The Mystery Of Faith Vs. The Illusion Of Control

The likes of Bill Maher, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins constantly assure us that faith is nothing more than a form of intellectual bondage, a false illusion of something unattainable that prevents man from reaching his true intellectual potential. Faith, according to them, is something that man is supposed to outgrow as he matures.

If Maher, Hitchens, and Dawkins are what pass for mature, intellectually liberated minds, then I'm afraid the human race never really stood a chance.

There is a method to the the madness of these so-called "militant atheists." The motivation is really rather simple, in every sense of the word: since they can't discern the existence of a higher power through their senses, nor conclude that there is such an existence through their use of reason (emphasis being on their use of reason, as opposed to man's use of reason), then such an existence cannot be possible.

At least, this is what they tell themselves. That they devote so much of their lives to disproving the existence of such an entity is not indicative of a lack of believe in such an entity. Rather, it is indicative of a desire that such an entity not exist.

That's their dirty little secret: Maher, Hitchens, Dawkins, and those who think like them aren't so much convinced that God doesn't exist as they are in the process of attempting to convince themselves that He does not even as they desperately try to convince others. Why they are trying to convince themselves of this is anyone's guess. It could be that they are unsatisfied with their experience of having believed in a higher power. It could be that they don't like the idea of having to acknowledge a power greater than themselves. It could be that they don't like the thought of having to accept things on faith, which would require an acknowledgment of the limits of their imagined intellectual prowess. It could be any of these things, or it could be all these things, and many other things besides.

What is painfully clear, however, is that self-professed atheists - whether they truly do not believe in the existence of God or simply wished that God did not exist - are left with a void in their lives and in their ideology that they are constantly trying to fill. And in the process of refusing to acknowledge the existence of a higher power that asks us to surrender to His will as a condition for attaining the greatest treasure man can attain (i.e. eternal life in the presence of the Lord), then they refuse to acknowledge the need to surrender to the will of another. This leads to an obsession with controlling one's own life, because as much as man might like to think that life is a series of random events with no greater meaning, human nature still requires that we acknowledge that someone is in charge. In the absence of a higher power than ourselves, then, logic would dictate that we are in charge of ourselves. Holding this mentality, however, requires a great deal of self-deception. Given the inextricable bond between the existence of a higher power and the need for faith, it almost invariably follows that the man who refuses to acknowledge the existence of a higher power will refuse to acknowledge the need to have faith in anybody but one's self.

And yet, faith makes demands of all men, not just those who believe in a higher power. It requires us to trust to things that we simply cannot predict or control (whether we wish to acknowledge such a lack of control or not). Without faith, we'd never turn our backs to anyone, for fear of being betrayed by everyone. Without faith, we would never cross an intersection, because we could never trust that the drivers of other cars will obey the traffic laws that govern safe driving. Without faith, we could never eat food we did not prepare personally, because we would not trust others not to contaminate the food, whether by accident or design. We take so many things for granted, assuming that they will happen in a certain way because they always have happened in a certain way, such as a light always turning on when you flick the switch or a dog who knows you never biting you when you reach to pet its head. And yet, if we really stopped to think about it, as some poor souls unfortunately do, we realize that past experience is no guarantee of future performance, and we would be in a state of constant paranoia about things going constantly awry. Yet, even the paranoid person is forced to accept on faith that certain things, such as the beating of his own heart, will continue to happen, or else he would not be able to function at all.

Among many other things, faith is an acceptance of the fact that there are things beyond the grasp of both our reason and our control, and that we must entrust such things to the providence of beings who can grasp them. Otherwise, society itself would never materialize, as the cooperation between men that is so essential to the proper function of a society would be obliterated by a lack of trust between men. Like it as not, trust is a form of faith.

In a very irrational world, then, there is nothing more irrational than a conscious lack of faith, or its logical extension, which is a conscious refusal to acknowledge that we lack control over every facet of our life.

The only thing we can control is our own behavior (but not its consequences), and the irony is that the people who are most obsessed with the notion of control and who scream the loudest about being allowed to do as they please are the ones least inclined to exercise self-control. Not coincidentally, they are also the most likely to profess a lack of faith. They mistake freedom for licentiousness, and in the process they fall into the most insidious form of bondage imaginable: they become slaves to their own passions, all the while basking in the illusion that they are fully in control of themselves and experiencing true freedom.

Faith, then, is a surrender to the ultimate reality that man has only limited control over the circumstances of his life. In a world obsessed with controlling its own destiny, such surrender is seen as an action of the weak-minded and unenlightened. And that particular illusion is advanced by the likes of Bill Maher, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins, men whose disillusionment with the concept of faith and belief in a higher power has led to delusions of the worst sort in other facets of their lives.

It's their loss. One can only hope that they will seek what they have lost before it is lost to them forever.

To paraphrase Hilaire Belloc, the mysteries of faith begin where human reason finds its limit. When seeking to understand the importance of having faith in our lives, acknowledging that fact - and understanding its implications for the level of control we can truly exercise over our own lives - is not a bad place to start. God bless!


In Jesus and Mary,
Gerald