Other People's Stories

I have just finished reading Michael Novak’s newest book, No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers. I always find Mr. Novak’s books insightful, provocative, refreshingly honest, well researched, and incredibly literary. This one exceeded the high standard he has set (in my mind) by all his past writings.

One of the things I have always admired about Novak is how honestly, openly and respectfully he engages the ideas, ideals, beliefs and values of those who differ with him. In this book, he is engaging some of our nation’s more popular atheists.

Novak reminds me of Bill Buckley, in this regard. I always respected how he engaged people who differed with him: even more so the fact that WFB’s friends came from every spectrum of the political, philosophical and theological world.

When we look around our personal worlds, whom are they peopled with? How many “people of color”? How many people younger and older? How many are from other cultures, other countries? How many of our friends are of differing faiths or, at the very least, have differing views of our common faith? How many of our friends ever get in our face and respectfully argue with us about beliefs/ values/ mindsets/ perspectives we hold dear?

It is very easy to gravitate to people who are like us in most every respect. Yet where is the “iron sharpening iron”? Where is the variety that spices up our lives? Who is going to put ants in the pants of our faith, our worldview, our philosophy, our way of being?

It seems to me that most people do not want to be challenged, do not want to rethink long held conclusions, revisit old certainties, preferring, rather, the comfort of people who pretty much only say Yes and Amen to everything they believe, to most every decision they have ever made, to their most cherished illusions. (The great thing about being disillusioned? It means we are being disabused of an illusion!)

All of us tell ourselves stories about who we are, why we are the way we are, how we came to be This Way, justifying why we believe as we do, act as we have, and how right (or wrong) we are about This, That, and The Other. The stories comfort us (even those stories that explain why we were or are "wrong") because, to our way of thinking, they are True. And once the story is True, all other possibilities are barred: all stories that would lead to other possibilities are seen as so many books to be burned.

This is not to say that we should never come to conclusions: only that our conclusions should be held humbly and with open hands, and they should never come before having engaged as many other possibilities —as many other stories—as possible.

When Novak engages an atheist, he does so respectfully and empathetically, walking in the shoes of the other, genuinely considering other beliefs, other answers to life’s questions (“What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?” Kant), other possibilities, and other stories that were shaped by differing experiences … and his soul is nourished, deepened, broadened, challenged, and enriched by doing so. As will ours, if we decide to Go, and Do Likewise.

Or so I believe ...

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2008