I Believe in Gods | On Losing Faith, and Remaining Faithful

A friend caught me at Greenbelt last weekend and we slipped off for a beer. He’s pursuing a path to ordination, and wanted to talk about some of the death of God ideas I’d written in After Magic. It gave me a chance to dialogue some ideas I’d been having about this, ideas I’d been spending time mulling on because people have been asking me if I still believed in God, or if I’d lost my faith. I thought it might be good to get some of them down online - though these are very much still ideas in progress.

To tackle the first question first: I do believe in gods. I think there’s something quite fascinating about the ancient Hindu idea of this whole ecosystem of divinities. Lacan’s idea of the ‘big Other’ I think is important here and as I look around at the world today, I see people absolutely under the influence of numerous gods - 'big Other’ systems that they are in service to, that control the way they think and act, that place demands on them that they are perhaps unconscious of.

As to what a 'god’ is, one helpful definition is 'a being with powers greater than those of ordinary humans, but who interacts with humans, positively or negatively, in ways that carry humans to new levels of consciousness beyond the grounded preoccupations of ordinary life.’

Part of this new book I’m writing (currently called 'Getting High’) references David Noble’s excellent book 'The Religion of Technology.’ Technology is a kind of religion - something that we find ourselves bound to and guided by, and - moving beyond ideas of 'being’ - in many ways fits this definition of a god. As powerful systems that promise to raise human experience beyond the mundane, Capitalism, Communism and drug use can be seen as functioning in the same way.

So I think atheism is in many ways absurd: quite clearly, all around us are people who are living in service of and devotion to gods. The addict who steals from her children to fund her habit is faithfully serving her god. The party official who sends the dissenter off to the Gulag is faithfully serving his god. The businesswoman who shifts manufacture to a developing nation with almost no workers’ rights is remaining faithful to the doctrines of the market.

Using various references from literature, my point in After Magic was that this move into 'super-nature,’ into unquestioning service of this 'big Other’ tends to dehumanise us - as the examples above show. But all is not lost, for what archetypal stories from The Tempest to the gospels show us is that the most human thing we can do - and thus, paradoxically, the most godly - is to lay down our devotion to these gods that demand too much of us.

So, my answer to the first question is this: yes, I do believe in gods. What then of the question of whether I have lost my faith? If what you mean is devotion to orthodox Christian ideas about a personal god and salvation, then yes. I’m not in that place. But the reason that I still have a 'troth’ to Christianity is because I think in the life of Jesus we see an example of resistance to the dehumanising demands of divinity. It is not that on the cross we see the death of God, but that here we see a pattern for the death of all gods. My Christianity is not about the generation of some new Kingdom, some new political system or utopia based on worship of a deity. My Christianity is about the process of putting to death all of the gods that keep promising release from death, but end up binding us and becoming the cause of injustice.

The friend I was talking with was coming at the issue with pastoral concerns as he journeyed towards ordination. And I think our conclusion was that the church can still be a very important place in society - not as a 'place of worship’, not as a place of devotion to this one particular god, but as a place where the passion is rehearsed over and over, where gods are put to death.

To put this back in language I used in Mutiny, this is the church as an 'agent of decay’ - a community that economically, politically, pharmacologically and theologically gathers to help one another put to death the systems that we have put ourselves in service of that have thus diminished our humanity.

In Infinitely Demanding, Simon Critchley says:

In our terms, anarchy is the creation of interstitial distance within the state, the continual questioning from below of any attempt to establish order from above.

Replacing 'anarchy’ with 'Christianity,’ what we get is a community that gathers around an absence - the god who has gone - and uses this to continually critique any attempt to reestablish order from above, to reinstate some new god.

This, for me, is what just faithfulness to one another looks like. Perhaps that means I’ve lost my faith; to be honest, it feels as if I’m just finding it.

Comments

Chris August 28, 2014 at 12:41 pm

Hi Kester as you know I have been pursuing these thoughts (albeit in a less public manner – death to the god of name making!! – a discussion for another time) in my own way for sometime. Anyway, although I can understand and appreciate your thoughts just wonder if you are not in some ways be in the process of making another god? Maybe a god who wants the idea of god to die? It still seems to hold the potential of being a Big Other – a totalising system of thought and possibility. I wonder if this thought truly does ‘lack’ as much it may seem to? Our does it just join the pantheon of fantasies, made available to sheild ourselves from the terror commitment to weakness and brokenness ( not wanting to create a further god in say this) of love? Does the hysteria of lack always need to fragment and break down? Are there not other paths beyond death? Is there not more to the ending brought about by the life of Jesus? Is resurrection a totalising myth or a very unpopular radical challenge?

