Worthy of Worship - A Critique of Kierkegaard's Morally Capricious God

What is faith, exactly? Is it a departure from reason? Or is it a supplement to reason? Does it supplant reason or does it function independently of it? Can or should faith lead one to contradict reason? Furthermore, can God command someone to do something wrong?

In “Fear and Trembling” Søren Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Johannes de Silentio,[1] sheds an interesting perspective on these relevant questions of Christian devotion. For Silentio, one develops faith after they have first become ethical. Faith is a step beyond the ethical, he explains, in which “the single individual . . . is higher than the universal” (p. 55), which is to say that that an individual, who is obviously contained within the universal law, can somehow become greater than that same law. Silentio admits that this is paradoxical. In fact, he describes faith itself as a paradox. This is the point at which most philosophers arguing for Christianity would put the proverbial car in reverse and try to find another route to their point. Silentio, however, decides that this is exactly where he wants to go. While unabashedly declaring that “this paradox cannot be mediated,” he even goes as far as to say that one acting on faith “acts by virtue of the absurd” (p. 56).

The focal point of Silentio’s argument is the story of Abraham and Isaac, in which God commands Abraham to kill his innocent son. Abraham goes through with it, but at the last moment, the Lord stays his hand and he does not have to kill Isaac. Abraham then goes on to be one of the most – if not the most – venerated figures in the entire Old Testament. Silentio argues that this story represents the paradox of faith, and what he calls “a teleological suspension of the ethical” (p. 54). It was in obeying the seemingly morally contradictory commandment to kill an innocent when the moral law commanded otherwise that Abraham moved from a resignation to the ethical, into true, pure faith.

I intend to demonstrate that his premises are misguided and assume much that need not be assumed. I believe that rather than what he intended to demonstrate, Silentio’s arguments do not create a God worthy of worship, but rather a despotic deity, for whom there is no foundation upon which to build faith. Ironically, Silentio’s assumptions weaken the ability to love and worship God by ascribing to him too much greatness and grandeur. That is to say that God being able to violate his own law and to capriciously determine good and evil makes him difficult, if not impossible, to truly worship.

Knights of Resignation and Faith

To understand the problems with his characterization of the “paradox of faith,” it is important to understand how Silentio has arrived at it. He talks at length about two kinds of people. There is first the bastion of the ethical life, the Knight of Infinite Resignation. Secondly, the more austere and difficult to attain – as Silentio mentions never having met one in his life (p. 38) – is the exemplar of the spiritual life, the Knight of Faith. Both, Silentio admits, are worthy of praise and have the hope of salvation, but the Knight of Faith is higher (p. 18). He demonstrates it in the example of Abraham, saying that “it is great to lay hold of the eternal, but it is greater to hold fast to the temporal after having given it up” (p. 18). The main distinction that he makes between the two knights is reason. The Knight of Infinite Resignation is devoted to a rational and consistent set of virtues. The Knight of faith, however, while still devoted to those same principles, is devoted to the contradiction of those same principles if so directed by faith.

Silentio uses the example of Abraham’s trial. He explains that by virtue of the absurd,

“he had faith that God would not demand Isaac of him, and yet he was willing to sacrifice him if it was demanded. He had faith . . . that God, who required it of him, should in the next moment rescind the requirement” (pp. 35-36).

Infinite resignation is then the last stage that Abraham passes through before coming to faith (p. 37). Faith comes, in this sense, by virtue of the fact that Abraham is infinitely resigned to his devotion to the love and care of his beloved son, and then relegates that resignation for the sake of his faith.

It is quite apparent that Silentio, while making no claim to be one, values the Knight of Faith as the ultimate ideal. Insofar as he has described the distinction between the two, I find the Knight of Faith to be dangerous and untrustworthy, and find the Knight of Infinite Resignation to be far more praiseworthy of an individual.

