What Does Christianity Offer?

What if it’s not true? Have you ever considered that?

Of course I have.

What if it is true? Have you ever considered that?

There is nothing new under the sun. There are no new questions – about life’s meaning and purpose. What is the good life? Why am I here? Again, these are not new. They are old as man himself. Perhaps the only thing that’s new is the failure – or refusal – to ask these questions.

But I don’t believe that. I believe that everyone asks these questions, whether voiced or not. That our very movement in the world – movement in space and time – reveals the questions we have. Our uncertainties. Our insecurities. Our existential longing and desires and, yes, agony. Hopes, dreams, fears. We move through the world, make choices, perceive the good and try to attain it. All this is a questing, a searching, a seeking. Who am I? Why am I? What am I supposed to do? It’s all there, written on the pages of our lives, our lived reality. Our weathered dreams. We are all now secondhand goods, having lived, dreamed, acted in the world.

Whether we know it or not, we all ask the same questions. Ultimately, the same Question: is Jesus God?

Baloney. Alright, alright, I want to hear you out. Fairy tale. Wishful thinking. Jesus God? No way. Crazed lunatic, perhaps. Or revolutionary hippie; at most, a pretty good teacher. But most likely, a sly blood thirsty tyrant. Prince of peace? Ha. Monomaniac king of global capitalism; of war hungry nation states; of the slave trade. Perhaps. Maybe you’ve never even heard of Jesus. But I’m still going to come out strong with my thesis – for what’s the point of writing if you’re not going to take a strong stand, for or against, something, or someone? – we all are wondering: Is Jesus God?

Because we’re all looking for a savior.

Baloney. Alright, alright, I want to hear you out. You don’t need to be saved. You’re an individual, perfect just as you are. The whole idea of a savior is just a means of oppression, seeking to repress the perfect you that is good and comfortable in your own skin. Or perhaps you are not that deluded. You recognize your brokenness. But aren’t so naïve as to believe there actually exists one who could save, and thus you don’t waste your time looking for a savior.

I heard you out. But I don’t believe you. I can’t prove it. But most of life – at least the really important stuff – is not provable. I tell my wife I love her. And she often asks why? What a silly question. As if anything I say could prove to her that I love her. Like Don Quixote, we could spend our entire lives trying to prove our love, and get no closer to doing so. Or take my youngest son. Recently he told me he doesn’t like me. For a moment, I believed him; his recent actions seemed to confirm the truth of his declaration. But again, just as I can’t prove that he likes me, I also can’t prove that he doesn’t like me. Does that mean ambiguity rules? That there is no truth, big T or little t? That we must all be agnostics? I don’t believe so. But I do want to highlight that the common misperception that mystery has been solved and cold-hard-facts rule the day is just that. A misperception. Uncertainty and mystery rule the day.

But where was I?

Oh yes, you, reader, wonder if Jesus is God. You, reader, want to be saved. Even if you don’t voice it, you live it. Your movement in the world comes as close to proof positive of this point as Pythagorean’s theorem.

Based on what I’ve just written, I’m not going to try and prove to you that point. But tell me whether the following rings true for you:

A stained chunk of foam rubber, the remains of a mattress, lay under the workbench. I dragged it out and rolled my body into a ball and went immediately to sleep inside the plastic envelope of that room. Sins and rivers passed through my dreams, underwater faces fish-staring in my mind. I woke up to silence and chill, the accusations of the klieg lights. The city was full of people searching for the man or woman who might save them. My body stank of cold sweat, liquor and fear. The loft seemed endless, a scene lifted from the sandy bottom of a dream. A shape in the shape of my mother was forming in the doorway.

Photo by Osman Rana on Unsplash

Don DeLillo. From his first novel, Americana, back in 1971. He’d just lived through the 60s. The comic Bill Murray has this to say about that decade: “I had the misfortune of reaching adolescence at a time when the world turned upside down.” Indeed. The world turns upside down; people reject authority; reject marriage; reject institutions; reject God. And yet. What does the Greatest Living Novelist have to say about all this? DeLillo, that supposed postmodern poster child, what’s his assessment? NYC (or America, or the world) was full of people searching for the man or woman who might save them.

I’ll stop arguing my point. And just ask a simple question. Does this ring true for you? Look, you don’t have to tell me. You don’t have to tell anyone. Ask yourself. I mean really ask yourself – and then give an honest answer – are you looking for the man or woman who might save you?

Has it ever occurred to you that life might be absurd?

