On Why We Need God, Part 1: The Moral Core of My Faith

I want to thank all of you who have and who are still commenting on the two prior posts about religionless Christianity. Your openness and intellectual depth--Theist and atheist alike!--are amazing. I'm honored that you take the time to visit here.

(PS-As I mentioned in my Dietrich Bonhoeffer post I could not find the important parts from his letters on religionless Christianity on the Internet. So, I typed them up so that people could find them, copy them, and forward them to others. Please copy the interesting parts of those letters onto your blogs and start discussions there. That is why I typed them up.)

Given some of the comments to my last post, and as I like to push one way and then another in this blog, I thought I'd take this week, across three posts, to explain why I think we need God (and even church).

To start, note that I'm going to argue why I think we need God. Not why I believe in God, but why I think I need God. Which is a different focus then what we are used to. That is, the issue will be pragmatic, not metaphysical. What I hope to argue is that even if God doesn't exist I think the idea of God is still helpful. Which is to say that I'll be arguing that the idea of God is even of use to an atheist.

To start, I want to say this: There are lots of reasons for acknowledging how believing in God leads to bad outcomes. Please read Sam Harris' book The End of Faith for a good analysis. So, I don't begin by saying believing in God is an unmitigated or noncontroversial good. My goal is more modest. I want to simply argue that there is a good facet to believing in God, perhaps even a morally necessary facet. I hope to convince you of that this week. Quite a job, huh? (Oh, and I fully expect to fail in this.)

Let us begin.

If you read this blog you know that I define my faith morally rather than metaphysically. So, as this analysis will be partly autobiographical, we need to start there, with my moral focus. More specifically, I define my faith by three overlapping moral foci:

The Kenosis Focus: The mastering of ego and pride and selfishness.
Key Virtues: Humility, eschewing hierarchy/status, submission, egolessness, servanthood.
Key Jesus Teaching: To enter the Kingdom of God you must become like little children (i.e., a powerless and marginal one).
Key Jesus Example: Washing the disciples feet.

The Ahimsa Focus: Primum non nocere ("First, do no harm.")
Key Virtues: Non-violence, pacifism, peace, forgiveness, reconciliation.
Key Jesus Teaching: Turn the other cheek. Do not repay evil for evil, but pray for your enemies.
Key Jesus Example: "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."

The Solidarity/Embrace Focus: Solidarity with victims (from Girard and Moltmann) and embrace of the other (from Volf)
Key Virtues: Radical hospitality, aid, protection, justice, care.
Key Jesus Teaching: The parable of the Good Samaritan and the Sheep and the Goats.
Key Jesus Example: Welcoming the unclean and sinner to table fellowship.

Okay, so what I call faith/religion/Christianity is this focus: Kenosis, ahimsa, and solidarity/embrace. I'll shorten this to KASE.

Now, as I've explored various religious, metaphysical and philosophical perspectives to support KASE in my life I've found three which, in my opinion, do a good job of aiding the development of KASE in me. These three perspectives are:

Buddhism
Liberal Humanism
Christianity

I've looked hard and studied hard (and still study hard) in all three of these areas. And the mutual study of all three has been very helpful to me. I highly recommend this tripartite study. The best in buddhism, liberal humanism, and Christianity overlap in very helpful and reinforcing ways. I see lots of overlap between Jesus and the Buddha and feel that, in many ways, they are the great thinkers behind liberal humanism.

But at the end of the day, I've found that Christianity, for purely pragmatic reasons, has done the best job of fostering KASE in me. Thus, at the end of the day, this is why I'm a Christian.

Why does Christianity do such a great job of fostering KASE in me? I'll get to that in my next post.

This entry was posted by Richard Beck. Bookmark the permalink.