Atheism: the first step on the path to belief
Photo by Emanuela Picone
“The ultimate riddance, and the most difficult, is getting rid of your god to go to God.”
-Meister Eckhart
My mother grew up in Wales where, as a loyal British subject, she learned to enjoy a proper spot of tea with milk and two cubes of sugar. This tradition followed her to the States and was imparted to me as a young child. For Brits of a certain era, tea included an element of ceremony complete with bone china- passed down the generations- which was returned to its proper position on a tray in a glass hutch in a special part of the house after the designated tea time.
Imagine after a lifetime of proper tea, your child returns from Nepal where she spent weeks hiking and staying at teahouses in the Sherpa lands of Khumbu. She now prefers her tea with yak butter and salt, served outside (gasp) in the cold, fresh air where the scent of an open fire can fill her nose.
“Oh, how…interesting,” you say. You tell her you’ve been thinking of leaving her your mother’s tea collection in your will. She thanks you but graciously declines suggesting it may be more her sister’s cup of tea. You can’t help but feel devastated. It is tough to separate the rejection of your gift from the feeling of rejection of your sense of family, identity and traditions.
Like the tea ceremony with its symbols and traditions, everything we’ve learned about God is built on symbolic thought. Many of us from a Christian background can remember first associating God with symbolic visual images related to Jesus: nativity scenes, Christ on the cross, strange-looking fish on the back of cars and important leather-bound books embossed in gold.
This was followed by written symbols in the form of words: God, Jesus, Yahweh, Holy Spirit, all-loving, all-powerful, church and baptism. These words were combined into sentences and these sentences into stories, “For God so loved the world, he gave his only Son.” These stories were assembled into creeds and dogmas, and like a Lego set, the more pieces you had, the more intricate creations you could build. If you assembled your symbols as we did, you were one of us. These symbols became so powerfully associated with our sense of self and identity that their mere sight could bring us to tears. An attack (even in the form of questions) could lead to rage, frustration and anger.
These symbols wallpaper the glass walls in the room of our mind until we no longer see the outside world. All light from beyond the walls casts shadows which –when filtered through these symbols– form our reality. But, the map is not the territory.
One day you read a book on the Roman Empire and learn that Jesus was not blonde, nor white like you’d seen in picture books. There may not have been any white people in the Bible! The book shows that as many Jews of that era he was probably just over 5 foot tall with olive skin and kinky, dark hair. Your mine holds up the picture in the book, compares it to your wallpaper at which point one of two things happens. You either throw the new book away, holding tight to the shadows, or you scratch your head, grab a crayon and make adjustments to the symbol.
You keeping reading and discover that many of your favorite holidays, like Christmas, borrowed pagan religious elements like caroling and mistletoe and incorporated them into its traditions. You shrug it off. “That one wasn’t such an important symbol and it was off in a corner. And, anyway, it’s not really at the core of what Christmas or being a Christian is about anyway!”
You visit the home of your best friend since childhood. Growing up, her room was decorated just like yours and you are shocked when you walk in. She too has been evaluating her room, but she’s not been content with merely rearranging and adjusting. Staples that held up the posters lay about the floor. Layers of wallpaper have been peeled away in strips so she can peek at what’s behind.
Your rooms look less and less alike. Her band posters change, her clothes are new, everything which made you two ‘you’ is different. Her replacement choices of new core symbols feel like a personal attack on you and your way of being. Her questions hit a nerve forcing you to question the permanence of the symbols around and the reality they conveyed. You feel uncomfortable around her. You wonder if things will ever return to the way they were when you were younger.
Your friend with the questions also faces a dilemma as she finds herself staring at the wreckage strewn about the floor asking if any of it was ever real and whether anything that remains is worth salvaging. When examining a fallen collection of symbols, some understandably say, “I no longer believe these symbols represent God. Therefore, I must be an atheist.”
Others say they can never truly know either way whether the symbols point to something real. They thus begin to identify as agnostic. The death of a symbolic god, however, no more makes one an atheist than burning a restaurant’s menu causes them to run out of food. Like the first time you grow up and see beyond your parent’s symbolic role as father or mother, and encounter them on a human level, atheism can be the time when a true connection to God begins.
Atheism is a natural pit stop on the journey for truth. In mystical traditions, it is known as The Dark Night of the Soul when doubt creeps in and you find yourself questioning God’s existence at all. Many biblical heroes and historical saints like St. John of the Cross have gone through and described such Dark Nights.
A Dark Night can come in times of distress or when, like Moses returning from Mount Sinai, you find the golden calf of your mind and destroy it. It is only after this destruction that you can truly begin your spiritual journey. It is here, in the letting go, where many great spiritual traditions tell us we can first experience grace.
Religion is designed to create uniformity and distinction between groups. It is the wood and the glass of the tea hutch as well as the cubes, china and time of day tea is served. As such, questions that blur the lines are a threat to its very existence. To tear down your symbols requires the spirit of a mystic, the questions of a scientist and the courage of an explorer. You must be willing to push beyond the veil and hold your god symbols to the flame. This is what the Tanakh and the Old Testament refer to as refiner’s fire and it is only after, when you sift through the ashes and find what remains, when will you find the answers to your questions which lie beyond the world of symbols.
Religion is for those who are afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who know they have been there — perhaps through involvement with religion.
— Fr. Patrick Collins
