Part 2 of 2: Children who believe through the beliefs of their parents
In the last post I made reference to the phenomenon whereby the seemingly uncompromising and unwavering belief of a parent is sometimes only maintained insofar as that belief is accepted by their child. And that if this child expresses their doubts then the parents are forced to confront, not merely the child’s loss of a religious worldview, but their own (a loss that was, up until then disavowed). Often, of course, the role of the child in this example is taken by another, perhaps by the local Pastor, or other authority. In such cases the other believes on our behalf because we don’t really believe.
In this post I want to briefly mention a slightly different phenomenon. Slavoj Zizek notes the existence of educated sceptics who freely accept and speak of their unbelief, yet who believe through a ‘naïve’ other. Here the enlightened individual is happy not to believe in anything in particular as long as they know of some ‘naïve’ individual or group who does believe. Here, for instance, someone is able to live without any real belief as long as his or her parents continue in the tradition, or the local church where they went as a child remains open. However, if they find out that their parents no longer believe, or the church is closing its doors, then they feel a deep loss: as if it was they who had lost faith, even though they already supposedly had.
Here the parent’s naïve belief believes on behalf of the child, believes so that they don’t have to. These individuals do in a sense still believe then, even through their lifestyle and thoughts would give no direct hint of that belief. The belief has been externalised and is disavowed. In this setting such people may then return to the faith of their youth, for in a sense they never left it behind but only disavowed it.
As Neal and Sarah pointed out in the comments from the last post, the church can often take the place of the naïve parent in this example. The church believes on behalf of people. Believing for them.
The problem for me is not that the church should help people locate their own belief within themselves rather than externalise it (although this is preferable to believing through the other), nor (in reference to the last post) that it should help people to recover a belief that they have lost. Rather I am building an arguement that states the church should break the idea that faith is about belief wide open: exposing doubt when it is hidden in dogma and exposing dogma when it is hidden in doubt. My position is that the church today needs to imbibe doubt into its very structures while simultaneously helping people to incarnate faith in life. This will require a fundamental restructuring of church and is something that I will take up in later posts. This is also the topic of the book that I am currently writing (which I will hopefully finish in mid 2009 and release in early 2010).
Tags: Belief, believing through the other, doubt, Peter Rollins, Religious conviction, Zizek
March 25th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Yey! Another book! Looking forward to it.
(You seem to have something of a Calvinist work ethic…:P)
March 26th, 2009 at 11:00 am
I agree, Peter. My faith has only grown since I’ve learned to imbibe doubt into my life and not shrink away from it. You are spot on, the church will only grow when it does that.
March 26th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Pete
Interesting again… one follow up. You say your goal is to:
“exposing doubt when it is hidden in dogma and exposing dogma when it is hidden in doubt. My position is that the church today needs to imbibe doubt into its very structures while simultaneously helping people to incarnate faith in life.”
Though I resonate with the sentiment, what is one way you see this being workout out concretely, especially within accepted church dogma. Would love to hear your thoughts.
Peter
March 27th, 2009 at 6:31 am
I must agree with the comment above. Whilst personally it has become almost second nature in my encounters to state; ‘I don’t know’, ‘I don’t have all the answers’, ‘I doubt…’, that it is much more difficult to see how this can impact on the structures of my church. Part of my difficulty with the emergent and the fresh expressions stuff is that what I see of it, all looks so terribly Anglican.
Tackling classical epistemology to claim faith is not about belief, seems limiting of itself. Can faith not be about What, How AND Why?
