I attended two funerals Thursday.
The afternoon one was definitely tougher.
At the morning funeral, celebrating the life of a long-time friend from Kiwanis, the priest spoke at length about Christian faith — what it is, and what it isn’t. He pointed out that holding to a Christian faith doesn’t by and of itself make us better people, and it doesn’t protect us from the vicissitudes of life. We’ll still lose family members, still become sick or suffer injuries, still be treated unfairly at times.
What faith does do is place our fleeting time in this life into perspective — remind us that there is something greater.
I don’t remember much of the homily at the second funeral: it was for my father, and I was — and remain — in a fog.
But talking to Father Peter about my dad’s funeral ahead of time, we got on the subject of faith, and he made a wonderful point: As long as there is a mustard seed-sized fragment of faith in our hearts, so long as at some level we desire to spend eternity with God, then there is hope.
A friend of more recent acquaintance has been writing much on the subject of religion of late.
His focus is not so much on faith, but rather on the practice of organized religion.
He dislikes it enormously — because in his experience, he finds most religious adherents to be hypocrites as they (we) regularly fail to live up to the ideals of our respective faiths.
But I’m not sure that that is actually an example of hypocrisy.
If imperfection constitutes hypocrisy, then our entire ongoing experiment in American democracy and liberty is doomed — because none of us consistently lives up to the ideals of our nation’s founding.
People who hold up an ideal and then fail to live up to it aren’t inherently hypocrites, I don’t think. They’re — we’re — just people.
As Fr. Peter pointed out during our funeral preparations for my dad, Jesus himself well knew of the fallibility of the human condition. In the Christian belief system, Jesus is God incarnate — come to walk among His creation, to experience it as His children experience it.
Thirty years into his earthly ministry, Jesus knew he was to be killed and so looked around at his followers for the one best suited to lead his followers in carrying on God’s work here on Earth ... and settled on Simon Peter, a disciple he knew was about to betray him.
So even God knows what he has to work with when dealing with human beings, and it isn’t always much!
That just makes us all fallen, not hypocrites — and I don’t think our imperfection makes religion a worthless pursuit.
There is an old adage that church isn’t a place for the perfect, that it’s better thought of as a hospital for souls.
I’d take it a step further, and argue that church — or synagogue, temple, etc. — is an ongoing recovery program for the sinful.
Meaning all of us.
I have many friends who believe that faith and religion are no better than superstition, a primitive way to understand existence.
It seems to me, though, that believing that the universe was not created, that it just is, is as large a leap of faith as believing in a Creator.
Maybe more of a leap.
Besides, arguing as many prominent atheists do, that there is no God, that the universe simply exists, only puts off the question of why are we here.
A universe when consciousness can simply cease at physical death seems to me a pretty cold, hopeless place.
And I choose not to visualize our universe as such a place.
I think there is such a thing as a soul, and that it belongs to all sentient beings.
Maybe I’m wrong, and when I die, I’ll simply cease to exist — all my memories and hopes and dreams will simply disappear like the data on a bad floppy disk.
But I also wonder if all my friends who are atheist and think when we die that’s all there is are going to be disappointed to find their soul in the ever after?
Being wrong is never fun.
But in this instance, for my non-believing friends, I think it would be the best of all available options.
Of course, if I’m wrong, I’ll never know — and there will be no one around to shove my nose in it!
On the chance, though, that my Christian faith is not misplaced and that we do spend eternity in the place of our choosing, I promise no “I told you so.”
I’ll be too happy to see you again.
-30-
That or I think I got the bottle of Crown Royal out of the divorce.
I’ve got a 25 year Macallan or a 25 year Glenlivet if you would prefer!!