My problems with the Knight of Faith rest on the fact that spirituality – as Kierkegaard admits both as Johannes de Silentio and as Johannes Climacus – is inherently subjective. If what this person understands personally to be the will of God comes to him and it involves murdering me, should I praise him and tear open my shirt to accommodate his knife’s blade that much more easily? While I agree with Kierkegaard that subjectivity is paramount in spirituality, I add the caveat that one’s subjective experience ought not ever be imposed on another. If Abraham’s trial with the sacrifice of Isaac was as Silentio puts it forth, then what of Isaac? What about his will? What about his subjective spiritual experience? Are we to praise a man who subjugates another to satisfy his own personal spirituality? If we are now to invoke the categorical imperative and will that this maxim – that one ought to circumvent the ethical, even in regard to their fellow man, in order to serve subjective spirituality (faith) – then the result is a world full of barbaric, spiritual opportunists. In fact, it sounds a lot like the Crusades.

It might be argued that God wouldn’t command all of us to do contradictory, opposing things. However, Silentio’s position holds that spiritual trials are inherently paradoxical and even “absurd.” These commands from God are, by Silentio’s definition, beyond the ethical and thus have no ethics to bind them from creating things like wars, violence or strife. Furthermore, if one is to perform one’s perceived duty without consulting one’s own mind or ethical experience, unbeholden to ethics at all for that matter, who is to say that commands of this variety wouldn’t contradict one another? Is that not the meta-virtuous “absurd” of which Silentio seems so incredibly fond? If I were to find out that one of Silentio’s Knights of Faith lived next door to me, I would move to another neighborhood, for who knows when something would suddenly prompt him to violate the ethical and murder me in my sleep?

While paying lip service to Knight of Infinite Resignation being of admirable character, Silentio also slights him and all but directly calls him a coward. His argument for the Knight of Faith, and consequently against the Knight of Infinite Resignation is that resignation is a substitute for faith (p. 35). I wholeheartedly disagree with this. Abraham did not resign himself to principles that he concocted out of thin air, but rather to principles given to him by God. God did not walk along beside him every day shouting his revealed commands through a megaphone, but rather Abraham walked by faith, keeping the commandments of God. Thus, resignation to the ethical was not a substitute for faith, but rather an act of faith in and of itself.

Now, I am certainly not saying that what Abraham did was not an act of faith. Neither am I saying that he ought not to have obeyed the Lord. I agree with Silentio that this terrible trial culminated in an act of immense faith, but where we part ways is in categorizing the method and nature of his faith. We agree that the ultimate object of Abraham’s faith is God. Silentio however sees Abraham as having faith by virtue of the absurd, I see him as having faith despite his lack of complete understanding. My disagreement lies in that I do not believe there is a paradox.

Paradoxes of Perception

A paradox arises when one espouses premises which inevitably lead to a contradiction. In order for us to declare something a paradox, however, we must have all of the facts of a given situation. If you wake up early in the morning and it is dark, you do not declare it a paradox concerning the definition of morning, but instead you look to your bedside clock to discover that it’s 4:00am and the sun is not yet up. If you do not have the perspective to see and know all of the information about a given situation, you are not in a position to detect contradictions. This is the reason why most paradoxes are abstract and made up of truisms, because in the actual world, they can’t exist. In fact, a paradox is something which, by definition, can’t exist. If the supposed “paradox of faith,” was truly a paradox, it would define itself out of existence.

Silentio’s paradox of faith is what I call a “paradox of perception.” It is something that appears to be a contradiction, but only appears this way because one does not have all of the facts. The problem is then exacerbated by the fact that the missing facts are dismissed as not existing at all, and the argument is patched up with assumptions. As is common, the problem lies in the assumptions.

In the case of the supposed paradox of faith, there are two assumptions being made. Silentio assumes that God is a) not ethical, and B) above the ethical. Silentio makes the following claim,

“Faith is namely this paradox that the single individual is higher than the universal – yet, please note, in such a way that the movement repeats itself, so that after having been in the universal he as the single individual isolates himself as higher than the universal. If this is not faith, then Abraham is lost . . . . Faith is precisely the paradox that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal, is justified before it, not as inferior to it but as superior” (pg. 55, emphasis added).