March 27th, 2009 at 7:19 am
Hey Neal
Thanks for the comment about epistemology. I guess my concern here is not that faith cannot be about belief as such, but rather that today in the Western World a certain form of belief is no longer plausible for a vast number of people (my critique is thus genealogical rather than metaphysical). For instance today in Europe atheism is a rational position to hold, as rational, if not more so, than theism. This is a relatively new phenomenon. The point that someone like Bonhoeffer was making was not that affirmation of, say, theistic belief was problematic at a time but rather whether it is now important to need. Most of my friends do not believe in the existence of a higher power, not because of ignorance, but because they have thought things through to a high level through an intellectual heritage that has questioned such things. The question is whether we need to engage in apologetics to convince them (which, I think, is an impotent strategy) or whether they can have faith without necessarily holding a theistic belief.
Again, to be clear, I am not saying that faith has not in the past been rightly linked with a particular set of beliefs, nor whether it will be in the future, but rather, that today, the people I am in contact with would find certain traditional dogmas impossible to intellectually hold. Not out of arrogance, or lack of thought, but rather because of their intellectual heritage etc. I am arguing that Christianity is not hermeneutic and thus is not necessarily tied to a way of interpreting reality.
So, for instance, once creationism became an intellectually ridiculous position to affirm thoughtful Christians were able to drop it… at one time however creationism was the most plausible position to take concerning the nature of the world as we saw it and thus was rightly part of peoples basic beliefs (people like William Paley where convincing – at least in a broad way – until Darwin came along)
If someone finds that they are able to rationally affirm all the basic tenants of traditional Christianity I do not have a problem, I just think that the idea that one must do so in order to enter fully into the life of Christianity is a form of gnosticism.
Hope that clarifies my position a little… cheers
March 27th, 2009 at 9:49 am
[...] “If someone finds that they are able to rationally affirm all the basic tenants of traditional Christianity I do not have a problem, I just think that the idea that one must do so in order to enter fully into the live of Christianity is a form of gnosticism.” (Link) [...]
March 27th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Why gnosticism?
March 27th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Hey Aideen
I am thinking that there is an element of gnosticism in the idea that there is some knowledge that must be gained as part of the process of salvation. Here the believer is one who has an occult knowledge about the universe that those who do not know God do not have. What do you think?
March 28th, 2009 at 5:23 am
Having given life to 3 children there is an observable pattern. Baby, child takes on beliefs, culture of the parent, the teacher one who models. Once secure the child is then free to express, bring, add, shed those beliefs, blending and transforming moving apart from the parent. The point here is the security, how many of us now moving beyond church, embracing doubt, can do it because we have the security and foundation of what came before? The parents’ role I believe at this critical point is to provide something to hit against, adversity bringing its own creativity, to move on from the parents. Any parent not seeing this coming is not preparing their child to be an independent adult. Hence we have a church, is it an unprepared parent or providing something rigid for us to bounce off from?
March 30th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
“Hey Aideen
I am thinking that there is an element of gnosticism in the idea that there is some knowledge that must be gained as part of the process of salvation. Here the believer is one who has an occult knowledge about the universe that those who do not know God do not have. What do you think?”
Hmmm…I absolutely agree that the idea that we need to know our theology before we can be saved is patently ridiculous, but I do think that as someone grows as a Christian they need to figure out the rational basis for their beliefs, if your belief is not grounded in something it can easily falter; and for all its mystery, Christianity has a profoundly rational core. There are certain theological concepts that, once you grasp them, make sense of the world in a way nothing else can – that being said, of course, they open up even more questions. Of course, no-one should be required to grasp them in order to belong to the body of Christ (the analogy you made of the infant not needing to understand the mother in order to feel her love in ‘How (Not) to Speak of God’ makes a lot of sense). But I think if we affirm Jesus as God, that would have to be to the exclusion of other world views – and as such making truth claims about Christianity is not tantamount to ‘occultism’. Much as I would love to say that everyone has their own personal truth and none is superior, I can’t say that in one breath and then in the next agree with Jesus when he says ‘I am the way, the truth and the life, no-one comes to the father but by me’. Does that make sense or have I misunderstood you completely?
March 31st, 2009 at 4:07 pm
(PS twitter informs me it is your birthday, so many happy returns!)