I’m a rationalist who is often met with big scowls (and worse) from Christians in Santa Maria when I fail to agree with their unsolicited religious claims. It’s all so unnecessary! If they would only claim their faith as faith, rather than as fact, then they’d be much less disagreeable. I hope they’ll forgive me eventually for saying that truth is fact, but Truth is faith. One of the post-Jesus formulators of Christianity wrote that “Without faith, it is impossible to please God.” So, why shouldn’t all Christians claim their faith as faith?
It may scare the touchy ones to step outside of their guarded mindsets, but a hypothetical analogy is in order. Suppose a Christian came across an acquaintance at the supermarket on a Sunday morning, and jokingly said, “Hey, look who’s not in church!” Now, if the acquaintance were to say, “Actually, I’m a Muslim,” then there’d be no offense. But if he turned and said, “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammad is his Prophet,” then he’d be claiming his faith as fact. Awkward!
Besides, are touchy Christians in denial about all the people around them who privately find the Christian holy story unconvincing? And by the way, disbelievers usually don’t believe in devils either, much less purport to serve them. We’re just people with existential courage, which makes intellectual honesty possible. The Vatican forgave Galileo, eventually, so maybe the little believers out there can give us little thinkers a little toleration.
This article appears in Apr 25 – May 2, 2013.