In Silentio’s system, the ethical is universal, in that it applies to all agents in the universe, however, in some way God is above this universal, and it is his subordinate. The ethical in this worldview however, stems from God’s laws and decrees. God is their author and creator, and apparently also their eraser and re-writer. As such, in Silentio’s view, God is not ethical, because He is not within the ethical, because it is his creation. And by the same token, God is above the ethical because it is subordinate to his will.

The problem with such a view of faith is the view of God that it creates. Such a belief about God lends itself to ethical supernaturalism, which is to say that “X is right” is defined by “God commands X.” This sounds good until one realizes the implication that these things are not and cannot be good intrinsically, and by corollary, that things that are bad are only bad by the same token. I personally find the idea that genocide is only evil because God says so to be morally reprehensible, and the average person feels the same way. We respond, even at our most base level, to atrocities in a visceral way. Whether or not we claim to do so, we all function as if these things were intrinsically wrong. So all of us, deep down, reject this idea of God.

What is the alternative then? If we are to retain God, while remaining constantly committed to the ethical, then, Silentio might argue, we must bring God down in our esteem. This however is not the only option. If God is not outside of or above the ethical, then the only option left is that God is ethical. This immediately brings to mind Silentio’s argument that in such a scenario “God comes to be an invisible vanishing point, an impotent thought; his power is only in the ethical, which fills all of existence” (p. 68). It is easy to dismiss this, and I do not wish to. It is a good point. If the ethical is all-encompassing, then what function or use does God serve for man? What is He to us? If He is unable to circumvent or suspend the ethical, is He not impotent? The answer lies with how we understand the ethical.

Hierarchical Ethics

It goes without saying that God’s perspective extends far beyond man’s. Most Christians are content to say that God is all-knowing. An overwhelming majority of Christians agree that man is not only imperfect, but while in our mortal state, inherently flawed and limited. Silentio, however, makes another sweeping assumption, and supposes that man knows every last element of the ethical. He excoriates the Hegelians for writing off faith as something which can be achieved and then passed by, but does the same to the ethical. He does it so completely that his writing off of the ethical is merely an implication of something he says rather that something to which he even devotes a sentence.

Many of the flaws in Kierkegaard’s theology stem from the traditional theology he was trying to steer away from, namely the idea of a literally infinite being. While the rest of his theology sees God as an interested, loving parent, his metaphysics sets God up to be this infinite, inscrutable, immutable with whom mankind hasn’t a single inch of common ground. The ethical is “universal” but somehow does not contain God. We don’t even have virtue as a possible common ground with God, because to say that Silentio’s God is good isn’t telling you anything, because it’s a tautology. It’s like saying “white is blanco.” It doesn’t give us a very informative predicate. It simply gives us a synonym or definition. If there isn’t a truly universal good to which we can hold our God, then saying that God is good doesn’t really mean much more than saying “God is.”

Silentio’s conclusions about faith based on the story of Abraham do not necessarily follow from it. In fact, there are many reasonable assumptions that can be made to circumvent his admittedly unethical (p. 59) conclusions. As previously stated, I will assume the common ground of God having a not only broader but all-inclusive perspective, and posit that it is reasonable to assume that man does not and possibly even can not know all of the ethical. That there are some elements of the universal that only God has a broad enough perspective to fully grasp. This idea frees us up from making Silentio’s terrible conclusions about the moral nature of God.

As the first “Problema” he sets forth in the book after hashing out the form of the subject matter, Silentio asks “Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical?” (p. 54). This question becomes the crux of his view of faith. His answer is a resounding “yes!” Mine is a resigned “no.” The puzzle of Abraham can be represented as an inconsistent triad, a set of three premises, the affirmation of any two of which necessarily implies the contradiction of the third. The triad is as follows:

1. God commands me to kill my innocent son.
2. Necessarily, if God commands me to do x, then I ought to do x.
3. I ought not kill my innocent son.

Silentio argues that this situation clearly demonstrates a suspension of the ethical, thus subordinating the third premise to the first premise. “The story of Abraham,” he explains,

“contains just such a teleological suspension of the ethical. . . . Therefore, Abraham is at no time a tragic hero but is something entirely different, either a murderer or a man of faith” (p. 57).

