A case of the blahs? by Jim McGuiggan

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A case of the blahs?

I’m not making an “argument” against unbelief so much as making an observation. Harry Emerson Fosdick quotes a brilliant physics professor of some years ago by the name of Tyndal, an atheist. Tyndal said he noticed that atheism seemed more compelling to him when he was feeling depressed than it did when he was feeling buoyant and optimistic. That doesn’t in the least surprise me because I notice that I’m more inclined to be critical of the ways of God when I’m experiencing a case of the blahs than when I feel on top of things.

Our rational capacity is one of the marvellous things about us and only a fool despises it but it’s astonishing to see how many other things about us that can interfere with our reasoning capacity. A famous London preacher called Joseph Parker said that when his wife died, he who had never had a moment’s doubt in all his life became like an atheist almost overnight. And wasn’t it Martin Luther who confessed “sometimes I believe and sometimes I disbelieve”? In the middle of a bad dose of “the blues” 2+2 still equal four and apples still drop down from trees rather than fly up from them but while we can’t walk away from mathematical or empirical realities they’re not the dominant things in life.

A blistering headache, a very sick child or an honourable but unpayable debt can drive out of us any desire to consciously worship God. Confusion, lack of energy, deep personal loss or the week in week out sameness of life can hobble a non-believer and keep him or her from thinking clearly. The atheist Blackham, I think, spoke for a host of people when he said that he thought the strongest argument against unbelief was “the pointlessness” of it all. He said, “It’s too bad to be true.” He insisted, of course, that whatever the truth is it is and if we must face “unyielding despair” (the early Bertrand Russell’s phrase) then so be it. This is right and proper. Just the same I can’t help thinking that as believers and non-believers we think and say silly things not because we’ve rigorously thought them through but because we feel disappointment or think things should be better than they are. And so, weary more than convinced we turn to things that are very doubtful to say the least and passionately reject what should have been given a fairer and a prolonged hearing.

Feelings of impotence and rage and pity can all combine to rule God out of existence but maybe…just maybe they are the very things that should make us look up. Maybe these very feelings are as they should be in a world bent out of shape by what the Hebrew-Christian scriptures call “sin”. Maybe God is pleased when we feel such things, things such as rage against injustice and oppression, against the poverty and pain of countless millions. Each of us can make a difference to someone but our impotence rises up and jeers at us when we think of the vast numbers of our fellow humans and maybe it’s then, especially, that we should talk to God about it all and to listen to him as well.

You might remember the song from the stage musical Pickwick called If I Ruled the World. In it Samuel Pickwick (the Dickens character) is mistaken for a political candidate and the crowd wants to know what kind of world they’d have if he was elected. It’s a great song (usually connected with Harry Secombe but popularised too by Tony Bennett and Stevie Wonder) that expresses what every sensitive soul would like to see but knows he or she can never bring about. In that world, sings Pickwick, every day would be the first day of spring and every heart would have a new song to sing about the joy each new morning would bring. Every man would be as free as a bird, every voice would have a right to be heard, people would dream wonderful dreams, everyone would know his neighbour was his friend and there’d be happiness that no one could end.

How could we not want such a world if we had a grain of humanity in us? And a vast number of us—believers and non-believers alike—do want such a world and we want it not just for ourselves or the West or for many of us or even most of us but for all of us. If we think noble things of God we’ll know that he too wants a world like that for us all. And the good news is—the good news centred in the glorified Jesus Christ who stands as the representative of the human family—that God not only wants it but is able to bring it about and is even now moving to that breathtaking completion. The Christian Story is that the resurrected and glorified Jesus is the standing proof of it.

Even to disheartened non-believers the living Jesus would say, “Take heart, I have overcome the world.”

Trust yourself to him and his agenda and let your sad heart find peace and hope.