The Absence of Anger July 16, 2008
Posted by Gordon in Uncategorized.Tags: Baptist blog, Baptist blogger, Zimbabwe
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During my time in Zimbabwe, I came across some common themes when speaking to people that really surprised me. Firstly, more often than not, people I spoke to believed in God and prayed regularly, especially for their needs.
More surprisingly, I did not find one person who was angry about the situation. Rather, the people I spoke to were simply resigned. Instead of finding an angry nation plotting to overthrow the incompetent and cruel government of Dictator Robert Mugabe I found people who instead were waiting patiently for change to occur. Why was this?
This contrasted with what I would expect to find in the West, particularly if we were subjected to the same tyranny, corruption and abuse as Zimbabweans have been and are. Having said that, this is Africa, and not Australia we are talking about.
The absence of anger I can put down to a few factors:
1. Cultural
I don’t have the time or necessarily the expertise to expound this fully except to say that culturally, Zimbabweans are a humble and longsuffering people. This of course doesn’t explain the government of Mugabe but it may well explain how much Zim’s have put up with over the last 28 years, especially the last 12. I never felt unsafe anywhere amongst Zimbabweans [despite being the lone white face in a sea of black faces on occasions], and I found Zimbabweans to be a gracious and humble people. People more qualified than I can either explain it or debunk it, I think the former will apply though.
2. Resistance Is Futile
Zimbabwe has had a successful, text book revolutionary communist takeover. The standard methods have been applied:
- Seize power, violently if necessary
- ‘neutralise’ opposition [20 000 killed in Matabeleland alone by Mugabe]
- Neutralize intelligentsia and middle class
- Create a dependent coterie of sycophants, particularly in the military
- Eliminate freedom of speech
- Control communications, particularly t.v., radio and press
- Caricature any opposition as ‘counter revolutionary’
- Create the visage of democracy, but ensure victory through whatever means
- Enjoy the support of other ‘revolutionaries’ who also run countries like you do
There is little sense in the average person trying to change anything. Trying to bring change at the ballot box has proved futile and dangerous. I saw a grandmother who was suffering from burns she got trying to escape a house firebombed with 6 people inside. Their crime was to come from a village that had voted against Robert Mugabe.
I salute those who try, particularly people active in the Movement for Democratic Change and social justice groups. Check out www.sokwanele.com for up to date information about what is happening inside Zimbabwe [warning: graphic photos]. The courage of these people is helping to bring the focus of the world on Zimbabwe, which is rarely out of the news headlines.
3. Looking to God
It may well be that what I encountered was a greater reliance upon God than I am prepared to engage in. Whilst in Zimbabwe I certainly was angry, often to the point of tears. I was never more angry than when reading a government newspaper or listening to propaganda on the radio, particularly when I new first hand that what was being said was pure lies.
When you’ve had everything taken away and you cannot change things by your own means you are left with little else except to wait upon God. I felt humbled by the perspective of people on the situation in Zimbabwe and inspired by their unfailing trust that in God’s time things would ‘change’. Exactly what that ‘change’ will be is unknown, but things can only get better!
Eventually I tired to give up being angry ‘on behalf’ of Zimbabweans, and tried to join them in their reliance upon God. I’m not doing well…
I think you say it all in that last section:
“When you’ve had everything taken away and you cannot change things by your own means you are left with little else except to wait upon God.”
Basically, when you’ve had everything taken away, you are left with nothing. You romanticize how they’ve “resigned” themselves to their fate, which does not sound like an admirable quality at all.
Whereas people in more affluent societies believe in God because they’ve given up on curiosity and the sometimes frightening notion that no one is watching over us, these people seem to be turning to God for lack of any real or substantial source of comfort.
Their plight is certainly depressing, and as long as the placebo effect keeps working, they’ll turn to religion.
Ed you probably need to get your sceptical backpack together, get on a plane and visit these people for yourself to judge whether or not it is a ‘placebo’ effect.
Zimbabwe is in the hands of scientific atheists [otherwise known as communists]. In fact the Soviet Union was an atheists dream scenario: a country where religion was suppressed and schools taught atheism.
One of the reasons Zimbabweans have not resorted to the typical means of resistance is because of the outworking of their faith. You can’t suffer for 28 years drawing cold comfort from a placebo.
