Between my soul and God stand my heart and my deeds. Nothing else stands between us.
Years have passed since I set out on these journeys of faith, first diverging from the religious tradition of my family, then wandering on along these lonely paths. Even when I was confirmed into the Anglican Communion as a teenager, my faith was already wavering. Within two years of the Bishop’s blessing, my doubt outweighed my faith: the doubts within my faith gave way to religious agnosticism, which in turn gave way to atheism. In time, belief in God returned, but belief that a man was God never would. I became a searching agnostic, seeking truth. I had no idea where this quest would lead me until I arrived at each destination—those stopping points along the way, not journey’s end, for this ceaseless pursuit goes on.
By its very nature, agnosticism need not cause particular problems in the relationship between people, even if it is disliked. The agnostic has no commitments to observe, other than the call of his heart regarding sincerity. Thus he may attend family gatherings with ease, his presence never an intrusion. In the case of one who adopts another faith the situation is quite different: he has rites and principles he must observe which create differences. I have experienced both scenarios and I am acutely aware which is the more problematic. It is impossible to ignore the fact that my faith and beliefs cause great unhappiness amongst my deeply religious family: a reality I have never denied. Yet doubt is cast on this claim of mine, for I apparently continue to cling stubbornly to my principles. Is this not evidence enough that I am unaware of the impact of my decision to take up this path?
The answer is no. I am acutely aware of the feelings of those around me, but matters of faith—and of the heart—require action. While I am far from a good believer and my practice is hugely wanting, I nevertheless believe sincerely. My faith is not something that I take lightly, nor one that I took on as a choice of fashion. I came down this path because I believed it to be the best way to worship God. For this reason, I cannot turn my back on it just to bring ease in my personal relationships.
The heart and our deeds are all that stand between us and our Creator. Only two know what is in our hearts and they are God and ourselves. Faith or doubt, love or malice, sincerity or hypocrisy: these are known to us and to God alone. For me, the one aspect that recurred time and again was sincerity versus hypocrisy. It was this that forced me to sit at the back of the church and to utter only a few lines of the Nicene Creed for years. It was this issue that made the question of faith seem so difficult as I engaged in my search for truth. In 1997 I was continually writing about the matter, much to the distaste of friends whose rational minds had long since abandoned belief in God. The following reflects my feelings at the time:
You don’t want to reject their faith, you don’t want to be different, you don’t want to be an outcast; you just don’t have their faith, but at least you’re trying to find it. But it’s so hard to admit that. They prefer to hear that you’re lazy, because that’s not such a disgrace. You’re filled with fear, so you don’t admit openly that you’re completely lost. You’re hoping that someone will pick up on your blatant hints.
Halfway through my first degree, I found myself with an intense thirst to find my way in faith. On the one hand I wanted to believe like every other member of my family, on the other, I was adamant that sincerity before God was paramount. Thus that same piece went on:
I can listen to the readings, the gospel and a psalm. I can listen to the sermon and learn. But how do you think I feel when we all stand for the Nicene Creed, and all I can say is ‘I believe in one God the father almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth, and of all things visible and invisible’? You want me to say it all, but faith isn’t about you, it’s about God. Do you want me to be a hypocrite before God? Of course you don’t. I don’t go to church because I don’t have the strength or the knowledge to claim your faith and I refuse to lie in the Name of God.
Later on, having learnt something of Islam, I expressed similar concerns. I recently came across an old notebook into which I had poured my thoughts as my interest in the Muslim faith grew. Penned over two sides of lined paper, I found a lengthy answer to a question somebody must have asked me around that time. I had obviously said that I could never be a Muslim and had thus written a series of paragraphs under four headings to explain why: the hypocrite; knowledge of one’s self; true belief; and fear of rejection. Each passage focused on a matter that troubled me within. Of true belief I wrote:
I must believe: truly and truthfully. Of course I believe in God, our Creator, but the faith through which I should worship Him is still unclear to me. I refuse to have a blind faith; this is obvious, for would I have gone astray otherwise? To be convinced by man of the right path is not enough. The proof should be in the religion itself.
A fellow student—hearing my complaints about my lack of faith—once told me: ‘The problem with you is that you question it; I’d never question it.’ I was never able to accept this perspective, for I felt that it was important to be able to say what I believed with conviction. I was one who would say, ‘I’m not really sure, I’m confused, I’m lost,’ in contrast to the person who could simply say, ‘I don’t have a reason, I just believe it— it’s just my religion.’ The source of this lies in the heart.
The journey of the heart is on-going and continuous. Though those early obsessions have subsided, the question of reconciling my heart goes on. Between my soul and God, I remind myself over and over again, stand my heart and my deeds. I no longer have the luxury of the simple and innocent faith of childhood.
In the Islamic tradition, the child is considered pure—there is no concept of original sin, and the child that dies in infancy is believed to go straight to paradise—but we do not need faith to tell us this. The pleasing faith of the child makes this self-evident. Contrast its simplicity to the perplexity of adolescence; in my case, the two do not compare: my earliest days were characterised by my taking key principles to heart. In primary school I would censure friends who exclaimed, ‘Oh my God,’ after my godmother criticised those who took the Lord’s name in vain. In junior school I refused to provide a cover story for a friend in trouble because I believed that as a Christian I could not lie. Later on, when I was asked why I did not stand up to a boy who was picking on me on the bus on my way home from school, I got my first inkling that something was amiss in my simplistic interpretation of the command to turn the other cheek.
Blessed are the little ones, say the scriptures of more than one tradition. My wife and I once looked on in awe as a tiny baby, with eyes closed, lay in a cot before us and raised her miniature hands out in front of her, cupping them just like our own as we prayed for her, her parents and ourselves. We all knew who the best amongst us was. A few days later we received news that this baby, born prematurely, had also left us prematurely. Blessed are the little ones: a friend of the grieving father reminded him that these children are the residents of paradise. Of these children on the Day of Judgement, our Prophet said:
‘They will meet their parents and grab them by their garments or their hands to no end other than that God will enter them into Paradise.’Hadith reported in the sahih collection of Muslim.
As we grow older, we cloud matters with prejudice and desire, losing sight of the pure and beautiful. Certainly, in time, the church I attended in early childhood became the target of derision, despite having been responsible for promoting ideas of good living amongst its congregation. Its leader was sometimes unflatteringly described as a fanatic, and yet he taught us to thank the Lord for the blessings He bestowed upon us week after week; that our faith was one that brought joy, that we should wear like a garment and not be ashamed of sharing. Yet, for some, our family’s move from that charismatic, evangelical church to a traditional Anglican place of worship was a cause for celebration.
Looking back on that transition, however, I wonder whether my later hesitation in faith was a result of swapping dogmatism for something a little vague. As I got older, I found myself less keen on revealing my faith to friends, shying away from exhibiting overtly Christian behaviour. Indeed, just 19 hours after I was confirmed into the Anglican Communion, I cringed with embarrassment when a friend from church congratulated me in front of my classmates at school.
It was during a Christian holiday camp which took me away from home and my family for a week that I found myself clearly conscious of the fragility of my faith. My companions at the Lakeside YMCA centre in Windermere, whom I had never met before, were characterised by zeal. Their style of worship reminded me of that early church. On the first evening, witnessing their enthusiastic worship in a marquee on the site, I found myself noticeably uncomfortable in their company. This was partly because I was an exceedingly shy character and partly because I had grown used to the more reserved, restrained worship of our traditional church. Yet there was another cause of my discomfort: the recognition that I did not have the strength of faith that would allow me to sing those songs with such cheer and dedication. It was a feeling that began to recur frequently.
