This faith a secular response to tragedy

How do you heal the brokenness of your life after a loved one dies, after a hurricane strikes, after gunshots shatter your life, after the devastation of a global pandemic? In religious societies such as the United States, one common bulwark has been to hold fast to a belief in a loving God.

But what about those among us for whom this is just not an option; we just don’t or can’t believe in a benevolent deity who will make things right?

An overwhelming majority of the survivors of Hurricane Katrina found solace in religious faith and reported their belief in God was all the stronger following the disaster. In “A Letter to a Christian Nation,” secularist Sam Harris derides this and claimed this affirmation is akin to spitting upon the graves of their deceased loved ones.

I believe it is Sam Harris who is being simplistic here, not the survivors. People who attribute the death of their loved ones to God are trying to find a reason for their loved one’s death, attributing it to an inscrutable but just deity is their way of doing this. If they find solace in this, what harm does this do, and who am I to gainsay it? I do not share this belief, but I respect it.

The reasons people like me are skeptical are as diverse as the snowflakes on a lazy winter morning, but when faced with tragedies, skepticism boils down to what may seem a cold hard truth: God won’t help us.

God won’t help us, but faith can. Not faith in any higher power, but faith in ourselves, in the collective power of humanity to effect change for the better.

There are so many tragedies we have confronted in this year of pandemic, so much death, so much upheaval of rhythm and routine. I have been unlucky enough to officiate at two funerals. Or perhaps I should say, I have been lucky to officiate at only two funerals. We must mourn for so much, but mourning need not mean fatalistic paralysis. We need not say, “things are bad now, so they will stay bad, and there is nothing we can do to change it.”

There is a temptation among secularists to attribute this type of fatalism predominantly to those among us who believe in

God or who are conservative. Let us forgo this temptation. It is lazy and simplistic; such paralysis may grip any person or community.

There is broad agreement about the many ills that plague us in the United States. Too many people die in this country from gun violence. Our infrastructure, our roads and bridges, are crumbling. We face a humanitarian crisis at the borders of our country, so many people are trying to cross, and we don’t have the structures in place to contend with it. The partisan divide is so deep and wide, so bitter.

I am not offering a particular solution to any of these problems, just the abiding faith we can solve them, faith in my power and the power of the human collective to solve anything we set our minds to. Call me a deluded optimist, but I believe in this. I believe in us.