Believe me, I’m not trying to trivialize their pain or suffering. But that’s the beauty of a placebo…it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s actually real, just as long as you believe it is. And when it comes to religion, it helps to have billions of others who share your beliefs, as well as a complex set of rituals, texts, and pseudo-history.
So yes, I’d argue that you can suffer for 28 years drawing on such a complex and integrated placebo as religion, and if we look back on the history of suffering, we can see that people have suffered for much longer than that while clinging to their gods.
Your assurance of not trivialazing their pain is undone by your assertions. You do a good line in offering cold comfort.
Given that in Western contexts most people are thoroughly secular, to my mind atheism or agnosticism is a panacea for the emptiness that their rejection of the Divine has left them with.
The consumption of materialism, the sensate, the aesthetic, chemical solutions etc has left them with a deep sense of emptiness. Some rational explanation to justify meaninglessness is needed.
Churches in Zimbabwe aren’t sitting around enjoying a funk caused by indulging in a panacea. They are on the cutting edge of the communities needs, feeding poor, giving hope and homes to homeless, orphans, persecuted etc.
These are not the actions of people under a panacea. They could choose other options to bring about change, but they have chosen God. It is true to say that resistance is futile, but only to a degree. When you have no other option you can also opt to take up arms.
The ANC in South Africa pre-liberation had two strands of influence: revolutionary communism and liberation theology. The armed resistance in the end was a joke, a couple of bombs placed in fast food places and shopping centres. I rather think that the those with most credibility are the ones who in your book swallowed the panacea.
To set the record straight, I find atheism as foolishly absolute as religion. As an agnostic, I wouldn’t consider my “beliefs” (or lack of, rather) a remedy for any feeling of emptiness. In your first paragraph you paradoxically equate the lack of God as SOMETHING, while rejection of a fabricated belief system as NOTHING. I suppose I can’t really argue with you here because I can’t follow your logic; the fact that I and others like me choose not to accept that ignorance is bliss does not make us unhappy nor complacent.
Neither does it mean that we (and now I speak for secular humanists) reduce the complexities and mystery of life to mere chemical reactions, meaningless and random. In fact, the process of evolution is far from random.
Perhaps many Westerners (and Easterners, if we look at Eastern Asia’s modern cultures) DO cling to their material possessions too much, but it’s arguable that the very religious do the same thing. Instead of embracing our lives and existence for what it is, people would rather look to something else to distract them from the pain that accompanies living.
And besides, we can’t be happy all the time. Sadness is a natural part of life, and experiencing sadness allows us to appreciate the happier times.
Throwing up your hands and giving up is all and good if that’s what makes you happy, as I have argued regarding the placebo effect. But there are plenty of examples where people throughout history have not been satisfied by deluding themselves.
Where would blacks be without people like MLK and Rosa Parks, for example? Would you rather them be silent and obedient, still cowering at the back of the bus? They stood up for themselves, made a change, and without them things would be much worse off for those who have followed.
If you can’t improve your own situation, you can at least attempt to create a precedent, a foundation of inspiration for those who do want to change their lives.
I still don’t understand your use of the word “panacea”…as far as I can tell, it’s religion that offers all the comforting answers, not agnosticism.
I rather think you underplay the role that churches have played in the Zimbabwean situation. A quick Google search will bring you many examples of how outspoken they have been. My original article concerned the average individual’s feeling about what change they could make at a political and national level.
I note you appear to have a belief that there is perhaps some design behind evolution being that it is not “random”? Please expand. I quite like hearing agnostics [who in their purest form believe that you cannot know the truth value of claims about God, origins of the universe, etc.] define the undefinable.
You appear to claim ownership of the term panacea, and thus can only be used in respect of people who have defined Christian beliefs. I rather think it could apply to anyone who has beliefs. You may not believe what I do but you clearly have a defined set of beliefs enough to cause you to blog.
First of all, many agnostics don’t make the claim that we cannot know whether or not God exists/how the universe works. Again, thinking in absolutes is a troublesome path indeed. Personally, I don’t think that the evidence for God’s existence outweighs the evidence for his non-existence (popularity is rarely concrete evidence for anything), so until I have more proof I live my life without him. This belief, or lack thereof, is contingent on evidence, of which more can arrive at any time.