The other night I was hanging with my three oldest boys, playing ping pong. And it hit me like a slap on the cheek. What if there’s no point to this? Here we are, us four, whacking an almost weightless little white ball around, laughing, and joking, and trying to have a good time. And I’m just struck by the sensation: what if there’s nothing beyond this something? What if this is all there is? Now don’t get me wrong. I love my kids. And enjoy (sometimes) spending time with them. But on this Saturday night, struck by the absurdity of whacking a ping pong ball around, I wondered what I’d prefer to be doing instead. Probably lying on my bed, thinking, or reading a book, or maybe writing an essay. Again, I love my kids, but why was I playing ping pong with them on that Saturday night? Because I believe in Jesus. I believe in Eternal Life, and the Kingdom that has come and is coming and will fully come in the course of human history. So even if I’d rather be doing something else, I’m willing to sacrifice and hang with my kids and whack around a little white ball in the promise – and hope – that somehow this little sacrifice has eternal weight and meaning.

But what if this is all there is – this whacking of this little white ball?

Absurd. But what’s absurd? The very thought that this might be all there is? Or, if this is all there is, then life is absurd; pointless; a black comedy starring Godot?

I’ve recently been noodling the idea that Christianity and absurdism are two sides of the same coin. Christianity proposes that life has meaning. That God is love. That God created the world out of love, that mankind sinned, and that God rescued mankind from sin and destruction through the saving power of Jesus Christ. That human history is salvation history, God’s active role and participation in bringing to fulfillment His Kingdom on Heaven and Earth.

And absurdism? We are matter; flesh and bones, nothing more; placed here through no act of Divine Will or Love, but by mere chance; atoms and molecules floating in space and time that by happenstance exist for a few short days and then – poof – are gone. Yes, we have desires; yes, we think and feel and drive toward what we perceive to be something Big, Grand, even God-like – but, alas, it’s all absurd. These desires don’t point to God; they reveal the absence of said God; these desires forever go unfulfilled because they are unfulfillable. Hence, life is absurd.

I understand there is a third option. That through reason and will, man can make life meaningful. We don’t need God – the fairy godmother – to find meaning and purpose. We make it. We put ourselves behind something – making money, or epicureanism, or saving whales – and voila, life is not absurd.

I don’t have an argument against this option. It’s just never been viable. For my own life. For me it’s always been Christianity or absurdity. Which is why I’ve long been attracted to the likes of the Apostle Paul, Ignatius, Edmund Campion, and Dorothy Day on the one hand; and Camus, Raskolnikov (I get that’s he’s a fictional character), Nietzsche, and Houellebecq on the other. All in either way. Either I follow Jesus to the depths, or I fearlessly point to the depths and say: have a look; gaze in pals; this is all there is.

Admittedly, I possess a good deal of curiosity towards those who go all-in for option three, the whale-saving option, especially those who do it knowingly and willfully. I sort of look at them like I’d look at a monkey in the zoo. I know we share common traits, but I don’t get you, don’t understand you. You’re a different species. That’s probably my implicit bias. But for me, there’s only ever been two options: radical Christianity, or radical absurdism.

Here’s another thesis, unprovable (in fact, someone reading this can surely prove me wrong; again, here’s my implicit bias coming out): I assume that everyone who throws their lot in with option three, at some point, maybe only once, maybe only briefly, for only a few seconds, seriously doubts themselves. Perhaps they’re driving in rush hour traffic and suddenly it hits them: my life has no meaning. What has all my hustle and bustle been about? Or maybe they wake up one night and look at the clock. It’s three am. On the dot (it must be exactly three am). And the house is silent. And their wife is sleeping quietly beside them. And their two kids are upstairs, asleep. And then they hear the tick ticking of the grandfather clock in the living room. Ticking ticking ticking away. And like a revelation, a mystical insight, they think. This is absurd. What am I doing? Why am I doing it? Or, they’re just playing ping pong with the boys and – whammo – it hits them. …

I’ve also experienced the flip side; the other half of the coin. The sudden feeling of wholeness. Fullness. Of being seen. Of being loved. Wishful thinking? Perhaps. A delusion? Perhaps. But when my wife tells me she loves me, shouldn’t I believe it? And when God tells me he loves me, shouldn’t I believe it?

I’ll give you just one example. It proves nothing.

I’m walking the beach. St. Augustine, Florida. The sun is setting. The Atlantic waves are pounding the shoreline. My feet are in the sand. The waves are rushing in. And my oldest three boys, my ping pong boys, are rushing to meet the waves, and then running away. They are laughing. Free. Unencumbered. I’d go so far as to say they are delighted. Rushing to meet the waves, then running away, smiling, laughing. Barefooted, pushing one another, touching and being touched by the waves.

I’m suddenly struck. God sees. In that moment, I am overcome by love for my sons. I delight in them. I see them. And perceive – not simply intellectually but in my innermost being; in my soul – that God sees me, seeing them. And he loves me loving them. And he delights in me delighting in them. I am known, and I am loved.

So what does Christianity offer? Freedom from doubt? Salvation from self in the here and now? Meaning and purpose? What does it offer?

Well let me ask you: what are you looking for? If Christianity could offer you something, what would it be? And consider the possibility – even for a moment – that what you wish it could offer it actually does.