Indeed, Abraham is one or the other, and indeed it is the first premise which is taking the precedence over the third, but if one is to garner any kind of trust in God’s character, the implications must be different, or else Christianity is a game for the insane and the devious.

Abraham, as a man of faith, is contrasted with the “tragic hero.” The tragic hero is one who is resigned to the ethical, or universal good, and who, upon finding himself in spiritual trial, overcomes and stays true to his virtue despite the loss incurred upon him. He is different from the man of faith. “Abraham’s situation is different,” Silentio says, “By his act he transgressed the ethical altogether and had a higher [telos] outside it, in relation to which he suspended it” (p. 59). The difference between the two is that the tragic hero sacrifices one good for a higher good. For Silentio, Abraham is sacrificing his highest good for something higher yet (p. 59). His gradation beyond the superlative is cryptic at best and incoherent at worst. It is akin to invoking the proverbial “unstoppable force meets the unmovable object” paradox. Instead of throwing his hands in the air at its absurdity, Silentio instead declares the unstoppable force the champion and ignores the fact that this is complete nonsense. There can not be two superlatives within the same category. God’s whim and self-existent ethics can not both be our highest good. Silentio explains that “while the tragic hero is great because of his moral virtue, Abraham is great because of a purely personal virtue” (.p 59). This explains nothing though, because use of the word “virtue” implies an external standard. Once again, if Christianity is not to be the methodology of scoundrels and mad men, how can something which is without an external standard be judged for good or evil?

How then do we satisfy ethics and duty to God in the context of faith?

Hypothetical Imperatives

Immanuel Kant made the distinction between “hypothetical” and “categorical” imperatives. A hypothetical imperative is a commandment that is relative. That is to say that it is in effect only in regard to something else. For example, the imperative to not kill is not in effect if you are fighting for your survival, are an executioner or are a soldier in wartime. Categorical imperatives are imperatives that are not qualified. They stand alone and are not conditional. For Kant, there are only two of them, or rather one, formulated two different ways.

In order that that we might be ethical while providing for obedience to additional commandments from God a they come, and do all of the above within a context of faith, I propose that we must abandon some of our assumptions about the commandments. I’m suggesting that the vast majority of God’s heretofore revealed commandments are hypothetical imperatives. Id est, that not all of God’s commandments are eternal, irrevocable laws, but instead that most of them are adapted to the changes in dangers, opportunities, knowledge and general states of affairs over the course of world history, and – I’m treading on thin ice now, I know – even the individual lives of His children. This would explain how certain commandments of God have changed over time, e.g. the replacement of the Law of Moses with the higher law of the Gospel, and the preaching of the Gospel to the gentiles.

This liberates us from fearing the whim of a capricious God. Furthermore, rather than engendering less faith in Him, it causes us to exercise more faith in the fact that his commandments ultimately serve a purpose and are not there simply because “he said so.” That is not to say that He doesn’t test us, but that his commandments are purposive and, more importantly, righteous, in the sense that they are in conformity to an externally existent morality.

The idea of God’s power being circumscribed by eternal law is what gives LDS theology such strength to withstand the winds of such philosophical onslaughts as the Problem of Evil. If God’s power is bound by law, then He cannot exercise it in violation of it. LDS scripture even has the audacity to claim that were God to be so unjust, He “would cease to be God”![2]

Silentio’s God has no such strength. If God has the power to violate any law in existence, then He could violate natural law and moral law, as well as man’s agency itself. The state of affairs in the world, however, demonstrates no such being, which both possesses those powers and loves his children. Silentio won’t give that up either though, claiming love as a foundational principle of faith (p. 16), so the Problem of Evil crushes Silentio’s God without the slightest difficulty.

