Fingerprints of God_ The Search for the Science of Spirituality - Barbara Bradley Hagerty [132]
This, I know, puts me outside the circle of much of modern (certainly evangelical) Christianity. I was forced once again to wrestle with the trump card flung in the face of every Christian believer who begins to question that premise: the statement in which Jesus Himself said He was the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to God but by Him. I could not reconcile the literal statement with my reporting.
But it seems to me that Jesus’ words suggest what we do, and not what we proclaim. When Jesus says that the way to eternal life is to follow Him, that means trying to live as He did—feeding the poor, helping those who cannot benefit you, loving your enemies, sacrificing rather than promoting yourself, living as if every moment on earth counts for eternity. Can I prove that Jesus is the Son of God? Of course not. Does my instinct tell me that He is the Son of God, and that I should try to emulate Him? It does, and that instinct makes me better.
You do not have to wear a gold cross around your neck to have that kind of heart. Anyone can follow Jesus’ example. I have always felt that, but the science persuaded me. Buddhist and Christian meditators reach a very similar spiritual state through the same neurological pathways. The specific content of their beliefs differs, but the underlying spirituality does not. My reporting shows that anyone who has encountered the spiritual—through a brush with death or an unexpected epiphany or even a psychedelic trip—is transformed emotionally and often neurologically. Who am I to start proclaiming one type of experience as real and another as false?
And if I’m wrong? Well, if I’m wrong, I can only hope that the central character in my story, who included a skeptic named Thomas among His closest friends, would see in my questions an honest search for the truth. And, perhaps, He would approve.
In the end, nothing I have learned in the past year undercuts the fundamentals of my Christian faith. I did not lose the young man on the cross, although the old man with a beard can no longer encompass the grandeur and genius of the God I embrace today. I can still believe because my faith rests not on quantum physics or mathematical equations but on an internal witness: a whisper that the story I have chosen is true, that it explains the world. It tells me that the universe is stitched together not just by infinite intelligence but also by love and justice and beauty. These qualities emerge from an elegant Being who revels in things above and beyond the orbit of the planets and the consciousness of man.
My story tells me that we are guided by moral laws, laws that are written in our hearts and genes. It tells me that some behaviors are better than others, some ways to live are more enduring and purposeful. I cannot prove a moral law but I do know instinctively that diving into a rushing river to save a drowning man is nobler than running off to find a rope. There is a hierarchy in morality that is universal—self-sacrifice is everywhere feted and murder is everywhere condemned—but the hierarchy is not derived from physics. It arises from an internal place, a “God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man,” as Blaise Pascal had it, and while that may testify to a moral universe, it is the job of faith to explain the mystery in words that an ordinary person can comprehend. The God who loves math also loves stories, because in the story of faith, the created finds the heart of the Creator.
Fearfully and Wonderfully