I've questioned my own faith before, but not in my memory since I became a Christian has another person questioned my faith or my Christian beliefs.
It started somewhat innocently enough. Somewhat, because I was asking a thought-provoking question: Heinz's dilemma, structured by the psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg.
A woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $ 1,000, which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said, "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife.
-from Wikipedia
Should Heinz have broken into the laboratory to steal the drug for his wife? Why or why not?
I thought the answer was clear as day: Steal the damn drug. But the company present did not agree. When phrased in the form that they were Heinz, they maintained that they could not steal the drug, as God has written in the Bible that Thou Shalt Not Steal. They would have faith that God would either heal them, or take them away. "God's keeping them suffering for a reason," is how one person phrased it.
An interesting twist, I thought. When asked about it from looking at Heinz as a third person, they said that he did the wrong thing. Stealing is against a universal moral code, and also by putting his faith in science.
The idea of a Universal moral absolute (hereafter referred to as a UMA) always intrigues me. I think that there are rules and guidelines, but sometimes you break them to do the right thing. In my Ethics class in 2nd year we explored the idea of a UMA. Take "Do Not Lie." If you're hiding Jewish refugees from the Nazis and a stormtrooper comes knocking on your door, do you tell them the truth of the people hiding, or do you lie (persuasively) and tell them that you haven't seen anybody lately?
They said that they would tell the truth.
We're told not to lie, and that's that. Whatever happens to you or to them, well that's God's will.
I don't know how we got going from that, but we ended up discussing evolution. Now, I'm a scientist, and a Christian. (Note which one if capitalized). Long ago I settled out, for myself, any apparent contradictions the two have in each other, and I believe that I'm no less a Christian for agreeing with evolution (nor do I believe I'm no less a scientist for believing in Christ). Obviously, they were opposed to it, words were traded. At the end of it all, the other member of the company said "We'll pray for you that God will reveal Himself to you."
I felt my knees actually give out. I was stunned. I'm more liberal than many Christians, but at many other times more conservative. From a very young age, I was taught to question, and then to find out for myself. Question teachers, question government, question the rulemakers. The only people I wasn't allowed to question were my parents, paradoxically. Hence my curiosity, my demand of evidence, my insistence on reading for myself if I feel it is necessary. God and His Word are not out of bounds in my mind. I ask why. When I come across something I don't like in the Bible, God had better have a reason for it being there (He always does, by the way). I've never thought I've done wrong by this. The idea to read and interpret a text full of symbolism, metaphor, history and context with such single-minded literalism astounds me.
To have someone question my faith is still stunning. It's not affecting me or my behaviour, but it's still...wrenching.
I know it's been two long posts in two days, so here's some funny pictures to make up for it:
see more crazy cat pics
(and Schrodinger's cat)
and (source)