The notion that the only alternative to “design” is “random” is mere polarization, which again is thinking in absolutes. Dawkins can say it better than I, so I’ll paraphrase his point on the matter:
Life’s complexity is often cited as proof for design. Not only is complexity a relative term, but natural selection does not imply that existence is a result of mere chance. Obviously the mechanisms of the human eye did not somehow find themselves suddenly stuck together and began working in conjunction.
“Natural selection is a cumulative process, which breaks the problem of improbability up into small pieces. Each of the small pieces is slightly improbable, but not prohibitively so. When large numbers of these slightly improbably events are stacked up in a series, the end product of the accumulation is very very improbable indeed, improbable enough to be far from the reach of chance.”
(Now back to me)
Thus, it is not chance that has created all that we see before us, but billions of years of tiny changes, tiny adaptations to the environment, with each generation losing many, many individuals. But as most die, a handful survive to pass on their genetical material, some slightly different from the generation that produced them; the cycle repeats over and over, and thus it is not difficult to imagine that the human body has evolved over billions of years of an amazing process.
I do certainly have beliefs, clearly, but I’d like to think that my beliefs are based on evidence that has been uncovered using a sound method. This is the same method that has led us to realize that the earth revolves around the sun (and not the other way around), that the world is not flat, and that oxygen has eight protons. We have been able to watch natural selection occur in real-time in species that produces many generations in a relatively short amount of time.
In other words, the only real “proof” that I’ve heard in favor of God is the overpowering feeling that his believers share. This, to me, is akin to the feeling that people had when the KNEW that we lived in a geocentric universe. Overpowering feelings are not inherent evidence of any intellectual matter, especially not something as complicated and intricate as religion.
I do not possess the faith and spin skills to swallow Dawkins’ attempt to explain away chance. He should get a job writing speeches for McCain! He could make him sound young!
For me personally I moved from a point of rejection to a willingness to take a step of calculated risk [faith], when I read that Jesus said that he offered “life in all its fullness”.
Despite various crisis of faith [especially rational] I eventually could not ignore the empirical evidence that was mounting up in terms of that sense of fullness [in the place of emptiness], meaning and purpose [in the place of meaninglessness] and most importantly personal transformation.
Those who knew me before I made my faith commitment could hardly believe the difference. I moved from agoraphobia to entering speech competitions, joining dramatic productions and eventually leadership and further public speaking. This is only a small picture of some remarkable personal transformations that began to take place that changed the course and quality of my life.
To ‘feel empowered’ and to be genuinely changed are worlds apart to me. This to me is of course not absolute proof, and I need to combine a range of factors in to the overall question of God’s existence. Part of that is considering the alternative viewpoints.
I have only ever found agnosticism to be a negation. It’s lifeblood is doubt [and often cynicism]. I much prefer atheism, in that it has more courage than to just hedge your bets.
Well, I am glad to hear that religion has helped you overcome problems in your life; there no doubt that it can work miracles.
But I’m not sure that I understand what you’re referring to when you say “empirical evidence”–it sounds like you’re equating religion’s effectiveness as a tool with the legitimacy of its details. Perhaps it fills the emptiness in your life, but that doesn’t make it real, anymore than Harry Potter or Santa for young children.
I’ve found that no one likes a fence-sitter; everyone wants to know where you stand…are you a Democrat or a Republican? Atheist or theist? Coke or Pepsi? I don’t think life is ever simple enough to realistically dichotomize everything into to opposing camps.
I was arguing about this with my girlfriend for about two hours yesterday, actually, and she ultimately she couldn’t give me an answer that I was satisfied with: Why is it admirable to believe in something without any objective evidence?
I think human beings are biologically inclined to gravity towards beliefs that sound true, permanent, and absolute. Trusting that gravity will not suddenly reverse its polarity, or that trees will not uproot themselves and attack us is how we live our lives. Without a sense of constancy and pattern, it would be very hard to exist from day to day. It’s our propensity for labeling certain things as “final” which allows us to move on and concentrate on the things that are much more likely to change or threaten us.
I think this is where your preference for atheism comes from. People like atheism and theism because they go ahead and PICK something to believe in; they can’t really imagine doing anything else.
I don’t believe agnosticism’s foundation is in doubt (which is clearly meant to give a negative connotation), but curiosity. Curiosity in the sense that because our senses and power of understanding is limited, we can always find out something else about the world. Therefore, I would actually argue that atheism and theism breed complacency, or trading the feeling of being content with good old fashioned human curiosity.
