The Will to Believe

Please refer to my post from October for the back story to this post.

The magic is gone. It took the world falling apart for me to realize that life really is every bit as terrible as people keep telling me it is. I look out my window and hate what I see all around me. There are people living on the streets and in houses that barely deserve that title. There are hungry people. There are people who don't have families. If my separation from my family, my meager housing (which is a castle by comparison), and my penny-pinching at the grocery store have taught me anything, it is to sympathize ever so slightly with these people. If I have a longing for home and security, imagine their emotions of a similar kind! I hate that these people have little choice about their situation.

The season of Advent is supposed to make us want Christ's coming all the more. It has certainly fulfilled that goal in my life. This Advent, I have been faced with a picture of the sick monster that is at the core of the world. It breaks apart relationships both human and divine. It creates greed and hostilities. It forges bitterness and despair. Call it what you will, but do not consider that the world is a safe place. There is of course goodness, virtue, and right relationship in the world, but do not neglect the existence of its dark alternative as I did.

Advent is supposed to be about the hope for a brighter future. Having the resurrection in the back of my mind, I realize that there is nothing so dark as to overcome the Son of God. But believing it is sometimes more difficult than knowing it. I confess that I am a cynic by nature; hope is not something that comes easily to me. Hope is a choice that I have to consciously make. Ultimately, I have to decide whether or not I judge Jesus to be worth hoping in. He claimed that he would bless the poor, the meek, the peacemakers, the mourning, those persecuted for righteousness' sake, and those hungering and thirsting for righteousness. I don't see a lot of that when I look out my window. I don't see a lot of that when I look at my life. Perhaps others have clearer lenses than I and can easily point it out. I urge you to do so, for mine are too easily stained with despair. Chances are I am missing something; I certainly hope I am.

I want to believe in the hope Jesus represents. I just don't know that I can. William James offers a picture of the requirements necessary for believing in something without absolute proof. He claims that one requirement is for there to be a live option in the choice. One option is that God is at best capricious and at worst malicious or nonexistent. The other option is that God truly does care about humanity as Christ's life, death, and resurrection represent. Yet it seems to me that if option two is to be viable, there must be some evidence of such today.

This Christmas is unlike any other in my memory. This Christmas, I have doubts about Christianity. This Christmas, I have to make a choice whether to celebrate the coming of a Savior and the hope that he brings or to abandon that hope altogether. It seems illogical, but option two it is.