I once knew a man who, when thinking, thought only to analyze: to break open, to lift up, to turn over, to discover, or to burn. He knew no other way.
So when this friend of mine turned his complex mind to God and the world filled with things he could neither see nor touch, he found only questions. Questions! Five hundred burning, churning, ripping, boiling questions that he could not answer, and an ocean of pain.
When, upon further consideration, he could not deny the existence of the One, he found himself angry at It's existence, It's presence, and It's seeming circumvention. He found himself crying out at the injustice of the answers he feared from the questions he could not satisfy. And so he stood right where he was and he screamed curses to try to fill the ever-present silence, silence born of his fear.
But he had asked so many questions that he forgot to keep searching for the truth - or even for the answers. He did not notice the truth of the fact that the enemy was in himself.
And the enemy was growing. Mercilessly feeding on his organs and drinking from his blood, little by little, it turned his heart from a heart of flesh to a heart of darkness.
And every time my friend thought he caught a glimpse of this parasite within himself, he found it too terrible - too terrible! It was easier, he found, to spend his moments cursing God and dying, rather than confront the evil and the pain and the brokenness that lived within his own chest.
And so he drank a bitter draught of rage each day, and it fueled him to stand, to live, and to be. But at night, in the darkness of a solemn midnight, when he could no longer preoccupy his own complex mind, he considered the other side of the great conversation. The dreadful What If?
What If? Oh the torturous thought! What if by raging against the One, he was damning himself forever to be apart from the only thing that could save his anguished soul? And yet, through the stillness of the night, there whispered a voice both gentle and sure,
"Ye who are weary of whipping my back, come home and find rest in my arms."
ReplyDeleteDo you know this poem?
In the Desert
BY STEPHEN CRANE
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
“Because it is bitter,
“And because it is my heart.”
I think that for your really serious atheist there aren't that many questions out there! That atheist is as certain of the Nothing as a religionist is of the Something--and in neither case is there a lot of doubt.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that certainties of either kind prevent inner torment--I take inner torment, anguish, and affliction to be the common fate of all people, saved and unsaved, believers and non, lovers and haters.
I do know that poem! Very chilling, and my favorite of Crane's.
ReplyDeleteI think you're right, inner doubt and torment can fill both the atheist and the Christian, I think it's a part of the world we live in. But my story here is not about a Christian or an atheist, but rather an intellectual whom I know that is searching.
Funny you should mention that poem - I struggled whether to write this in free verse style or segmented into paragraphs since it seemed as though it might fit either style. But then I thought you might not read it if it looked anything like a poem. ;)
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