I don’t see agnosticism as a negation, because I see agnosticism as the “natural” state of man. We are born into a world, then presented with ideas, facts, evidence, sensory details, the works. As we go through life we learn to ignore some and invest our time in others. Agnosticism is not a negation so much as Religion is a Construction, something made up and taught. Thus it is our job to view it with a critical eye and weigh its evidence, probably much in the way that you have with other religion.
I’m assuming that you’re not simultaneously Baptist, Buddhist, Hindu, and of the Voodoun faith. So, if you “doubt” the legitimacy of any of those religions (and when I say legitimacy, I don’t mean their ability to bring people happiness but the probability that the details surrounding their beliefs are real and true), then perhaps you can understand where I’m coming from.
You say that agnostocism is our ‘natural state’, but before then you expound in more detail on the natural state contradicting your assertion:
“I think human beings are biologically inclined to gravity towards beliefs that sound true, permanent, and absolute. Trusting that gravity will not suddenly reverse its polarity, or that trees will not uproot themselves and attack us is how we live our lives. Without a sense of constancy and pattern, it would be very hard to exist from day to day. It’s our propensity for labeling certain things as “final” which allows us to move on and concentrate on the things that are much more likely to change or threaten us”
I use the term empirical in its dictionary sense:
1. derived from or guided by experience or experiment.
2. depending upon experience or observation alone, without using scientific method or theory, esp. as in medicine.
3. provable or verifiable by experience or experiment.
The personal transformation I can assure you go far beyond the delight a child takes at Harry Potter. Agnosticism by its nature requires a reductionist approach. A staggering personal transformation must be reduced to something akin to a child’s delight with a book. This is necessary to reinforce the agnostic position.
As a pastor I deal a fair bit in human misery, and thankfully a fair bit in incredible transformation. The proof is in the pudding ultimately. If agnosticism brings you the meaning and fulfilment you are looking for and it can be backed up by enough philosophical rationale then go for it. In my experience the lot of agnostics is to try and pull apart others beliefs rather than celebrate their own. what is there to celebrate as an agnostic in anycase?
I suppose I did contradict myself, but looking at it now, I see a slight difference in the points that I made. I see agnosticism as the natural state, but belief in something as a natural inclination. We’re born not knowing anything and open to every possibility, but we’re inclined to choose one because it benefits us as an individual trying to survive and pass on genetic material.
I said this to explain that I recognize WHY people turn to religion–I myself must take some things in life as truth, even though consciously I realize that they may not be. Though I understand the lure of religion, I’d argue that there are much more reasonable beliefs to choose from which don’t conflict with everything else.
The difference between believers of religion and believers of the scientific method, for instance, is that religious people use both everyday. Everyday you trust that China exists and that your chair won’t spontaneously combust with you in it– you trust that these are true because countless others have confirmed these “truths” independently.
It’s not by chance that all of the academic fields mesh well together while there are more religions and sects than I can count.
The difference is that the scientific community is either wrong or right about something, but because there are so many conflicting faiths, there can only be one faith that is right (if at all), while all of the others must be wrong.
Sure, they may all be based on the same supreme being and all, but still, all of the details surrounding their beliefs conflict with one another.
Most people knowledgeable in the biological sciences would probably define “A staggering personal transformation” in terms of neurological activity– which I would argue is much more interesting and delighting due to the fact that anyone with a brain can experience it. I don’t think that discovering the nature and cause of something trivializes it; the feeling is still valid and meaningful, just not inspired by a mythical being.
As an agnostic growing up, I never liked arguing about religion, and I definitely never took delight in trying to rip people’s beliefs apart. But because I’ve grown up in a community and nation that treats agonists and atheists as second-class citizens, and constantly bombards them with Christianity (after awhile, having to say “one nation under God” during the pledge of allegiance when I did not believe in God became more than just a simple annoyance) when freedom of religion is supposedly a right, I find it impossible to sit back and be abused.
Agnosticism is nothing to celebrate anymore than the sun rising another day. But I do take comfort knowing that I haven’t resigned myself to self-delusion and complacency.
