Gungor’s “For the Doubters:” A Corollary
Liturgical post-rock collective Gungor just came out with a new album that wrestles heavily with issues of doubt and wandering. It’s a big departure from the church music they have been producing the last several years, but it seems to be a good step in the evolution of the band.
The final song on the album, called “Upside Down”, has some muffled lyrics towards the end of the song that present an axiomatic view of God, boiling many of the concepts in Christianity down to what Michael Gungor views as bare minimum truths that one struggling with doubt can accept as reality.
Here are the lyrics, stemming from a longer blog post on their site called “For the Doubters”
Prayer is AT LEAST a form of mediation that encourages the development of healthy brain tissue, lowers stress and can connect us to God. EVEN IF that is a comprehensive definition of prayer, the health and psychological benefits of prayer justify the discipline.
God is AT LEAST the natural forces that created and sustain the Universe as experienced via a psychosocial construct rooted in evolved neurologic features in humans. EVEN IF that is a comprehensive definition for God, the pursuit of this personal, subjective experience can provide meaning, peace and empathy for others and is warranted.
Gungor emphasizes these axioms are no basis for even a basic understanding or faith in Christianity, but they provide something to fall back to if doubt threatens faith in the very notion of a creator. This reasoning is not entirely unlike what C.S. Lewis posits in his novel “The Silver Chair.” When constructs of reality were threatened, one of the characters suggests that living as if their current, dreary, meaningless reality was the only reality to speak of, living in search of something that’s very well might not be there would actually give them a sense of meaning that would prevent despair if they were wrong, and truly be the only thing worth living for if they were right.
It’s an argument that is rooted in the universal human search for happiness. Conversely, the ever famous Pascals wager (If Christianity holds true, Christians are “saved”. If atheism is found to be true, Christians aren’t any worse off for their faith, as we all share the same fate).
This brings me to my corollary, which, though it assumes a bit more faith than simple axiomatic reasoning, actually takes an even broader approach than Gungor’s approach.
THE SOURCE OF HUMAN REASONING IS GOD.
I’m obviously assuming a lot more about God than Gungor does, but if every facet of our existence is forged by a creator, then our own ability to reason and even have these thoughts comes from him. In a sense, our own attempt at ascertaining the nature of our theorized creator stems from the creator making himself known through giving us the ability to reason.
According to the Christian understanding of God, reason and logic is indeed a way that God chooses to reveal himself to us, but it is a far cry from the only such means by which we can ascertain his nature. Strip logic away, and God can still be known! Through his word, through his people, through supernatural means–God will never run out of ways to show us who he is.
Flip that thought on its head and we discover this:
WE CAN KNOW NOTHING ABOUT GOD APART FROM WHAT HE REVEALS TO US.
God could have created us without the capacity to think about Him, and kept the epistemological gap wide open. Conversely, He could have built in the knowledge of Him so deep within us that we could not possibly resist Him. I can’t tell you why we think about these things, but it seems to make sense that with what we are given something is expected of us. According to Jeremiah, that something is the search itself.
Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.
- Jeremiah 29:12-13
If you were born in a Christian home, seek God. Get out of your comfort zone and stop putting God in a box. Realize that what God does reveal to us about Himself doesn’t encompass the smallest part of who He actually is.
Finding God is as impossible as counting to infinity (math nerds, don’t talk about countable vs non-countable infinity, you’re missing my point). As soon as we decide who we think God is, he can’t teach us any more about Himself. So to that end, a little doubt is a really good thing if it helps you expand your view of God outside any box you’ve been using to hold Him.
