parallel lines (part 2)

Yesterday's post was quite abstract. Let's make it more concrete.

I'm embedded in the Christian community. And I see much that is excellent and praiseworthy there. Christian charities achieve a huge amount - historically they have been leaders in whhat they do, and remain massively influential. Indeed, the evidence seems to say that they are better, and more cost-effective than other means of achieving desirable social outcomes. And the average Christian gives far more to charitable causes than the average non-Christian. And so on.

The warm, open, accepting, unconditionally-loving community which so often flows from a shared faith is a remarkable thing to behold, and really gives the lie to a purely biologial or economic or political analysis of human existence. British society seems to know that it has forgotten how to live relationally - but truly there are little pockets of faith where this works. I want to celebrate that and share it.

But on the other hand, I have a huge amount of sympathy for the naysayers. The warm fuzzy stuff is nice, but the crazy metaphysics that goes with it is, well, bokners. The 'unprovable' stuff - likened by some [originally Russell] to an assertion of the existence of a teapot the sun between mars and the earth - seems at best a curious intellectual distraction; at worst a diversion from the real message, the real good news. Christians can be awful hypocrites; some of those warm loving communities can be cold and savage if you have the wrong outlook on life. That the Catholic church faces damages claims for years of alleged complicity in child abuse seems entirely just (where cases are proven) - even if amidst the real anguish there will surely be some opportunist litigants as well. The notion that religious faith should be privileged in society, and permit exceptions to dress codes or working duties, seems backward.

Or, it would seem backward, were it not for the preceding paragraph. Maybe faith deserves privilege because it demonstrably has an effect: but this tension of private faith and community impact is one I've rambled about before.

So, again, I find this tension at work. I often love the Christian community and much of what it stands for - but often I also find the deconstruction from the secular humanists quite convincing as well. Far too much Christian dialogue is routed in the epistemology of a previous (long-dead!) era.

In Douglas Adams's book, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the eponymous eating house advertised itself thusly: "If you've done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe" [homage along the way to Lewis Carroll]. Sometimes it feels as if being a Christian requires you to belive impossible things - not to accept things through faith, but simply to take leave of your senses. It really won't do: perhaps I need to re-learn which impossible things are true, and which cannot be (ironic and self-consciously nonsense as that sentence is).