Recently I read an article titled “Lead Singer Of Christian Rock Band Hawk Nelson Says He No Longer Believes In God”1. It’s always a shock to read about some Christian Celebrity who loses their faith. But perhaps it should not be. Though one does not often read a headline like that…I can certainly understand where he is coming from. There are arid periods many of us go through in our faith life making us wonder about the reality of a God.
The day to day process of living out my Catholic faith is like climbing a ladder. A ladder is not a place to sit idle. There is no room for that. The purpose of a ladder is to enable one to reach an otherwise inaccessible higher place. One ascends this metaphorical ladder by cultivating virtues and growing in one’s understanding of the faith. But a ladder is a tricky thing. It needs to be firmly planted on the ground or it teeters. That firm plant is a solid grounding in one’s beliefs.
What is that grounding? It is a good understanding of the basics. First there is The Problem: Original Sin caused by the fall of the first man and woman and its ongoing consequences. I can clearly see the effects of Original Sin in myself. As St. Paul says in Romans 7:15 “I do not act as I mean to, but I do things that I hate.” This is a problem that needs a solution. Jesus Christ, who said “I am the Way; I am Truth and Life” is The Solution. (John 14:6) Christianity, from my own Catholic perspective, and indeed, all of salvation history only makes sense in this context.
Our faith has to be planted solidly, grounded on evidence too. Jesus showed his followers he had the power to forgive by backing up his words with a miracle, making a lame man walk. (Mark 2:3-12) Then there was the Transfiguration where Peter, James and John saw Christ in his glory. And there were countless miracles that Jesus worked during his 3 year ministry. Jesus told the Apostles he would be put to death by the authorities and rise on the third day (Matthew 16:21) - before this happened, and afterward he not only appeared to them but also, as St. Paul mentions, to five hundred “of the brothers” (1 Corinthians 15:1-7).
One must also climb a ladder one rung at a time. In your haste, if you somehow miss a few rungs you can loose your footing and have a bad fall. One way that happens is to get discouraged if you find you don’t seem to be growing in virtue fast enough and give up. Or get bogged down in difficult questions when perhaps some more basic questions or issues need to be dealt with first. Which brings me back to the above mentioned article. There are some challenging questions raised in it:
“Jon Steingard, lead singer of the Christian rock band Hawk Nelson, regretfully announced on Instagram last week that he no longer believes in God.”
“If God is all loving, and all powerful, why is there evil in the world? Can you not do anything about it? Does he choose not to? Is the evil in the world a result of his desire to give us free will? OK then what about famine and disease and floods and all the suffering that isn’t caused by humans in our free will? If God is loving, why does he send people to hell?” were all questions that plagued him.
“Why does God seem so pissed off in most of the old testament, and then all of a sudden he’s a loving father in the New Testament? Why does he say not to kill, but then instruct Israel to turn around and kill men women and children to take the promised land? Why does God let Job suffer horrible things just to win a bet with Satan? What does he tell Abraham to kill his son and then basically say ‘just kidding! That was a test.’ If God can do anything, can’t you forgive without someone dying? I mean, my parents taught me to forgive people – nobody dies in that scenario,” he wrote.
These are all legitimate questions most Christians have asked or pondered at some time. Every one of us has to deal with these obstacles as we climb the ladder. And here is one other point about a ladder. It’s always a good idea to have someone holding it steady while we climb up. These are all questions that great minds have pondered over the centuries and have written about - These are the men that have made that ladder steady. Among them St. Augustine2, and St. Aquinas3. A more modern example is C. S. Lewis. And we have these teachings as resources to fall back on.
In closing I have a few of my own reflections on some of these questions that Jon raises. Many of them revolve around The Problem - original sin and the evil it has caused, particularly suffering: “It was not for its own purposes that creation had frustration imposed on it, but for the purposes of him who imposed it - with the intention that the whole creation itself might be freed from its slavery to corruption and brought into the same glorious freedom as the children of God. We are well aware that the whole creation, until this time, has been groaning in labour pains.” (Romans 8:20-23)
Because of original sin, humans, and by extension human cultures, are capable of depravity, the depths of which many of us in our somewhat comfortable, prosperous and sheltered modern western culture cannot imagine. Perhaps in part because it is “hidden before” our eyes. Take abortion - the killing and dismembering of helpless human beings. It is sugar coated as “right to choose” and hidden away in abortion clinics. We don’t see the horror of it.
Human sacrifice was not uncommon during Abraham’s time. In fact it seems to be an ongoing human proclivity that is manifest even today - in the form of abortion. The fact that God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son Isaac then telling him not to do so, shows that this God was not a God who demanded human sacrifice for appeasement like many of the false Gods men worship. This God is different in that he himself would provide the sacrifice. (Genesis 22:8, 13-14) Historical context is everything when reading scripture. The Old Testament cannot be fully understood in isolation. It must be understood in terms of the New Testament. In this we see Isaac is a figure of Christ.
The post modern mind finds it incomprehensible that some cultures became so polluted and corrupted by evil that the only solution was to tear them down and start over. The problem isn’t a heartless God that orders Israel to kill men, women and children but heartless men who have given themselves so entirely over to wicked practises that perhaps there was no other remedy possible.
This is a hard reality to grasp, but a good starting point would be to read “The Conquest of New Spain” by Bernal Diaz, born in 1492, and who was an eye witness to the horrors of Montezuma’s Aztec empire, where human sacrifice and cannibalism was a common everyday occurrence.
We all need to make it up that ladder, but we need to make sure it is secure, have a steady hand holding it and to take one rung at a time. However, in the end we have to be aware there is a limit to human knowledge and understanding…and we may not always find answers to some of life’s more difficult questions. When that point is reached reason won’t carry the day. There must be faith and trust in God too.
Sources:
1. Lead Singer of Christian Rock Band Hawk Nelson Says he no Longer Believes in God
2. https://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201/modules/Philosophers/Augustine/augustine_evil.html
3. https://catholicexchange.com/aquinas-evil-four-comforting-insights and “Light of Faith The Compendium of Theology”, St. Thomas Aquinas, Sophia Institute Press, 1993. pp.121-133.
Authors
Adele's Photography
