During my cab ride to the Miami airport this week I had a very pleasant conversation with my driver. (I am making a point that it was a nice conversation because in writing this it’s not possible to get right the nuance and tone of the discussion, and it’s possible that reading this you may think I was being confrontational and a jerk. Really, I wasn’t. Really.)
Anyhow, I noticed that my new friend had a couple of books on the dashboard and I asked him what he was reading. He told me they were Bibles (as I suspected). I actually thought there was a possibility based on what I could see of his Bible that he might be a Witness, but it turned out he belonged to Church of Christ. So he asked me if I knew Jesus. I said yes, I had heard the name and he said “No, I meant do you believe in Jesus.” I said I thought there was likely a man named Jesus who lived a couple of thousand years ago in the Middle East, was killed by the Romans and a major religion sprang up around him. I knew this also wasn’t what he was really asking and wasn’t trying to be obnoxious, but I wanted to see where this was going. Anyhow, he asked me if I had accepted Jesus as my personal savior and I told him that, actually I had once been a minister but didn’t really practice anything now. After his expressions of astonishment and admonition to “be like the prodigal son,” I asked him if he believed if his religion was the right one. He said “Of course!” and I said, well, if you believe your religion is correct, then you have to believe the one I practiced was wrong since it wasn’t Church of Christ. So wouldn’t I actually be better off if I stay where I am than if I returned to a religion that is actually false worship (by his beliefs)? Wouldn’t god be angrier at me then? I then pointed out that there are more than 500 different religions, all purporting to be based on belief in salvation through Jesus and also professing that each and every one of them were the “correct” faith. Given that I had a nearly 500 to 1 probability that I’d pick the wrong religion (since, at most, only one of them can be the True Faith), wouldn’t it make more sense to not believe any of them? Furthermore, there is no certainty that any of them are actually the True Faith; they could all be wrong. What then?
He didn’t really answer, except to state that the Bible was definitely God’s Word and we need to follow it in order to have salvation. Not wanting to get into which version of the Bible was representative of God’s true words, I switched topics and asked him if he believed in heaven. He gave me the expected affirmations; he’d had a number of problems in his life and looked forward to a heavenly reward in the next life. I said I’m not suggesting there is no afterlife, but if you were to find out that there really was no heavenly reward, would you still believe? He really surprised me by saying “No.” I wanted to be sure I understood, so I asked differently and it became clear that the reason he believed is because of the reward he expected for that acceptance of Jesus as his savior.
I’ve had similar conversations with lots of people of faith over the years and I wonder why more people don’t pursue this a bit deeper. Most people freely admit that they are following a specific set of rules because they are convinced God will punish them if they don’t, or for the payout at the end. I’ve said in previous posts that “the Good Life” is something to be pursued not for hope of reward but because it, simply, is a good life. Besides, if I do something purely out of fear of punishment or for the presumed reward, it seems pretty straightforward to me that an all-knowing God would know that my faith is essentially selfish. How could that life be “pleasing to God?” I make no pretensions of any special personal loftiness, but even I know from my limited management experience that a person who does what they do because they want to, and not because of a carrot I’ve promised them, or worse yet, fear of being punished in some way, is not only going to do a better job of it, but is going to get much greater satisfaction out of the process.
My friend Chris and I had a conversation years ago about this, and he said that, while he believes with all his heart in the correctness of his belief (and I expected nothing less from him), if at the end it turned out he was wrong he wouldn’t want to change a thing. He said, as best as I can recall, “I’ve had a wonderful life. I haven’t had to sacrifice much and even if I did, it’s been worth it just for the joy I get out of my life as it is.”
I have a sneaky feeling that if more “Christians” were like my friend Chris, and were a bit less focused on their personal reward (or on the avoidance of a possible punishment), the world would be a better place to live.
Regardless of what comes afterwards. Or if nothing does.
