The Death of Faith

Deb and I got a chance to brew some coffee after the kids went to bed and watch a movie she got from the library--a Woody Allen film, Irrational Man with Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone. I have a soft spot for existential-themed films (I was a big fan of "I Heart Huckabees," though I know practically no one who 'got it'). I was never into the nihilists like Sartre but Kierkegaard pushed my Christian boundaries a bit, pre-orthodoxy, and I could appreciate the stripped-down absurdism in Camus' The Stranger. Having existentialist tendencies--regarding meaning as a fabricated attempt to make sense of our otherwise ultimately meaningless (or radically subjective) existence and insulate ourselves from an indifferent universe bereft of it--might be kind of hip and edgy for aspiring sophomore intellectuals and brooding seniors who secretly long for meaning in their lives but who are too cool (or scared) to commit to it. But for middle-aged college professors who teach and live it (Joaquin Phoenix), the result is the usual cliche and pithy momentary pleasures of alcohol, one night stands, and depression.

But something does wake up Phoenix in the film from his existential depression. When he overhears a mother going through divorce proceedings lamenting that she can't get custody of her kids and is running out of money to appeal because of a corrupt judge, he decides to take it upon himself to off the judge as a moral imperative "to make the world, in some small way, a better place." Suddenly his life has meaning and purpose. The thought of exacting this kind of radical judgment--not in words and books and ideas, but in real life--gives him a reason to live and something to live for, cures his year long sexual impotence, and offers a view of the world in Technicolor. His plan to poison the judge's orange juice with cyanide is successful, and he feels he has pulled off the perfect crime in true unwittingly narcissistic form.

His wonky moral high ground is compromised, though, when the student he is having an affair with (Emma Stone)--who was sympathetic, at least intellectually, to his desire for justice for the woman going through the divorce--puts two and two together and realizes Phoenix poisoned the judge. To boot, the police have arrested an innocent man for the crime who is faced with a life sentence. Suddenly the university lectures and theoretical jabber about meaning and existence and morality has become "real life:" a man is dead, a crime has been committed, and an innocent man is arrested. Stone realizes the right thing to do is for Phoenix to turn himself in to the police, but after cowardly refusing to accept the consequences of his actions ("I can't go to jail") he attempts to silence her as well to hide his deed by throwing her down an elevator shoot and making it look like an accident. In the struggle, he slips on a flashlight that falls from her purse (which, ironically, he won for her as a prize at a carnival, confirmation of his good "luck") and falls down the shoot himself.

I didn't intend for this to be a benign movie review. But it did make me reflect on some themes in light of the struggle for meaning and crisis of faith many Catholics are experiencing today as a result of the crimes of those in authority; the inability of those figures in authority to recognize the very real spiritual deaths experienced by the victims of their abuse; the cowardly ensuing cover ups; and the red hot (and justified) desire for justice and transparency from the faithful.

Whereas the existentialist may "create his own meaning" in the absence of objective moral norms to make life in an indifferent universe bearable, the Christian recognizes, by way of faith, that moral directives transcend individual tastes--we have the Ten Commandments given to Moses by God Himself to His people; we have the conviction of the Holy Spirit in an informed conscience, which is not completely untethered from the universal moral law in complete subjectivism, but is informed by it; we have the living example of the saints and those who followed the real, historical man, Jesus of Nazareth, who made the claim to be God incarnate, God's own Son, who told us to love one another, provide for those in need, and hope for eternal life beyond this world.

For the Christian, meaning is not some made up, subjective, arbitrary reason to get up in the morning--it is the substance of our faith.  Our lives are meaningful because we have been charged to love, in word and deed. We have joy not because of a make-believe universal entity, a "Flying Spaghetti Monster" as the atheists would say, but because of an encounter with the living God that goes beyond psychology, beyond the intellect, beyond theology, to the very core of our being, the heart. This is what it means to be born again by the Spirit. This is our "wake-up" moment, a radically subjective experience wrapped in a wholly objective God.

We read theology and Church teaching not as intellectual endeavors for their own sake, but as a way to inform this living faith and to exercise it in real life more fully. We make sense of our individual calling--our raison d'etre--to do the objective work He calls us to do, by way of the subjective experiences of prayer, spiritual consolations, and affirmations of intuition.

Faith, for the Christian, is our reason for living. It is the oxygen for our blood, the blood for our organs, the organs that keep us alive. That is why the death of faith--spiritual death at the hands of those who self-servingly abuse with no regard for the consequences--cries out to Heaven; takes away the will to live, both physically, psychologically, and spiritually. It is why Jesus said it was better for those who lead others into sin to hang a millstone around their neck and cast themselves into the sea.

For those who find themselves in the wake of this scandal shell-shocked and wandering around in a wasteland of betrayal and distrust without bearings to guide you, remember the disciples on the day of the Crucifixion. The prophecy had been fulfilled the night prior: "Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered, and I will turn my hand against the little ones" (Zech 13:7). They are disoriented; everything they staked their lives on was hanging lifeless on a tree. It was a dark three days before the Resurrection, which is where we find ourselves today--huddled together in upper rooms, trying to make sense of things, consoling one another, coming to terms with a work unfinished.

We know how the story ends in scripture, but the disciples did not have that consolation. Likewise, we find ourselves without consolation with regards to the battered ark, the Church, bereft and floating in an existential sea of doubt. This is when faith comes alive--it's no longer a textbook lovely little thing to muse and ponder in classrooms, but a steely, gritty, stripped down kernel of hope in a blanket of darkness. DO NOT LOSE THAT KERNEL. Hold it tight to your chest and protect it from the wolves and robbers who would strip you of it. Pray, even bereft of consolation, even as matter of form, even as duty, but grit down and pray not to make sense of things, but to be faithful to the end. People will be falling left and right, stripped away before your eyes--members of your own family, your friends, your kin. The resurrection of the Church is coming, and soon. And the Judge who was murdered by cowardly men two thousand years ago is making his way back.  The final ruling belongs to Him.