Externalities

I am sure that the argument that Silentio would make to any of this would be to accept it all and to remind us that faith works by virtue of the absurd, to which I invoke the all-powerful pragmatist mantra: “So what?” What does believing this do for you? If it’s valuable and is illogical, then its value must lie in the value derived from the practical aspects of believing it. However, I can see no benefits in such a form of faith. Every practical externality I can think of from such a belief system is a negative one. The only positive I can come to is that you won’t disappoint God. I can not speak for anyone else, but the idea of my highest good being to placate an omnipotent child and my highest motivator being some kind of cosmic hybrid of guilt and fear to be abhorrent. If anything, the main externality to come to anyone from believing that faith and God have to be the way that Silentio describes them is a sense of resentment for God and a complete lack of desire to worship him.

However, if you are to accept that God is at least equal with if not beholden to law, faith becomes a coherent concept. To say “God is good” is no longer a tautology but is instead an actual sentence with an informative predicate. Believing that God is moral and ethical provides a motivation to believe in him. God’s confusing commandments aren’t absurd just because I can’t understand them. A cave man would think a television was magic, because he didn’t understand it, but that doesn’t mean that it is magic. The key difference is that Silentio obeys for the sake of the absurd, and I am advocating the belief that faith is not absurd, but rather that God simply knows what is right far better than I can hope to. I am advocating faith. Johannes de Silentio is advocating the worship of a mentally deranged deity.

Ultimately, the inconsistent triad is resolved by filling in the information that is missing from it, and removing one word:

1. God commands me personally and directly to kill my innocent son.
2. Necessarily, If God commands me to do x, then I ought to do x.
3. I ought not kill my innocent son, unless I’m absolutely sure that that God personally commands me to do otherwise.

Conclusions

To conclude and compile, allow me to piece together the central points I’ve made, in premise/conclusion format:

1. God has an all-encompassing perspective that obviously surpasses man’s.
2. The ethical admits of degrees.
3. It is possible that there are some higher levels of the ethical that we don’t fully comprehend as mortals.
4. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that there are elements of the ethical that God knows that we do not.
5. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that seeming paradoxes such as Abraham’s are not contradictions but rather commandments based on greater knowledge than that possessed by man.

The one part of my argument with which I think Silentio would agree is that faith is not easy. He called it “a task for a whole lifetime” (p. 7), and I do not disagree. Where we disagree is what we believe faith’s foundation is. Faith is necessarily based on the uncertain but not on the absurd. I can almost certainly say that I would not have had the faith that Abraham had. But what I can say is that I trust God to be good, and that that means what it sounds like.

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[1] From here on out, I will direct my arguments and critique at Johannes Silentio, rather than Kierkegaard, because the ideas don’t fully represent Kierkegaard, and are intended by him to be stimuli for thought rather than authoritative declarations. Any references to Kierkegaard specifically in the following pages will be to common threads throughout his philosophy.

[2] Alma 42:13-25

With a Little Help from my Friends - Re: "Oh, My Father"

I can not begin to express my gratitude for my the concern and kindness of my friends. While this is obviously an issue that takes a lifetime of work, and won't be fully resolved until I stand before God in the flesh and the veil over my understanding and memories is finally lifted, I am pleased to say that I have found some peace on the matter in the meantime.

The help all of you gave on this subject was monumental. While I was worrying about this these past few weeks, I recalled a talk that Jeffrey R. Holland (who, for my non-LDS readers is one of my church's 12 apostles), had given at General Conference while I was a missionary, entitled "The Grandeur of God." I remembered being touched by it, and that it related to this very topic. But, being the sulky guy that I am known to be from time to time, I didn't read it right away. I guess I wanted to fully explore the depth of the matter, and show myself just how much the topic meant to me. As I've said before (see the previous link), I have a hard time understanding joy or reaching any kind of catharsis without first understanding the pain against which it is juxtapositioned.

So in the meantime, as I worried about this issue, at least three friends of mine - Rachel Hunt, Daniel Judd, and Alanna Allen - recommended that I re-read Elder Holland's talk. Still, I dilly-dallied. Then came the flood of comments and emails, sharing common feelings on the issue. Allow me to share a few excerpts from ones that I have permanent records of, which made some points that were particularly helpful:

My friend Stephen Thayer commented, regarding revelation, that

"Perhaps you feel moved emotionally at times, while at others you feel as if "pure intelligence" is flowing into your mind. Either way, you have to know (or have faith, I suppose) that what you are experiencing is from the Father in order to really experience closeness to him."

