"A" FOR EFFORT

Of Bart and Homer, and the Many Ways of Faith (KATIE ZEZIMA, June 14, 2003, NY Times)

[The Rev. Shawn] Galyen, 31-year-old minister of the Georgetown University chapter of Chi Alpha, a Christian campus ministry, has been spreading the spirituality of Springfield by dedicating a chunk of the group's weekly meetings to discussion about "The Simpsons." Two of his Chi Alpha colleagues, the Rev. Scott Miller at Boston University and the Rev. Bryan Bessette at the University of New Hampshire, hold monthly "Simpsons" viewing sessions. [...]

One recent night, Mr. Bessette and about 20 students watched the episode "Bart Gets an F": Bart will have to repeat the fourth grade if he doesn't pass one last history test. He kneels by his bed and prays to a deity he calls Old-Timer: "I just need one more day to study, Lord. I need your help." When he wakes up the next morning, Springfield is blanketed in snow, and school is canceled. He studies all day for the test, only to receive a 59. In crying to his teacher, he makes an obscure historical reference, for which she awards him an extra point and a passing D-minus grade. Part of this D-minus belongs to God, Bart declares.

Mr. Bessette asked the students to compare Bart's prayer with "The Lord's Prayer." The students said Bart's offering lacked selflessness and a plea to help him resist enticements. "It was also too informal," said one student, Christopher Chartier. "While God wants you to talk to him like a friend, you have to respect him like a father."

Mr. Bessette also asked the students whether, as with Bart, it was possible to be sincere in the moment while not honestly seeking faith in everyday life. Arwen Temple replied that in moments of desperation, people who do not live a God-filled life seem to find religion. Mr. Bessette agreed: "Bart's a pretty good estimate of most people," he said.

I beg your kind indulgence for a brief but excruciatingly self-referential moment. To begin, let me just say that I'm a firm believer in the odd notion that we don't know much of anything, and, therefore, since so much (all) of what we understand ourselves to "know" is in fact taken on faith, there is in the end no difference between reason and faith. That which we call Reason is just another form of faith or a subset of faith.

At any rate, of all the things we truly know nothing about, that about which we have to assume we know the least is God, from whether He exists to what he wants of us to whether He's paying one damn bit of attention or grew too bored or irritated hundreds of years ago to be bothered with an obviously failed experiment. However, based on what we think we know, God would seem to be uniquely indispensable. Given that everything from our morality to our form of government to our social institutions to the value we place on human life is completely dependent on at least the idea of Him, on our Creation by Him in particular, it seems impossible to give up the core idea without sliding into the sink of Despond that places like Europe have become and without beckoning forth the darkest parts of our nature, embracing depravity because our resort to reason tells us it makes not one damn bit of difference. If the choice is between believing something that seems silly from a purely rationalist/materialist perspective or following where that perspective leads--to the charnel house--it just doesn't seem all that difficult a choice.

But what then to make of prayer? Even admitting we know nothing, it seems somehow beyond the realm of possibility that God wants us to summon his attention periodically in order to ask Him for stuff for ourselves. This happens to be precisely what a bestseller, The Prayer of Jabez, tells us, but I personally come down on the side of the VeggieTales episode with Madame Blueberry: a thankful heart is a happy heart. Prayer is a time for us to offer up, not to ask of.

Indeed, where prayer is concerned, I propose my own version of Pascal's wager: We can't know whether God exists and asking Him for stuff is manifestly ineffective, but there is a way of praying that is rewarding regardless and that is to make demands of ourself rather than of Him. As one can (must) believe in God, because He must be the absolute that defines our behavior, so too can (must) prayer be an attempt to conform ourselves to His (these) standards. Prayer then would seem an opportunity to acknowledge to Him (ourselves) that we can not always love one another as He loved us, that we can not always honor and obey, that all too often, in the words of Romans (7:18-19): "I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do." In prayer we can recognize this about ourselves and regret it, then ask for whatever help He sees fit to give us as we try to do right more often:

In prayer we express deep penitence and contrition for our shortcomings, using sorrowful and self-accusing words. And this often in all sincerity. But, at other times, we are not really much disturbed about it; or, at least, not nearly so much as our heaped-up language would imply. What we imagine that we are achieving through this unreality I do not know. We shall not fool the All-wise; nor induce Him to believe that we are anything other, or better, than we actually are! Were it not saner to tell Him the truth, exactly as it is -- not that we are overwhelmed with sorrow for our sinfulness, if it is not so; but rather this, that, to all our other sinfulness, we have added this last and crowning sinfulness, that we are not much worried about it, or, at least, not nearly as much as we ought to be. Be pleased, in pity, to grant us such measure of sorrow for our failures as will lead us to a true repentance; and, through that, to a new way of life.
-A. J. Gossip (1873-1954), In the Secret Place of the Most High (1947)

And the thing of it is, even if God is nothing but a fable we made up to comfort ourselves, so long as prayer takes this form, so long as we use it to dedicate ourselves to trying to be the kind of people we believe He requires us to be, it truly doesn't matter whether He exists. This is a prayer that we have to answer ourselves, however inadequately. It's a wager that we can cause to pay off, though being merely human, the payoff will likely be in small amounts. Still, if six billion of us were to cause those small payoffs it would add up fast, no? Posted by Orrin Judd at June 14, 2003 8:47 PM