The Problem of God for Liberals
June 1, 2015

I FIND in my work that not only do most people possess a theology, they've actually thought about it and can speak about it. Most people I know either believe in God, or would like to believe in God if they could find it possible in their intellectual lives.

But often those same people hit a stopping point that confuses them or prevents them from arriving at helpful conclusions. When facing the challenges in life I offered on shabbat (see below), those obstacles may prevent a person from finding solace.

Here's the most frequent one: "I can't prove God's existence, and I'm not sure about it, so I can't depend on it."

Uncertainty is the modern liberal Jewish plague. Most Jews today are college educated, and they were taught this in college, in philosophy class (existentialists except for Kierkegaard), in psychology class (Freud), and certainly in the sciences (more in a moment). How did we get to this point? Well, Rene Descartes, who died in February 1650, wrote "Cogito, ergo sum," "I think, therefore I am," kicking off philosophical modernity by locating all reality in the brain of the individual rather than in God. No longer did the 3 medieval proofs for God's existence work! The only thing I can absolutely prove is my own existence, because I know I am thinking. Everything else may just be a product of my mind (solipsism).

What to do?

We live simultaneously in two worlds: a physical world and a spiritual world. We know about both because we have encounter both through daily experience. Everything we sense is part of the physical world. The spiritual world we were introduced to by being loved, and it progressed from there.

But there's a HUGE DIFFERENCE! They do not possess the same qualities. We live IN the physical world. We cannot live WITHOUT the spiritual world! And there's another difference: there are certain rules that we can prove about the physical, material world. We call those rules "science." One of them, perhaps the most important, is replicability. I can prove rules within the material world because of replicability: if it's true in the physical world, it's replicable.

I'll tell you one truth about the world of spirituality: replicability is NOT one of the rules! Instead, people prove stuff about the spiritual world to one another through narratives of their experiences. We identify ourselves in the narratives of others, and say, "Yup, that's my experience, too." So it must be true. Here's the catch: if you believe only scientific proofs achieved through the law of replicability, you'll always be uncertain about the spiritual world. But as I said before, we humans cannot live in the world without spirituality. What to do?

We can live with less than absolute certitude! We can develop a dependable theology without being 100% certain all the time. The longer we live with our theologies, testing them every moment we are alive, the more they reliably enable us to function, the more sure we are of the truth of our theologies. For instance: authentic love will get us through crises (more about this in a future post). What do I mean by authentic love? Is there non-authentic love?  By authentic love I mean what Eric Fromm described in a book that everyone read in the sixties, "The Art of Loving." Fromm, a social psychologist, described UNSELFISH, non-self-centered loving: giving to the other simply because that person exists and we love him/her. Authentic loving creates meaning in our lives. The fact of creating meaning points to a Creator (God), who has put a purpose (telos) into the world. Authentic loving is one of the bedrock components of spirituality, and of our spiritual lives.

We can develop theologies by reading the rational thoughts of others, like philosophers and theologians. We can develop theologies by listening and sharing with others who have them, like friends, family or peers. And most important, we can develop dependable theologies by living them ourselves, constantly testing and correcting our behaviors and our theologies until our theologies guide our lives.

If loving is a bedrock of your spirituality, you will encounter issues when the loving becomes self-serving. We all do! We are all human. That does not mean that loving is not foundational to our theologies. That means that we are imperfect lovers and imperfect human beings! Duh! That's why Jews repent. We are not perfect. But our imperfection does not mean that we cannot be spiritual, and it also gives us another spiritual opportunity: repentance.

Summing up: Of course you are uncertain! Everyone since Rene DesCartes has been, because in the spiritual world certitude does not exist as in the material world described by science. But since we cannot live without a spiritual side to our lives, which produces meaning and purpose in life, we must content ourselves with theologies that make us most certain, and then correct them as we fall short. But what a glorious enterprise: creating meaning in our lives that points us to relationship with God.