On Faith…

November 8, 2011

For the first time in my life I’m not struggling with my faith. As in … I have some now. I have finally solved the riddle of faith, and here’s how I did it: Are you ready? Are you sure? Here goes: I asked God to give me faith.

I KNOW! Isn’t that amazing? I’m so brilliant. <insert eye roll here> It only took me 35 years, but I finally just asked God to give me faith and remove my doubts. I told Him I needed His help and that I couldn’t do it on my own and that I was willing to part with my doubt and skepticism and just accept Him if he would have me and if He would just give me the strength to take the first step. And then it hit me (or maybe He hit me): I already had faith. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have been praying in the first place. Circular logic? Yes. Do I care? No. Even *I* didn’t realize what a burden the lack of faith had been for me. I’ve been happy since that morning and He has reaffirmed my faith in a hundred ways since.

Here’s one: While on a business trip last week, I caught a program on the Catholic TV station EWTN about St. Thomas Aquinas and something about it piqued my interest a little, but I fell asleep anyway – give me a break, I’d been up for 22 hours at that point. Then this past weekend, I found out that I could download audiobooks to my iPhone for free through my public library via an app called Overdrive and the library’s website – and in my browsing I found a book called Aquinas for Armchair Theologians by Timothy M. Renick, which I downloaded because of that program I’d fallen asleep to. Yesterday, I was listening to it on the way home from Bloomington and there was a section about whether man truly has free will, and the differing views on the issue (which I won’t get into here). The questions implied by this conversation include one that’s bugged me for a long time: Does God control everything or does some stuff just happen? I know in my heart of hearts, from my intellect, that God doesn’t cause the evil that’s in the world. He doesn’t cause the tragedy. Some stuff just happens. But how do you square that with the concept of an omniscient, omnipotent God?

Let me put it another way. If God is all-knowing, then He already knows every thing that will ever happen. If he is perfect, then He cannot be wrong about what he knows. If he is both all-knowing and all-powerful, then everything that happens is His will (or he would see it coming and change it). Makes sense, right? But I know, somehow, that not everything that happens is God’s will. So then, I’m left with a conundrum. If God didn’t cause it and God didn’t allow it but it happened anyway – then how can God be considered all-powerful and all-knowing? Head hurt yet?

The book points out that Aquinas addressed this problem, albeit indirectly when he addressed whether man has free will at all or if everything is predetermined by God. He essentially came to the conclusion that God can create in more than one way. He can will something to happen absolutely – as in “Let there be light.” There is no doubt that it will happen. But maybe he can also will that something happens dependent on other circumstances.

All of this was interesting on a purely academic level and I pondered it as I drove, wondering why I had a mild headache all of the sudden.

Then about 2 hours later, I found myself on the phone with my Brother’s girlfriend – the one who lost her beautiful, tiny, innocent baby in July. My nephew Caden. And during the conversation with her, this very issue came up as she questioned whether Caden’s death was somehow her fault – as in she was being punished for something by God, or whether God had anything to do with it at all – and I had an answer for her – maybe not a perfect answer and maybe I didn’t articulate it perfectly – that’s quite likely in fact – but I had something to say to her. I was able to offer her some comfort and maybe that’s all she needed right then at that moment, for that minute. The answer I was given just two hours before, was there for me when I needed to pass it on to her.

Okay, okay you say – that’s convoluted and ridiculous and you’re stretching. First off, I disagree…it’s actually very simple, it’s just tough to communicate. But okay –

Here’s another: Two weeks ago I went to the Indiana Catholic Men’s Conference, and God got me with a right hook.

It was a wonderful day and featured, by pure coincidence, a speaker who addressed two of the exact questions about my faith that I had come to accept but that I still didn’t understand. How by coincidence? Well, a speaker who was originally scheduled to be there had to cancel last minute due to illness and they brought in a replacement – who addressed my two primary questions about Catholicism. Questions I’d prayed for more understanding on just a few days prior.

While I was still reeling over that, God hit with me with a jab with his left: I have issues with the legal profession. Rule of law and justice are such noble pursuits, but the profession itself is twisted and warped to the point that it’s nearly impossible to be involved in it without becoming corrupted yourself. At lunch, I sat down next to a man and we started talking and it turns out he’s a lawyer, shares most of my legal interests and experience and we had a great talk that gave me some amount of peace on this issue.

And then another right: the man on my right, whom I’d sat next to all morning struck up a conversation after lunch and it turned out he is an aspiring author who is concerned about how to connect with a younger generation. Folks, in case you don’t know, that’s what I DO for a living. I work with some of the best and brightest young minds in the country and while I’m by no means perfect at engaging them – I do have a lot of experience and lessons learned in the last 5 years of trying, and in the next 10 minutes before the conference started I was able to share a lot of what I’d learned with this man.

Then came the knockout blow: I was feeling so close to God and so blessed by this day that as I sat at my table during a break I prayed to God to please let this Conference continue in future years so that it could reach others like me and to show me how I could help. When we came back from the break, the Master of Ceremonies took a minute to thank the conference organizers and had them stand up. Yeah – the man on my left was one of the 10-15 people in a room of hundreds and I was able to thank him personally and tell him how the conference had blessed me, and I hope he gets the chance to share what I told him with the other organizers.

Those are just two ways…it’s only been a month, but I’ve had dozens of smaller things as well. If I ask a question, it gets answered in the very next homily at Sunday Mass, or in one case, my know it all 10 year old son gives me the answer in a seemingly unrelated conversation on the way to Mass. Or, in another case, I go to bed confused on something and wake up totally clear the next day as if I’d known it all along.

Moral and ethical issues I’ve wrestled with since I was in Junior High School are now clear as day for me because I asked for them to be made clear to me. Habits I’ve been trying to break for years are just gone, because I asked for them to be.

Folks – I don’t know how else to say it but this: I’m absolutely sure that God is.