Religulous, and Doubt

I just watched the Bill Maher documentary Religulous. I know, two anti-religious documentaries in one week. But have no fear, they haven't converted me. I just find them really interesting. Religulous was a lot better than the other one--much more well done, funnier, and it just made more sense. Rather than trying to prove that religion was all false, Maher just went off the basis of his perspective, that it was false already, and just set out to show how ridiculous (and dangerous) it all is. In the end, he basically concluded that all religions are dangerous and are going to bring about the end of the world all their prophecies looked forward to themselves, rather than God bringing them about in His wrath and judgment. Of course, Maher interviewed all the real crazies of the religions. Many of the Christians he interviewed I found myself disagreeing with. It made me wish that Bill Maher would have interviewed me, so I could tell him how it REALLY is. Hah. It did make me wonder though, because I'm sure he did have some interviews with really rationally-thinking Christians that made sense, but that wouldn't fit into the theme of their documentary, so obviously they couldn't make the cut.

One thing that I did like was that in the end, Maher said that the best "religion" that he had found was that of doubt. There's no way any of us can know everything for certain or have a certain claim on the truth, so why bother. It's a much more humbling standpoint than all that religious rhetoric. While I do think that we do possess a unique angle on the truth because of God's special revelation to us through Scripture, I'm in favor of this attitude. Why do we NEED to know exactly how things are going to play out when Jesus comes back? Why do we NEED to know exactly what happened in Genesis? These are the things that we argue over the most (and make us look the dumbest to the world when we do), yet these things are not essential to our faith.

After the Reformation, the Church was split apart into literally hundreds of different denominations/sects/claims to truth. People were arguing over so many minute details of theology and Scripture interpretation and religious practices that it was pure chaos. So a bunch of important guys got together and came up with a new concept. It was called adiaphora, a Greek word that literally means "non-essential." This was the category that they put everything that they argued about that was not essential to the Christian faith. It made room for disagreement, doubt, and unity within the Church. It made it so that it's OKAY to not know everything for certain. And it has to be that way if the Church is ever going to achieve any kind of unity.

One of my favorite things that my dear friend Joel Reichenbach ever said to me, when we were talking about teaching, was, "I don't want everyone to agree with me, I don't want everyone to agree with one certain denomination, I just want everyone to be as confused as I am!" Confusion is okay. We don't have to have the answers to everything, or know exactly how everything is supposed to be. Bill Maher is right, saying "I don't know" is a very humbling thing. Maybe we need a bit more of that. Maybe the world would take us more seriously if we started being more real with ourselves and with our beliefs.