CROSSING THE TWO GOD CHASM
A story of connecting to the Divine
Have you ever experienced God?
In the Ivy League schools where I was educated, asking that question would kill a conversation. Religion and God talk were considered marks of unsophistication. If somehow one had religious beliefs entering college, don’t worry, they’ll be gone by graduation.
The Ivy disdain for faith stemmed from the fact that for centuries religion seemed to be fighting a hopeless rearguard action against scientific progress. To take two famous examples, science established that the earth is not at the center of the universe, as the Church insisted, and demonstrated that the Bible’s date for the earth’s creation was off by billions of years.
But recently something striking has happened. Science, like the superpower Oceania in George Orwell’s 1984, has abruptly switched sides and now fights alongside religion under the banner of belief. Or so it seems to several sophisticated interpreters of recent scientific developments in cosmology, astronomy, and quantum mechanics.
Two important books, written for non-specialist audiences, make a strong case that God created the universe. Charles Murray’s new book, Taking Religion Seriously, though brief, does double duty, surveying recent scientific work that points to a universe designed for life, and charting his own hyper-intellectual journey from atheist-materialist to Christian. Similarly, God, the Science, and the Evidence by Michel-Yves Bollore and Olivier Bonnassies argues that scientific evidence favors the conclusion that God exists.
Which returns us to the question, have you ever experienced God?
The answer might turn on what one means by the word “God.” Both books acknowledge that a gap exists between the Creator God that science arguably supports, and the God of the three monotheistic religions, who loves the humans He created, makes demands on them, and oversees a vast plan driving toward their fulfillment.
This gap between the God philosophers can reason their way towards and the God whom the devout revere and serve is a chasm that can only be traversed by a leap of faith. No arguments, evidence, data, or probabilities, no strange quantum phenomena can propel the vexed seeker from one side to the other.
So, if reason can only get one to the philosopher’s God side of the chasm, how do some cross over to the Biblical God?
Here’s a story:
In my early forties I went through a period when the daily routine was deadening. My morning commute to New York began in darkness. Once there I sat on a trading floor in front of several blinking screens all day and then returned home in darkness. One rainy and gloomy fall Friday night my wife and I went to a synagogue near the Bedford Hills train station for Shabbat service. This was an unusual choice. We were looking for relief from work-week doldrums. As it happened, a student choir was performing that night. The elementary school-aged children sang a song about that week’s Torah portion, which was the story of Abraham’s journey to Canaan:
Lech lecha, to a land that I will show you
Lech lecha, to place you do not know
In the Torah portion, God tells Abraham “lech lecha,” or go {on a journey} for yourself.
As I listened to their sweet voices, the words became more and more personal. An epiphany flashed through my mind, taking instant hold: some mysterious force had guided me to this service on this night to hear this song, which was no longer a song but a summons.
That startling realization touched me in a way that no abstract argument about the structure of the universe ever could.
And then? How does such a story end?
Not with a happily ever after.
Life, with its heartaches and blessings, with its ordinary rhythms, goes on. I make choices and decisions, some good and some not. But more than once, when I have felt lost, I hear those children singing, and the fortifying sense from that Friday night service, the conviction that I am on the path meant for my feet, returns.
That was my way across the chasm.
Standing at the crossroads - I have learned to choose by asking “which way will take more faith?” Which way will require His guidance?
Lech Lecha is a very personal journey.......there are myriad ways to experience this life changing experience.... both my Mother and my Father experienced this journey, literally they travelled alone, when they left the life, the family, the language, the education, and all the sights and sounds of their respective homes to travel to the unknown.