Frederick Buechner

I shall quote from the wise Frederick Buechner.

"There must be a God because (a) since the beginning of history, the most variegated majority of people have intermittently believed there was; (b) it is hard to consider the vast and complex structure of the universe in general and of the human mind in particular without considering the possibility that they issued from some ultimate source, itself vast, complex, and somehow mindful; (c) built into the very being of even the most primitive man there seems to be a profound psychophysical need or hunger for something like truth, goodness, love, and-- under one alias or another-- for God; and (d) every age and culture has produced mystics who have experienced a Reality beyond reality and have come back using different words and images but obviously and without collusion describing with awed adoration the same Indescribability.
       'Statements of this sort and others like them have been advanced for several thousand years as proofs of the existence of God. A twelve-year-old child can see that no one of them is watertight. And even all of them taken together won't convince any of us unless our predisposition to be convinced outweighs our predisposition not to be.
      'It is as impossible to prove or disprove that God exists beyond the various and conflicting ideas people have dreamed up about him as it is to prove or disprove that Goodness exists beyond the various and conflicting ideas people have dreamed up about what is good.
      'It is as impossible for us to demonstrate the existence of God as it would be for even Sherlock Holmes to demonstrate the existence of Arthur Conan Doyle.
     'All-wise. All-powerful. All-loving. All-knowing. We bore to death both God and ourselves with our chatter. God cannot be expressed but only experienced.
    'In the last analysis, you cannot pontificate but can only point. A Christian is one who points at Christ and says, "I cannot prove a thing, but there's something about his eyes and his voice. There's something about the way he carries his head, his hands. The way he carries his cross. The way he carries me."


--- Wishful Thinking by Frederick Buechner.


I was recently in a rather heated discussion about Faith and the Proven and the Unproven-- idealogical stances about God and his Goodness and/or Badness, Evolution versus Biblical creationism, the Easiness and/or Difficulty of daily 'Christian living.' It was a pretty hopeless conversation, and afterwards I found myself to be a bit embarrassed of how I handled myself.

Over the past year and a half, I've come to the realization that reality is situated in such a way that one cannot prove in a 'water-tight package' the existence of God or the absence of Him. No matter what our argument or our evidence, there is always that margin of doubt or error, the possibility for contrary evidence or ideas. God and Faith are not things we can measure through scientific procedures. We cannot sense them, scientifically speaking.  When it comes to trying to prove things about God, the conversation becomes muddled, hazy, and often times ill-tempered and nasty.

It is as impossible for us to demonstrate the existence of God as it would be for even Sherlock Holmes to demonstrate the existence of Arthur Conan Doyle.


I love that quote, and I completely agree.

Whenever I talk to ANYBODY about Christianity or God, we always end up having our own set of standards and belief about God and salvation, usually accompanied with different pieces of Historical evidence or textual artifacts or just Good Feelings.

After a while, I became cynical. I could never find anyone who was willing to admit that their ideologies might be wrong. No one would honestly tell me that they simply don't know.

I for one didn't know. I wished to know-- to have a stance about God's state of existence, to believe that he was Good or Bad. But I couldn't. Every belief had too much of a margin for error to believe in. So I didn't believe anything, and it was a miserable place.

Today after reading this I realized that I've spent so much of my time being angry with certain Christians and their never-ending desire to prove their beliefs, and being fed up with myself for my inability to choose a certain belief, that I've forgotten about the most crucial part of all of Christianity---- Christ.

Regardless of proof or evidence or Christian debates or disagreements, Christ existed outside of all of this. He had power and love, and he suffered.


 A Christian is one who points at Christ and says, "I cannot prove a thing, but there's something about his eyes and his voice. There's something about the way he carries his head, his hands. The way he carries his cross. The way he carries me."


I don't know if I expressed this well. I am not angry with anyone. I'm just trying to find peace in all of this Christian turmoil.