My good friend of many years, Tyler Nickl, said in an email:

"These facts lead me to believe that knowing God the Father is a mystery. However, LDS theology does not preclude Saints' search for mysteries; you simply have to change venues to get more information. "Mystery" is derived from the Greek "musterion" meaning "rites, initiation, ceremony". . . . The results for me have not been conclusive but instead have opened my eyes to a number of possibilities about who God the Father might be."

I'm not sure if this was my friend Chris Black, or an internet passerby, but he commented:

"I've always felt that the best approach is to talk to him like I talk to my dad. I'd like to think that if he is my father in heaven, then I probably had a very similar or identical relationship with him as I now do with my earthly father. I might not use the same kinds of words, but the way I present my ideas is basically the same."

Elizabeth Boyd, a friend from my mission made the point that:

"I think by acting quickly, I can better attune my life to God's purpose and further understand His will and the way I can become like him, and, therefore, know him."

I think, though, that what struck home the hardest, was an email from my friend Rachel (which I then asked her to break into parts and post as comments, which are available to read now). Rachel's email hit me like a ton of bricks for two reasons.

1. She has recently been struggling with the same issue, and
2. Because of the quote she shares from that talk by Elder Holland.

Much of what she said bears repeating:

"[W]hile I don't know if I believe in very many things anymore, there are things that I hope for, and that I want to be true. Like you, I have had prayers answered in the past, and like you I should pray more in the present, and do more to bring about a real relationship with God.

I like what you said about emulating Christ in concrete ways, in an effort to try to know God more personally. I think that there is something there, in your suggestion that one doing this will come to know God similarly to how Christ came to know Him, and that is by action. . . .

I found it both interesting and sobering, that, as you pointed out, despite the gospel claim that everything Christ did is exactly what the Father would do, it still wasn't the Father. So I ask right alongside you, how do we come to know, and I would add, love, someone who hasn't suffered with us in that same way? Even though I said it can be hard earlier, to have faith in Christ, it can also be very easy to love Him. It can be easy to want to have faith in him, because he has toiled with us in the daily sweat of our mortal existence. He is human, and so we can get that. We can somewhat wrap our minds around that, though not fully. But theFather, He is a pure God. And so I guess we have to believe a few things, and take that "leap of faith." . . .

We also have to believe Christ when he said that the works he did were works his Father did. That they really were His works first.

And of your reading of Moses 7, it does seem in many instances, and often for the reasons you cited that it is not actually the Father, but the Son who weeps. Here I can only say that Elder Holland and Elder Maxwell both declared it to be referring to Heavenly Father, and that I have to believe them, because I need it to be true. If it was not Him, then I have no faith--then any small comprehension that I have attained of God as merciful and God as loving is destroyed. So again, I need it to be Him."

Immediately, my ears perked up, and I sat forward. She then quotes Elder Holland's talk:

"How grateful we are for all the scriptures, especially the scriptures of the Restoration, that teach us the majesty of each member of the Godhead. How we would thrill, for example, if all the world would receive and embrace the view of the Father so movingly described in the Pearl of Great Price.

There, in the midst of a grand vision of humankind which heaven opened to his view, Enoch, observing both the blessings and challenges of mortality, turns his gaze toward the Father and is stunned to see Him weeping. He says in wonder and amazement to this most powerful Being in the universe: "How is it that thou canst weep? . . . Thou art just [and] merciful and kind forever; . . . Peace . . . is the habitation of thy throne; and mercy shall go before thy face and have no end; how is it thou canst weep?"

Looking out on the events of almost any day, God replies: "Behold these thy brethren; they are the workmanship of mine own hands. . . . I gave unto them . . . [a] commandment, that they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood. . . . Wherefore should not the heavens weep, seeing these shall suffer?"

