

This proof is the one thing that we are never going to have. Asking for proof is to treat God as though he is some sort of new species found in the Amazon – some people claim to have found it, but others are sceptical and say, “Unless I see this creature for myself, I will not believe”. But God just is not like that. The one thing we know is that God is unknowable – we said that on a point of principle earlier. This is God we are talking about, and surely all our experience as religious people has taught us that God is very mysterious and very wonderful.

Instead, let’s focus on the experience, rather than the cause of the experience. For there is an unacknowledged assumption going on for both believers and atheists, that if the cause of the religious experience is not provably God, then it’s a worthless experience. But the experience of God’s presence – whatever it is that causes it – is supremely precious. All the world’s great religions testify to the existence of an experience of transcendent love. Though the cause of the experience is debatable, there is no doubt that the experience exists, and it’s wonderful.

So, doubts about God’s existence as the cause of our religious experiences shouldn’t derail our faith, as the experience of believing in God is supremely precious.