Tim Eveleigh August 28, 2014 at 1:27 pm

As always, perfectly sums up how I feel using language that wouldn’t occur to me! Spot on.

KB (Post author) August 28, 2014 at 5:53 pm

Thanks Tim, and good to hear from you Chris. Been out most of the day so just getting round to replying.

just wonder if you are not in some ways be in the process of making another god? Maybe a god who wants the idea of god to die?

I don’t think we can escape the urge to create gods. What is vital is how we respond to this urge. The religious (and, I would argue, technological) response is to keep elevating this god, eventually into utopian perfection. The problem here is that this necessarily creates elites, and violence around organising who is ‘in’ or ‘out.’

What I would now want to call the ‘Christian’ response to this urge is the continual process of pulling these gods back down. That is not something that is itself trying to build something. It is the act of resistance to that building. I think Foucault would help here in his stuff on power and resistance, and also in the idea of tactic vs strategy. The problem with getting tied up in anxiety about creating another god is that we can end up in total impotence. This, I think, is where Zizek goes wrong – he cannot act, because every action is tainted.

I’m particularly interested in pursuing Lacan’s ideas here to do with our relationship to the big Other. My friend Tad Delay is currently polishing a manuscript for IVP on Lacan and theology which I think will be really helpful, and I know that Pete Rollins’ current thinking is really good on this too. We need to look carefully at how language and consciousness have worked to make us feel this mind/body split, and I think we’ve kept on dealing with that by pursuing the transcendent, the stuff ecstatic, beyond language etc, and it’s this that has created this urge for the divine.

I’d love to hear your counter-thoughts on this. As I said at the top of the post – these are very much thoughts in the making at the moment.

Chris August 28, 2014 at 7:43 pm

Hi Kester yeah as you know I agree about the pulling down in most part. Although having not been part of organised religion in any form for so long i recognise there is a lot of energy still grappling with something that is not on my radar.

My thoughts are more in terms of thinking about whether the the perpetual tearing down is the only praxis available? The link between lack, fantasy, symbolic universe, and hysteria within Lacan is continually (thanks to Zizek and friends) pushed toward a more negative ontology. I think there is something else within the idea of hysteria (maybe beyond Lacan himself) which is not about the continual fragmentation of self; or in this case the systems of the ‘big Other’.

Hysteria also has an etymological root into the womb – potential of new life. I think this is the resurrection part of the Jesus narrative which I think has hope to go beyond the praxis of anarchy ( as much as I still frame the majority of my life and actions within this beautiful often misunderstood tradition).

In this sense it is not searching for utopia but grappling with what Valerie Fournier calls Utopianism. What I would see as the ongoing struggle of incompleteness and contradiction embedded in a narrative of love. Not reachable but deeply hopeful – expressed in aesthetics, humour and weakness.

Counter-narrative birthing from resurrection not death, although having entered into the ground of weariness and abandonment. I’m rambling now so will stop.

KB (Post author) August 28, 2014 at 8:19 pm

Again, I’m not familiar enough with Lacanian terms – other than that I sense that there’s a rich seam there to be mined in relation to this. We should have a beer and get into it properly.

Chris August 28, 2014 at 8:50 pm

Cool sounds like a plan. Also looks like we have been able to arrange a workshop with Simon Critchley in November. I will let you know the date. Cheers chris

KB (Post author) August 28, 2014 at 9:38 pm

Excellent news. Please do keep me in the loop! And yeah, let’s sort out that beer v soon.

Rachel Collinson August 28, 2014 at 7:38 pm

Interested to know where the Self fits in to this. Can one really let go of devotion to the Big Other without becoming devoted to the Self? Or is the devotion then focused on a multiplicity of others? Or is it in letting go entirely, in a Buddhist sense?

I don’t think I could do any of those things… I think I believe in relationship… that yearning for unity that doesn’t enslave me but is a mutual nurturing. And I think a unity beyond the physical is possible, where new life happens. Thinking while typing here…

KB (Post author) August 28, 2014 at 8:15 pm

This is the kind of stuff I need to reflect on Rachel – and probably need others to throw in on, as my knowledge of the psychotherapeutic is enthusiastic-amateur at best. My hunch is that this is not about a rejection of the existence of big Others, but a better, more wise understanding of our relationship to them… which will help our relationship to the others (petit a) around us.

