How Does One Find Faith? Fallen Away Catholic

The title of this article is a question that William F. Buckley initially posed to the British essayist Malcolm Muggeridge in one of the best programs ever produced in the PBS television series Firing Line. Muggeridge answered the question by noting that as a journalist and social commentator, he had observed human events for more than fifty years. This personal experience at seeing the devastation following World War II, the effects of communism, and the decline of Christianity in Europe led him to seek out a truth higher than what mankind could by itself discover. It is the gradual unfolding of human tragedies that taught Muggeridge that there must be more to the great drama of human life than what reason can explain. I have read and re-read the transcript of Bill Buckley's interview with Malcolm Muggeridge many times, and I believe Muggeridge articulated some enduring truths during that interview. In this article, I pose and answer the same questions as Muggeridge and compare our answers. At the time of his interview, Muggeridge was a Christian though not a member of any denomination. Buckley described him as the foremost lay apostle of Christianity. Within a few years of his interview, Muggeridge and his wife both joined the Roman Catholic Church; however, he remained sharply critical of the reforms following the Second Vatican Council and preferred the church in its pre-Vatican II ways. My own experience and background consists of a person born and raised in the Catholic church, who subsequently stopped attending mass, because he felt spiritually dry. I do not have any major policy differences with the Catholic church, although I distinguish between comments made to the press by members of the church hierarchy from those that would be espoused by Jesus Christ were he alive today. When there are differences between the two, I come down squarely on the side reflecting Jesus's own teachings as quoted in the New Testament. Today, I find that I have a spiritual connection to the Catholic church and frequently attend mass on Fridays followed by a brief rosary service. But I am not spiritually fed with masses on Sunday. When asked how he found God, Muggeridge laughed that he did not have any type of Damascus Road conversion, where he was a non-believer one day and a believer the next. Instead, he found God through "the unfolding of an enlightenment which is full of doubt as well as certainty. I rather believe in doubting. It's sometimes thought that it's the antithesis of faith, but I think it's connected with faith - something actually that St. Augstine said - like, you know, reinforced concrete and you have those strips of metal in the concrete, which make it stronger." I agree that those who pursue enlightenment, not for the sake of gaining knowledge but in an attempt to understand circumstances and find truth, will discover the limitations of human thought and scientific theories. Along the way, these people will be exposed to religious explanations, which they can investigate further or reject as mere superstitions. But the longer they search, the more they will bump into matters in which they believe even without evidence establishing proof for their beliefs. These beliefs need not be religious in nature. For example, people may believe that there are intelligent life forms somewhere else in the vast universe. Or they may believe there is no God, even though they cannot prove the nonexistence of God any better than those who believe in God can prove his existence. Perhaps less important than actually discovering and mastering some transcendental truth is the search for truth; truth is what the inquiring mind seeks to set it free. Muggeridge was correct that faith without doubt is no faith at all; it is a kind of mind-numbing acceptance of everything that is taught without any second thought or questioning. If I asked my religious friends if they have doubts about their faith, most, if not all, would immediately say "no" and some would take offense that their faith could even be subject to doubt. But that is completely the wrong answer. To have faith in God means that a person has tested and evaluated other competing theories to explain various phenomena and has come back to his or her initial beliefs. Unless a person has an open mind to hear challenges to his faith, he can never be sure that his religious beliefs are more than mythology similar to the kind that modern man scoffs at with the ancient Greeks. In Greek mythology, the sun went across the sky, because the god Apollo was driving his chariot up in the heavens. The change in seasons was supposedly due to some Greek goddess being denied visitation with her daughter. Faith in the Judeo-Christian concept of God must have a firmer foundation than silly explanations for forces of nature. One way we can differentiate the Judeo-Christian concept from Greek mythology is on the longevity of the beliefs. The Christian church is almost 2,000 years old now. When I begin to wonder whether I am foolish for believing in God, I draw comfort from the fact that on down through the centuries, many very bright people (as well as an even greater number of simple and uneducated people) have all believed that God existed, and that we would have greater closeness and communion with God in the afterlife. Is it possible all those billions of people were simply wrong? Yes, it is possible, but highly unlikely. http://michaelguth.com/lawnews.htm Dr. Michael A. S. Guth, Ph.D., J.D. is a Professor of Financial Economics and Law for several universities with on-line degree programs and an attorney at law in Tennessee. He writes legal briefs and appellate briefs for law firms as well as his own clients. On the retail side, his law practice seeks to empower individuals to represent themselves in court without a lawyer. He assists these pro se parties by drafting court documents (pleadings) and performing legal research. His contact information is shown on each of the business web pages above. In addition, Dr. Guth is a financial quant and former investment banker, having worked for Credit Suisse First Boston and Deutsche Bank in London and Frankfurt. He specializes in developing investment strategies and hedging techniques using derivatives. For five years, he consulted to the electric power and gas industry in the USA, even managing the Middle Office (financial risk control) function for two trading floors. Dr. Guth has taught over 30 undergraduate and gradute courses on-line. See http://michaelguth.com/courses.htm