Healing to know

The sad thing about my last post is I could have said SO much more about “Star Wars.”  I have problems.

That post led us back to a theme I hit on in this blog’s third post, “An Adjustment of My Own” – if you’re interested in finding out if something is true – if your perception is accurate; if you’re seeing things as they really are as best you can – then you need some healing in your life.

I have some difficult news for you: you are an emotionally broken person. It is unfortunately inevitable that you are carrying around all sorts of hurts within you from childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, and adulthood unless you have received some form of professional counseling.  Even then, seeing as life continues to happen and nothing we seem to do as humans is ever 100% effective, it’s likely that any healing process you’ve gone through has not been complete.

That’s not a popular thing to say in our culture, which is dependent upon the beliefs that we are self-made and are our own people.

Sad to say, though, this just isn’t true. We are in large part the product of our life experiences. Only to the extent that we have begun to heal from how we’ve been hurt are we in any way free from our past. Otherwise we are subconsciously guided like marionettes by how we have internalized our experiences.

Don’t believe me? I hate to use this example because it’s singling out a particular group of people, but in my observation it’s one of the most blatantly obvious examples: look at any of the literature coming from the movement that calls itself the “new atheists,” with writers such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchins. Almost without fail, anger and resentment flow off the pages these folk write, lambasting God, religions, and those who believe in said religions.

There is one thing I greatly respect about these authors, and it is explicitly stated in most of their writing: they admit from the outset they are driven to write what they do and believe what they do because they don’t WANT God to exist – they adamantly can’t bring themselves to believe in a universe where God is real because they don’t want to.

Almost without exception, these men and women are quite brilliant. Their logic and reasoning are sound. But here’s the thing: when the tone of what they write is angry, resentful, and judgmental and they honestly admit they are driven to believe what they do ultimately because they don’t want to believe in the alternative – how impartially are they viewing reality?

Sounds like an awful lot of hurt that hasn’t been dealt with coming out and coloring their perspectives. We should have known the Jedi were plotting to take over.

But what is good for the goose is also good for the gander: I think a lot of belief in God comes down to ultimately WANTING to believe in God.

What is one to do? Is there such a thing as a “correct” desire that leads one to truth, or is truth an enigma that is completely relative to the observer?

At the end of the day, I’m not sure there is an intellectual answer to satisfy those questions. I can address them from my point of view, which I eventually will, but you’d have to come to trust that point of view over and against other competing points of view.

Short of a definitive intellectual argument, you have to take a look at the kind of people who are presenting points of view – are they in the process of healing from the hurts of life, or are they embracing in various forms a path of anger, resentment, and ultimately self-destruction?