Back in the 1960\u2019s, the then vicar of Selby caused a lot of controversy by preaching on the theme \u201cGod is Dead\u201d at Easter, in a service which the BBC recorded. What he was engaging with was the then very young area of Radical Theology; in particular he referred to Nietzsche\u2019s parable of the madman running through the streets shouting \u201cGod is dead \u2013 and we have killed him\u201d.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m writing this on \u201cHoly Saturday\u201d, which is one day of the year when that would be the most appropriate sermon title \u2013 except very few churches do a service on Holy Saturday. Yesterday was Good Friday, when we would supposedly meditate on the death of Jesus (the death of God?) if we ever managed to forget that we knew the outcome of the story, tomorrow we will celebrate his resurrection, but today, perhaps, God is dead.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been doing Peter Rollins\u2019 \u201cAtheism for Lent\u201d<\/a> course this year. The course seeks to challenge all of our preconceptions about God, to deconstruct our constructions and expose those beliefs we weren\u2019t aware we had. Perhaps the ideal outcome would be to leave us with a child-like wonder, able to accept the pure experience of God without it being tied down by dogma and philosophy \u2013 but then, I\u2019m a mystic, and I would<\/em><\/strong> say that!<\/p>\n Atheism for Lent is really situated between Good Friday and Holy Saturday, between the potentially violent destruction of ideas about God and the place arrived at once that has been achieved. Some of those taking the course (over 1000 this year, I believe) have found it too violent and have retreated, perhaps to have another go next year. That is much my situation with one of the daily \u201creadings\u201d for the course, which was to watch the 2016 film \u201cSilence\u201d. I still have nearly two hours of that film to watch. Some have stuck doggedly to our existing conceptions and improved our ability to defend them against all comers. Some have arrived at a place of anxiety, where nothing is certain any more, and some have arrived at the same lack of certainty and found peace there.<\/p>\n I am not completely certain whether I\u2019ve merely improved my ability to defend preconceptions or have found peace in the storm. I feel fairly peaceful, to be sure, but there are those pesky subconscious instincts which may not be completely exorcised \u2013 I know, for instance, that there\u2019s a bit of my subconscious which is apparently a five-point Calvinist (despite the fact that I\u2019ve never consciously espoused Calvinism or, since I first actually thought about it, the salvation mechanism which leads to it). Happily, it doesn\u2019t make itself known very often, but it\u2019s still there…<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been aware of the course for a few years now, but haven\u2019t actually done it previously. I\u2019d thought that as I was already well aware of the criticisms of the \u201cMasters of Suspicion\u201d (Freud, Niezsche and Marx), and\u00a0 had read widely in the mystics and dipped into some of the Radical Theologians such as Rollins and Caputo, the course would not offer me much I hadn\u2019t already looked at. In addition, I \u201cam not now and have never been\u201d a fundamentalist or \u201cEvangelical\u201d Christian \u2013 unlike, as it seems to me, the vast majority of people taking the course, I started (after some years of Sunday School which at least apparently \u201cdidn\u2019t take\u201d) as an atheist, a confirmed rationalist materialist, and have moderated my position the minimum possible consistent with having a language of expression which would accommodate and express my mystical experience. Somehow the statement \u201cit was a brain fart\u201d which an atheist friend came up with after we\u2019d knocked down all the more usual reasons for the kind of symptoms I described, such as drugs, physical or mental distress or psychiatric or neurological disorders, didn\u2019t \u201cdo it for me\u201d.