That single, riveting scene does more to teach the true nature of God than any theological treatise could ever convey. It also helps us understand much more emphatically that vivid moment in the Book of Mormon allegory of the olive tree, when after digging and dunging, watering and weeding, trimming, pruning, transplanting, and grafting, the great Lord of the vineyard throws down his spade and his pruning shears and weeps, crying out to any who would listen, "What could I have done more for my vineyard?"

What an indelible image of God's engagement in our lives! What anguish in a parent when His children do not choose Him nor "the gospel of God" He sent! How easy to love someone who so singularly loves us!"

The email continues, but it was early into the above quotation that I began to weep. And as I read through it I felt the most amazingly clear, poignant impression. It was nuanced and full of so many smaller feelings, but the overarching feeling was pure, unadulterated love. I could feel God's love for me so strongly, that the floodgates broke and I wept with joy. Like my good friend Rachel, I needed that passage from Moses 7 to be about my Father in Heaven. I cannot thank Elder Holland enough for letting me know that it was.

I feel now, that though my communication with Him has been sparse as of late, I feel like I have at least something around which for a relationship to coalesce. And to that I have the knowledge - or at least the sufficient grounds for belief - that my Father in Heaven loves me in a personal way.

And one of the ways that he has shown that love is through the sincerely, genuinely kind and interested friends he has put in my life. Thank you to every last one of you that left a comment or sent me an email. If I did not quote you in this post, please understand that your words of advice were still genuinely appreciated. I hungrily devoured every last bit of wisdom that all of you generously gave me. Thank you all.

Oh, My Father

[What I am about to say is very personal. And, while I understand the inherent dilemma of posting something personal to a public website, I simply ask that any response or judgment be tempered by common decency and a sympathetic heart. What I am asking for is input as to how I can strengthen this part of my faith. Fides quaerens intellectum.]

Let me be clear when I say that I am not without my doubts or struggles. Nor do I think that I necessarily. "Faith" itself implies a certain amount of assumed doubt. You can't actively apply faith unless you are lacking knowledge in some degree. Søren Kierkegaard, a mid-19th century Danish philosopher, made this fact the center of most of his theological writings, coining the phrase "leap of faith." So, do not be concerned for my spiritual welfare when I say that there are certain aspects of my faith with which I struggle. This post is therefore a series of questions and not as an argument, as most of my posts are. Your input is requested and welcomed.

A difficulty that many people have with Christianity is that most of us Christians believe that we can develop a personal relationship with God, with whom we have never - in the normal sense of the term - become acquainted. We do this in three main ways:

1. Study of the words and works of God in scripture
2. Communion through prayer
3. Through the archetype we are given in the example of earthly Fathers

Through Scripture

The scriptures are replete with depictions of the acts, words and will of God. The burning bush, the parting of the Red Sea, the loaves and the fishes, the parables; and in LDS-specific scripture, the conversion of Enos, the hand of God bringing light to the Jaredites, and - my personal favorite - God himself weeping, in front of Enoch, over the hatred and strife that his children choose to enact upon one another.

In each of these cases however, we run into the same problem. While in a nominative sense, all of these are the acts of "God," they are not the acts of God the Father, but rather of God the Son, Jehovah. (Keep in mind, that I am speaking from the perspective of LDS theology, which rejects the traditional, credal, Latin Trinity, instead viewing Father, Son and Holy Ghost as three separate individuals.)

Tonight, with my wife, I read through chapter 7 in the book of Moses (an LDS-specific book of scriptures) in which Enoch speaks with God and God weeps for the sins and cruelty of his children. This has been a favorite passage of mine for quite some time, as it demonstrates that God is not austere, impassible or disinterested. Says He,

"The Lord said unto Enoch: Behold these thy brethren; they are the workmanship of mine own hands ... And unto thy brethren have I said, and also given commandment, that they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood."

Upon reading it tonight, I began to take hope that perhaps it was the Father speaking, but it became increasingly evident that it was the Son, especially with the repeated use of the term "The Lord" which implies Jehovah. So, I'm back to square one.