Trent August 28, 2014 at 10:06 pm

Just wanted to say that I really enjoyed reading this. Perfectly articulates some of the same things i’ve been working through lately. Thanks man.

Micah August 28, 2014 at 11:51 pm

Thanks for this.

In light of this new faith (which I resonate with)

how has your behaviour responded?

KB (Post author) August 29, 2014 at 9:54 pm

That’s a great question Micah. Part of my response would be that I hope that my behaviour hasn’t changed that much. What I mean by that is that the outworking of this is still a life of hopeful activism, of working for justice, and lovingkindness – but doing so from a ground that’s not rooted in the transcendent, and doesn’t have to attribute to a divine source. Part of Critchley’s mission in Infinitely Demanding is, I think, to show how an ethical subject can be generated without resort to a divine being – and so I think that’s what I’ve been aiming at too.

But this is also a very personal question, and not one I can satisfactorily answer in the public sphere. It’s going to have to be down to those who know me well, the people I share life with, to answer that. I do know that part of that answer has been tough in the working out, and in the crisis of finally facing up to the absence of transcendence that brought some pain to me and those around me. But I now feel far more grounded, far happier and contented in a pretty deep way because the nagging feeling that I was sort of pretending at belief has been removed. That’s a huge relief, and one that allows one to live more honestly and, I believe, more generously. But as I say, that’s not an easy thing for me to answer for myself, and others might disagree.

Gto theC August 29, 2014 at 11:06 am

it’s funny isn’t it….

I was recently asked, (having been appointed ‘the spiritual speaker’ at a friends wedding) whether i ‘believed in a higher being?’.

And that’s maybe the crux – how can we realistically answer this kind of question with integrity, whilst trying not to baffle the asker?….. The basic answer was a hesitant – and surprising to the listener – ‘no’…. but on more levels than simply the ‘no’ bit…

i don’t actually subscribe to ‘believing’ when it comes to the divine either… that seems to suggest – at best – that i simply concur with a set of given propositions…

And then the ‘higher being’… well ‘higher’, how do we begin with that? Certainly not fitting into a panentheistic/ weakness model. and ‘being’.. ah now there might be the rub! beyond the framework of order, into the realm of Nietzschean de-construction… we rid ourselves of the gods, but still remain surprised from time to time;… the event of love, or mercy, or compassion, or connection carries maybe the whisper of the divine… maybe/ certainly the ‘divine’ i’m interested in.

(at this point just want to use the word apophatic… but don’t have time to fit it in anywhere meaningful!)

But how do you answer this ‘do you believe?’ without sounding totally like a worldview is based on negative definitions…. or without getting caught in an ‘instant philosophy lesson’, or without confusing the hell out of the other?

Drawn to love, to poetry, to magic in the everyday. to connections, and ultimately to justice.. an other to an other…

maybe the answer is ‘i experience something i might call G-d, most notably at the extremes of pain or delight, in absence and presence… but mostly, when i’m not even aware…. over breakfast, breathing, walking, and working.

In other words… what is the point of the story, the myth, the narrative? Can we still find something which eludes us, enchants us, beguiles and seduces us within it’s arc? Is there still a place for surprise? If we look for G-d, where are we looking? What are we expecting to find? What construction informs our question?

But beyond that i’m not massively keen to tell people ‘what i believe’. We learn from one /another of course, but i’m interested in how folks make sense of there experience, and how their worldviews inform justice-making compassion, family etc. How we share and enrich each others wisdom. And how we navigate the borders between one understanding of ‘God’ to an/others…

In my conversation, maybe the more interesting response is, ‘when do (we) taste the magic – after the magic has gone?’

KB (Post author) August 29, 2014 at 10:02 pm

GC – thanks for posting – and I think this is a really vital question. I would too want to subscribe to a view that is (very) open to ‘the event’ as Caputo put it in his talk last year, this ‘perhaps.’ Note to self – I need to read his latest book, which explores this.

I think I’d also want to say something too about not dismissing the experiences that we’ve had. We need to celebrate them, seek them out, but be more careful in their attribution. Group singing, the mystery of a mountain at dusk – there are so many things which should still thrill us (and in a quantum world, we should never expect to describe it all fully, or remove all of the wonder) and we should hold on to them… but then not diminish them by saying glibly that they are ‘from God.’

All that said, I’m keen to learn from those who are wanting to work this out in the practical pastoral setting, and would be keen to hear from those who are trying to do so – and doing so without resort to bullshit (which frankly isn’t my gift )