<\/p>\n I also come via having sampled a lot of other spiritual traditions. Peak mystical experiences are very good indeed, and I started out wanting more of them, so tried the methods of any tradition which produced accounts of similar experience for some years. Those often required you to adopt a mental posture involving some theoretical concepts, so I became fairly good at holding those lightly, in much the way as you\u2019d \u201csuspend disbelief\u201d while reading, say, a work of fantasy, or think in terms of a wave or a particle when considering the behaviour of an electron. However, my culture is Christian (or at least post-Christian) and my basic language of expression was Christian (some of that Sunday School stuff apparently did rub off…) and other traditions required learning new concepts and new languages, and I\u2019m lazy \u2013 so where I\u2019ve ended up is with a largely Christian practice and vocabulary. That doesn\u2019t preclude me asserting that \u201cAtman is Brahman\u201d or that \u201cthe Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao\u201d or that we should practice the \u201cWillow way\u201d (which is not a long way removed from \u201cal-Islam\u201d…).<\/p>\n I was, however, surprised to find that this level of engagement with the texts, among a lot of other people giving their reactions, was particularly powerful. I re-engaged with issues such as the abominable history of persecution by Christianity and it\u2019s encouragement of undesirable psychological traits and found that those still had the power to disturb me (though perhaps the most disturbing thought I had was \u201cwhat if the five-point Calvinists<\/a> are right?\u201d).<\/p>\n However, perhaps the most worrying thing for me was watching the reactions of some others. I\u2019ve been discussing spirituality and faith with others for nearly 50 years now, and on a few occasions have had someone complain that I\u2019ve shaken their faith to the point that they lost it \u2013 and as one of those people was my mother (and she never really regained it, nor did she arrive at being entirely comfortable with its loss), I tend to be reluctant to press too hard in deconstructing concepts where I can\u2019t provide a new framework which someone can be content with. Myself, I can flit between frameworks to suit the occasion, but not everyone can, and equally not everyone is able to be comfortable with an overwhelming lack of certainty. I\u2019m probably not comfortable with an overwhelming lack of certainty myself, to be honest; I tend far more to the mindset of the revolutionary, who wants to take apart the existing order in order to construct a new one, who has something of a new one already in mind, rather than the rebel who just wants to take things apart. I may accept that there\u2019s always going to be something not quite accurate, not quite complete about current concepts, but I want the next concept to be a better fit to reality, rather than abandoning any hope of a better fit \u2013 which is what I see the rebel as embodying.<\/p>\n Equally, I used to say \u201cI don\u2019t need to believe in<\/em><\/strong> God, I experience<\/em><\/strong> God\u201d. \u00a0I may not be able to describe that experience adequately; as the week we spent looking at mystics indicates, it is perhaps impossible to do that, but nonetheless the experience is real. I experience God for some value of God unspecified, therefore. I\u2019ve never found a way to make others<\/em><\/strong> experience God, however \u2013 I can\u2019t have a mystical experience for you, you have it happen for you and in you. What I have found is that analysing what is going on is the best way to stop such an experience happening, however, so our concepts can only really get in the way. Should we therefore deconstruct those concepts in the hope that we will then\u00a0 be able to have a peak experience? What of those who are left with nothing to cling to, with no consciousness of the presence of God? The closing benediction<\/a> from P\u00e1draig \u00d3 Tuama ends with \u201cAnd so, friends, the task has ended. Go in pieces to see and feel your world<\/em>\u201d. \u00a0Have some people been left \u201cin pieces\u201d but still unable to see and feel their world \u2013 or God, inasmuch as God is not already implicit in \u201ctheir world\u201d?<\/p>\n I hope and pray that they haven\u2019t. \u201cPray?\u201d you say \u2013 \u201cwhat to?\u201d I don\u2019t know, to some value of God, I suppose. I doubt it can have any real effect, as the values of God which I can conceive and which might make that possible seem improbable to me. But I hope I\u2019m wrong… and tomorrow morning, at silly o’clock, I will be affirming “Christ is risen”. For some value of “Christ” For some value of “risen”. May that be true for those now feeling cut adrift as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Back in the 1960\u2019s, the then vicar of Selby caused a lot of controversy by preaching on the theme \u201cGod is Dead\u201d at Easter, in a service which the BBC recorded. 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