Now, I am quite well aware that we have Divine Investiture, which allows Christ to speak for and as the Father, and that Christ does the works of the Father (John 5:19) and that by knowing what Christ does, we know what the Father would do, but both of these fail to satisfy my yearning. I understand that the Son can act as the Father, but they are distinctly, ontologically separate beings. I believe that Christ's actions are the will of the Father, but the fact stands that the Father didn't do them. With the exception of announcing the Son's presence, the scriptures are pretty much void of any information concerning the direct actions of the Father. How can I come to know or find a basis for revelation concerning a being for whom I am starved for information?

Through Prayer

I admit that I can make lots of improvement in this particular category, but at the same time, it's kind of a self-licking ice cream cone. I lack knowledge concerning the Father because I don't pray to Him enough, but I don't pray as often because I feel ashamed that I don't know Him very well. I am aware that this is a bit like Scholasticus, who wouldn't venture into the water until he had learned to swim. So, to be clear, I am not denying that you can come to know God through prayer, nor am I saying that personal revelation does not come. I have personally had many interactions with God, but they don't come in the form of words or voices, but as impressions, and I've never received any sort of impression from God that stated specifically that it was the Father speaking. Perhaps, that is because that has never been the source of my inquiry, or perhaps that is because - as the established doctrine states - God speaks to us through the Holy Ghost, which is, existentially speaking, yet another separate individual.

The traditional model for Christian prayer is that you pray to the Father in the name of the Son. I will be honest and state that I'm not perfectly sure of all of what "in the name of Christ" means with regard to prayer. I do know that it means that we are made worthy of the blessings we ask for by virtue of asking for them on Christ's tab, so to speak (I apologize if that is a crass metaphor), but I get the impression that there is more to it than that.

Furthermore, while I know that this is no excuse, I will admit that that communing with God is really hard. As one ages, the simple, unquestioning faith of a child becomes increasingly difficult. Add onto that the cacophony of thoughts and concerns that fill our minds from day to day and the difficulty of quieting our minds enough to hear God's answers. I believe that God is willing to answer, but what I have to do to hear it is spiritually and emotionally exhausting. This by no means suggests that I ought to give up, but I think that it's fair to at least acknowledge this element in my struggle. I know from my own experience that there is an immense payoff when it is successful, but that there is a lot of struggling that goes on in the interim.

Also, as I've mentioned before, God expects us to do as much information gathering and contemplation as we can before bringing something before him. That is we should use our brains and not expect Him to do all of our thinking for us. In this case, however, I know very little and, outside of pure conjecture, his nature, words and actions are either veiled or channeled through an intermediary. Does that mean that I need to find more information first? If so, where? Does it mean that my knowledge of God has to be 100% through prayer and revelation? If so, does that mean that I'm entitled now to revelation on the matter? And if that is so, why haven't I?

Through my Earthly Father

Something that I'm absolutely convinced of, and which I've argued before, is that our understanding of God is colored by our understanding of both the principles we know him to embody, and of our experience with Fathers in general, our own fathers being the most influential in this process. Many people struggle with God because their relationship with their earthly father was unpleasant or difficult, and the idea of an omnipotent version of the same is disquieting. I'm lucky that this is not the case with me. My father is kind, principled and cares about his fellow man. But making the leap from my earthly father, with whom I am very well acquainted to my Father in Heaven with whom I am not well acquainted is difficult. In fact, I don't really know how to do that.

An Active Approach

In the end, I think that taking a more involved approach is required to solve this. As I've already admitted, I need to pray more, irrespective of my lack of current knowledge. Furthermore, while I find that simply knowing that what Christ did was what the Father would have done isn't a satisfactory foundation for a relationship, it is probably the key to figuring it out. I supposed that if I want to get to know my Father in Heaven, I need to emulate his Son's actions. Perhaps, if I do what he himself would do, acting in his place, I will get to know Him better.

I really want to know Him personally. I will continue to try. Perhaps it will not happen during this lifetime, though the thought of that fills me with sadness. I will do my best.

Any thoughts, suggestions, advice or personal stories? Have you had this problem too? Were you able to get any better at it? Your advice and input is welcomed and appreciated.