God became more real for me after I quit ‘proving’ my faith

When I answered my phone, the young man told me his name, but not much else. I was still trying to figure out why he had called when he suddenly blurted out his disagreement with me.

“What you said doesn’t prove God!” he said with certainty.

I suddenly realized this man had gone to the trouble of finding my phone number and calling just to tell me how wrong I had been about something I’d written.

I rarely write overtly about religion or theology, but I’ve said a lot recently that’s required me to refer to elements of my faith more than usual. Something I’d written had annoyed this man.

At first, I thought he was an angry atheist calling to challenge my non-rational belief in my creator. I still wasn’t clear about what I had written to annoy him, but I explained that he seemed to misunderstand my intent.

“If you think I’m trying to prove anything, you’ve mistaken me for something I’m not,” I told him. “I’m just reporting what I’ve experienced. What you believe is up to you.”

That’s when he surprised me.

It turned out he was an angry theist, not an angry atheist. He was annoyed with me because I hadn’t cited the apologetic argument and the “proof text” that he had been taught.

He told me I shouldn’t talk about my own subjective spiritual experience. He felt certain that it was a waste of time to talk about love and silence and “fuzzy emotions” about hate and forgiveness.

I responded as gently as I could.

“Have you ever actually read the Sermon on the Mount?” I asked.

As the man’s anger was quickly spent with telling me how wrong I had been — and how I should have said what he would have said to “prove” God — he quickly got off the phone. He seemed like a shy young man who had built up enough righteous indignation to call — and he was finished.

When he hung up, I still wasn’t sure exactly which article he was objecting to. But it doesn’t matter.

I have no use for people who try to prove things that are unprovable. When it comes to God — or to anything about my spiritual experience — all I can do is share my subjective point of view.

If my experience is useful — and if you want to look in the same places where I’ve found something worth finding — that’s great. If not, it’s your life and your time. And those who think they’ve found some elaborate “proof” of God in a philosophical or theological argument are missing my point.

A Mormon can “prove” his theology based on his scriptures, which I don’t accept. A Muslim can “prove” the truth of his beliefs by quoting his scriptures, which I don’t accept, either. In fact, any person of any theological belief or practice can “prove” his or her point of view — as long as I’m willing to accept the assumptions that underlie that belief.

Since I got that call, I’ve been thinking that when people decide to take their faith seriously, they can take one of two paths.

In my observation, people who get serious about Christianity tend to do one of two things.

Some people become very serious about an experiential faith — trying to seek out truth as they can experience it and trying to live and love in accordance with what they see in Jesus.

Other people — especially very bright and logical people — take a highly rational snapshot of their theology and they become incredibly serious about defending whatever belief system has brought them to that point.

I started out among that second group. That way of thinking was part of the intellectual culture of Southern Baptists of the years when I was growing up. Personally, I was smug and insufferable. We had the truth. Everybody just needed to listen to us. I was far too much like the young man who called me on the phone, although I couldn’t have seen that at the time.

When I was in high school and college, I became very serious about my Christian faith. I was a rational person who believed everything I had been taught, so I became obsessed with proving and defending all that I’d been taught.

I studied apologetics. (Josh McDowell was a big deal for me at the time.) I studied theology and philosophy from the point of view of the beliefs in which I’d been raised. (I struggled to get through the dense philosophy of brilliant men such as Francis Schaeffer.)

I was pursuing what seemed right to me. I was very determined to gain the deepest understanding of the systematic theology in which I had grown up. And when I saw evidence — from time to time — that others on my path had little interest in experiencing God in a serious way or in living out Jesus’s teachings in a serious way, I ignored that.

When I saw a disconnect between what Jesus said in the gospels and the things that were said by those who said they were speaking in his name, I thought I must be misunderstanding something. I just needed to focus harder on my theology and defending the truth that I’d been taught.

Many years into my Christian journey, I couldn’t keep doing that.

Eventually, I realized that truth and love mattered more than anything else.

I finally determined that wherever I found truth, that’s where I would inevitably find God, no matter what I had been taught. And as I started experiencing God in ways that were more and more real — and more nuanced — I cared less and less about the argumentative systematic theology that I’d been taught.

I still understood that theology, of course. I simply saw that there were multiple ways to interpret all sorts of things. My reading of religious history showed me that many men had killed one another simply for having different interpretations of Christian scripture and theology. And I couldn’t reconcile this with the figure who all of these people claimed to be following.

The more I focused on my experience of God — and on what Jesus taught — the more I cared about the experience and the less I cared about the human theological arguments.

God became more real to me, not in a way that I could prove to anyone, but simply as a personal experience that I could share.

I didn’t want to admit it — even to myself — but I eventually realized that I no longer cared about proving anything. I no longer cared who was right about arcane theological debates that had once seemed so important. I was interested in a continued experience of God — and I was interested in how to transform my heart enough to love other people in the ways Jesus taught.

I don’t like to hold myself up as an example of what a follower of Jesus ought to be like, mostly because I know the worst of what I’ve seen in my heart.

Yes, I know all the right religious language to use to show that I’m part of the right theological “club.” But if you’re part of the club, you don’t need to hear that. And if you’re not part of the club, you’re already pretty tired of the arrogance and hypocrisy of many of my fellow Christians spouting dogma.

My spiritual path has been twisting and messy. It hasn’t been nearly as simple as I thought it would be back when I was in college — when I thought it was my business to “prove” God was real and make manipulative sales pitches to get people to pray some formula to meet the demands of my theology.

I’ve come to understand that we’re all on different spiritual paths, at least the ones who are making the attempt. That doesn’t mean that truth is whatever you want it to be, but it does mean that people’s paths often vary wildly. When I was young, I thought I knew exactly what the one and only path looked like. Today, I know there are all sorts of paths — and I’m not responsible for dictating that other people take the path I think best.

It’s not up to me to prove anything to you, especially about something which is unprovable. I no longer even try, because I think it’s counterproductive to try.

For me, systematic theology was a path toward pride and arrogance. Loving others and trying to change my heart has been my unexpected path toward experiencing God.

I can’t tell you what path you ought to take from where you are. I can’t tell you what you ought to believe or what you ought to practice. Those are decisions for you to make.

The only thing I can tell you is that the path of loving God and loving others — trying to give more than I ask of others — has brought me more joy and love and peace than any other path I’ve tried.

I haven’t taken an easy path. I’ve humiliated myself at times. I’ve had to see my own flaws. I’ve had to see the hatred that’s sometimes been in my heart. I’ve had to try to give up my certainty and my arrogant pride.

But in those moments when I experience the warm presence of a loving God, the messy path feels as though it’s all been worth it. Even if I can’t prove to you that this loving creator is even there.