“But none of us like to believe that things that happen to us are coincidences. We’re all hard-wired to believe that things that happen to us are significant.” Lawrence Krauss (Theoretical Physicist / Anti-theist)
As a Christian who constantly and critically examines one’s beliefs (religious ones in particular), I always find myself living in the midst of what I call "doxastic dilemmas". The term "doxastic" has something to do with belief. A doxastic dilemma can refer to a case where an agent has to make a profoundly perplexing choice between two contradictory beliefs that appear to represent two equally possible states of affairs. For instance, as a Christian, I believe that God elects, for reasons utterly unknown to humans, some humans to serve God in the midst of an ungodly world. The Bible abounds in stories about the heroes of faith who, supposedly, had personal experiences of God’s special providence. As a matter of fact, I also have my own experiences of what I suspect to be God’s special providence. Although they can be viewed as mere coincidences, I experienced them occasionally, though often enough, that there’s some weight to my suspicion that they were actual cases of God’s special providence. On the other hand, I always find it tempting to treat such cases as mere coincidences. I want to treat my attributions of such cases to God’s special providence as mere delusional tendencies of wanting to feel special. There’s always a part of me that finds one of the two possibilities, i.e. the possibility that they were mere coincidences or the possibility that they were cases of God’s special providence, unappealing.
When I am haunted by my doubts, I am also reminded of those personal experiences that appear to be God’s special provisions. Almost every time I choose to obey what appears to be God’s leading in my life, despite the seeming impossibility of fulfilling the task, I am always surprised by what appears to be an unexpected and concrete case of God’s provision. I am not referring to a single event. I am referring to multiple events in my life. Of course, I am not claiming that my life is immune from the tragic horrors in life or the consequences of my mistakes or sinfulness. It appears that God simply allows me (and other people as well) to witness mere glimpses of God’s faithfulness. It appears that God has given some people enough experiences to remember God. That seems to be part of the essence of the biblical religion. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of my most favorite authors, said several things that partly capture, and powerfully capture through his poetic prose, what I am trying to say:
“…unlike scientific thinking, understanding for the realness of God does not come about by way of syllogism, by a series of abstractions, by a thinking that proceeds from concept to concept, but by way of insights. The ultimate insight is the outcome of moments when we are stirred beyond words, of instants of wonder, awe, praise, fear, trembling and radical amazement; of awareness of grandeur, of perceptions we can grasp but are unable to convey, of discoveries of the unknown, of moments in which we abandon the pretense of being acquainted with the world…
…Ultimate insights…are events, rather than a permanent state of mind; what is clear at one moment may subsequently be obscured…the life of the spirit is not always at its zenith, and the mercy of God does not at all times bestow upon man the supreme blessings. Flashes of insight ‘come and go, penetrate and retreat, come forth and withdraw’…
The immediate certainty that we attain in moments of insight does not retain its intensity after the moments are gone. Moreover, such experiences or inspirations are rare events. To some people they are like shooting stars, passing and unremembered. In others they kindle a light that is never quenched. The remembrance of that experience and the loyalty to the response of that moment are the forces that sustain our faith. In this sense, faith is faithfulness, loyalty to an event, loyalty to our response.”
God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism, pp. 131-132
He also pointed out in p. 140:
“The essence of Jewish religious thinking does not lie in entertaining a concept of God but in the ability to articulate a memory of moments of illumination by His presence. Israel is not a people of definers but a people of witnesses...”
In another book by Rabbi Heschel, "Man is not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion", on p. 162, he also explained the relationship between faith and the act of remembering one’s past experiences with God:
“Memory is a source of faith. To have faith is to remember…Much of what the Bible demands can be comprised in one word: Remember.”
So, it appears that our past experiences with God make it possible for us to have faith, because they give us things about God to remember. They are concrete, though maybe not conclusive, grounds for faith. They give us the courage to believe a belief that we can reasonably doubt or the courage to trust someone whose existence and credibility we can reasonably doubt. I think that such faith that arises out of that act of remembering past experiences of what we suspect to be cases of God’s special providence sustains our hope for a redemptive future.
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