Questions From an Atheist

Isn't your life meant for Eternity? What does the present matter? Or are you in a constant state of "Now" as the Lord is?


Speaking in eschatological terms, yes, the Christian life is an acting out of the New Covenant the end result of which is eternal life. But when I wake up in the morning, I hear my alarm going off, I smell my coffee brewing, I feel the penetrating warmth of the water pulsating out of the shower head. In our life on earth, this is all we have. We have the ability to think about the past, and anticipate the future, but these thoughts are reality only as we define it. So as human beings we craft our perception of events (which I will loosely call reality).

When I think of Christmas break for instance I can think of an argument with a friend from West Virginia like it happened 20 minutes ago. To me that argument is very real; the words, the tones used. The situation as it was at that time is defining what I think of my friend presently. My friend on the other hand does not feel the same way. He forgot about the silly argument after it happened and went back to painting in his studio.

Anticipating the future is similar to thinking about the past. We use our perception of past events to try to predict how the future will turn out. There is a huge sports media industry dedicated to doing just that. So, the Duke and North Carolina men’s basketball teams are going to play. Sportscenter is digging up the stats: wins and losses, home and away records, each team’s performance in the last few games. The coaches and players are watching film of the last game they played against one another trying to see what their opponent will do.

All this time, money, energy and planning goes into determining how the game will play out. But once the teams tip-off the game takes on a life of its own. Players are up and down the floor, bodies are on the ground, a power forward twists an ankle and leaves the game. No amount of anticipating the game could have predicted the way the game went. So too when we think of our future. No amount of thinking or planning will tell us what tomorrow brings.

So that brings us back to the present moment. One of the Psalms says “our lives are 70 or 80 years, and most of those are loneliness and pain.” Our temporal condition means that we cannot know the eternal except through grace (if we believe in that). Most Buddhists would say (and I am inclined to agree) that after years of practice we can attain a constant state of now.

We can attain Buddha-hood, we can attain enlightenment after we have mastered the path of the Bodhisattva. I would say that this is not the same state that God is in, and that as Christians we cannot know that state while on earth, except through Jesus, but even Jesus is clear that the son is not the father.

Going back to the second part of the Psalm, our lives are loneliness and pain if we define them in that way. Our lives are precious gifts if we define them in that way. Happiness, an uncaused state, is brought about by the shedding of layers upon layers of conditioned thinking. We think that to be happy we must prove ourselves, we must be respected by others, we must have x amount of money in the bank, a spouse by age 30, a large house full of children at 35. This is so much garbage. We put conditions on happiness and we never attain it. We only have a brief resting place between getting one thing we want and striving after another.

So basically, since we define our existence, our lives can be either hell on earth or heaven on earth. If we can choose to live in the present moment, we can choose to be happy. If we can choose to be happy we can bring untold amounts of joy to others. Bringing joy to others, we find that we are reinvigorated by them and receive joy ourselves. And this is how we change the world. We change it by changing ourselves.

Traveling

As I write this I sit in Marshall’s computer lab, a place that at different times has been study center, escape haven and newsroom for me. It’s now June and I’m still traveling. DC, Wheeling, Weirton, Huntington, St. Louis, Chicago, St. Louis, Huntington, and the final destination, Northern Panhandle.

It’s my second stopover in my hometown and time has begun to drift. The constant déjà vu element of this trip is no longer shocking, and I half expect to see my past self, with long, curly hair and notebooks in hand emerge from Old Main, or be standing outside the Java Joint engaged in constant political debate.

In the past weeks I have seen people I no longer see, gone places I no longer go, thought things I no longer think. Place and time impress upon us as much as we define them. Marshall in the summer is still quiet, and from the library one can hear the constant pitter patter of the water from the Memorial Fountain striking the basin.

In St. Louis, the Arsenal Street house is the same as it always has been. When I walk in my guest room I am half surprised that I instinctively know where the light switches are, where I can plug in my cell phone, how the metal chain on patio door blinds lets the light in while the stiff cloth string pulls them back. The Arch still watches over my part of south St. Louis and the ornate steeple of St. Francis De Sales leans toward Gravois Avenue, pulling ever more slightly apart from its foundation.

These places are in me, and I am in them. Past, future and present blend and I am no more significant than a drop of water in the Ohio River meandering slowly but steadily toward the sea.