Two years ago on a boat bound for Dublin, my friend and I were debating John Lennon. I thought the song "Imagine" was idealism of the worst kind: founded on humanistic fallacies that attribute more innate goodness to people than they actually possess. My friend found beauty in the simplicity, the impossible but inspiring image of a world stripped of divisive forces.
"Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky..."
After a couple of years to mull it over, I can admit I was somewhat offended by the words. Would things really be better without a heaven? Or religion? As a Christian, can I really go along with the idea that we'd be better off without this institution? Where would that leave me? Since that day, I've realized much of the "Christianity" I've encountered over the last 20 years or so is stuff I could live without, but I am gripped with the conviction that God exists, and I must ask myself what that means in my life.
I am grateful to Roy Lee '00 for bringing a discussion to the table in his Feb. 6 column ("My Mind is My Church," The Dartmouth). The discussion is this: what role does personal faith play in education at Dartmouth? Whether we realize it moment to moment or not, our beliefs about the existence of God are inextricably tied to the way we live. So let's talk about this, shall we?
Lee writes: "A friend of mine thinks heaven must be a very dull place... He asked -- 'just look at the people who capture our attention these days. Do you think that they belong in heaven?' He asked me if I would rather meet Bill Clinton in hell or a minister in heaven?" What I want to know is, why is religion doomed to dullness?
A man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer was on a lecture tour of the United States at the outbreak of World War II. He immediately returned to his hostile homeland and joined the resistance against the Nazis. When he was discovered as a conspirator in an assassination plot against Hitler, he was placed in a concentration camp where he wrote some of his most influential works before his execution in April 1945.
Bonhoeffer was a minister who was not content to limit his faith to the tiny sphere of his own mind or his church congregation. He saw the gross injustice of the Holocaust, and he risked (and lost) his own life to stop it. Here was a Christian who felt his life was an insignificant price to pay for the lives of millions of Jews, who would stop at nothing to end the reign of an evil man who was brainwashing and killing his beloved fellow Germans.
Beyond his political action, while imprisoned, Bonhoeffer continually dedicated himself to the needs of others. He was not only a comfort to those who shared his circumstances, but he also worked to save lives from within prison and succeeded on numerous occasions.
It's clear from Bonhoeffer's writings that his faith in Jesus as the Son of God was the motivation for his action. Others acted from other compulsions and accomplished much, but Bonhoeffer acted out of a love for people he discovered through reflection on the love demonstrated in the life of Jesus. Can I (or any other Christian) claim to serve the same God as Bonhoeffer and hold a tighter grip on my own life?
Lennon was right to criticize a religious climate of hatred and division, steeped in self-righteousness and pride, but there is more to the picture than schisms and corruption. We need religion like Bonhoeffer's: religion based on something greater than human traditions or ideologies.
Lee also writes, "I couldn't make myself believe in stuff in the Bible. I read about the God in the Old Testament, and I thought to myself that God is cruel and unjust. I noticed so many incongruities in the Bible that the text lost all of its credibility." Human understanding will never unravel the mystery, but if you were to ask Bonhoeffer, he would tell you that the very same God of the Old Testament, later manifested in the person of Jesus inspired him to have compassion on the helpless, to fight oppression and ultimately to die. The reconciliation of the many "incongruities" of life was only possible for him through submission to the ultimate incongruity: the shameful and excruciating death of the Creator on his behalf.
I'm not talking about "Christianizing" Dartmouth. I'm talking about opening the channels of thought. At some point we each make a decision: we believe what we choose to believe, that which seems right to us, whether we can prove it logically or not. If Christianity at Dartmouth does not reflect the kind of radical conviction and action we see in people like Bonhoeffer, perhaps there is no reason to pay it any mind, but the life of its founder, a man claiming to be God and willingly walking to his death, cannot be ignored.
True religion is not a list of rules or a moral code, but an adventure. It's the ultimate rush of living life to its fullest and sharing its blessings with those around you through submission to a greater will. It's Abraham agreeing to sacrifice Isaac because he believes that God will intervene or raise the boy from the dead. It's Martin Luther King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Daniel in the lion's den. Bonhoeffer on the gallows. Jesus on the cross.
You will find this kind of religion in unexpected places at Dartmouth and lacking in many places where the so-called religious gather. I can imagine a world without empty words and hypocritical sermonizing, and I long for it. I can also imagine a world without true faith, and I shudder at the thought.