*And I still don’t understand how you’re using “empirical”: how is personal feelings a provable or verifiable experience or experiment? How can you verify someone’s experience without them just having to tell you about it? I think “verify” implies some sort of objective method of confirming something, not subjective verbal or written accounts.
Thanks for clarifying your apparent contradiction. You continue to ask how I can appeal to empirical evidence. It to me is evidence beyond just feeling, it is all about effects or results. You judge a tree by its fruits [many Christians fail dismally in this regard, often me].
I have personal experience, and am surrounded by many others who have undergone transformations in their lives that have changed them significantly as people. I’m not talking about feelings. A drug addict can feel good, but that doesn’t solve his addiction. A drug addict who has made a faith commitment and rebuilt a new life out of the ruins of his previous addiction is what I call results or fruits.
Some of these new experiences are in the realms of feeling to a degree, but things like hope are more than just feelings. They result in measurable changes to behaviour, attitude, health & well-being etc.
Many of these changes are as a result of new values, new principles derived from their understanding of the Bible, but most of all through the development of a spiritual dimension in their lives.
As long as you resolve the issue on a purely rational level it will always remain an argument. Nobody ever made a faith commitment just because they lost an argument!
You have mentioned the fact that you have a girlfriend. I presume you love her, and that you cannot really understand this love on a biological or neurological level. You ‘experience’ this love, and it results in behaviour towards her and an accommodation of this new reality in your life.
You take considerable risks when entering into relationships like this. You are not to know what will happen or how it will affect you. Your heart may well be broken, you may well be trashed. Hopefully you will be enriched beyond description.
In order to discover what lies ahead on your journey you need to take a necessary step of faith. At some point you need to stand on the end of the diving board and take a jump not knowing all the facts before you, but knowing enough.
That’s the point I was at when I took a leap of faith. I didn’t know everything and still don’t. But I find it hard to walk away from the empirical evidence of God’s activity in my life and in the world around me.
There is much that troubles me, and many doubts I struggle with, but if I could fully comprehend God I would not worship him, because he could be contained within my finite and limited mind.
If the only realities we want to embrace are those that we can fully comprehend with our own limited mental powers we are to be pitied I think.
Finally, I live in Australia, where to be a believer is to be a minority. Christians here are socially marginalised. Think about emigrating, this is agnostic heaven!
Haha, I don’t know about moving to Australia….I wouldn’t be able to stand the heat (New England or bust!). I guess what I’ve discovered through this conversation is that the very foundations from which we argue are very different. It really depends on how one defines truth and reality.
Many philosophers (and writers) have argued that because our subjective experiences are the only things we can really know, our feelings and experiences are more “true” than anything else.
So really, subjective experience can be just as real as objective experience…just different types of truth.
What you consider real has transformed many lives, and I believe that what I consider real has helped many people as well, but in a different way. Perhaps it all sounds corny, but I’m satisfied with it.
Bono sang that he still hadn’t found what he is looking for. An agnostic can’t really be looking because of a prefigured decision that even if you found something you couldn’t really nail your colours to that mast in anycase.
If you are waiting for God to happen to you in a rational sense you’ll be waiting for forever. Ultimately you cannot conceive of an encounter with God that did not engage you across a range of senses. The mere fact that an agnostic would be sensing something would be cause for doubt because of the agnostic dogma associated with ‘experiences’.
I think the argument that religion is more than just belief, but inalienable truth is akin to our understanding of sting theory. Presently (and as far as we can tell, indefinitely), we cannot prove string theory because strings are far too small to detect with any conceivable device.
As of now, strings exist only in theory and mathematical formula. This is both the condemner and savior of string theory; it can’t be proven, but it also can’t be disproved at the moment.
If you want to say that God’s existence will never be proved, that’s fine, but that’s a relatively new idea. If you ask most people, especially anyone living between 40 AD and the 17th century, they would tell you that yes, there is concrete proof that God exists. If God is real, we can know him with the very senses that he has given us.
To say that we will never be able to “detect” him in a conventional sense is to presume a great deal, especially if you believe in Revelations. I think that if God is real, we will know him sooner or later, and in a sense that no one will be able to argue with.
However, in this enlightened day and age, when you present something as “truth” people expect you to back it up with objective evidence. Science has surpasses religion in its ability to explain the universe and our place within it, and I think that’s why many people are turning from religion. Explanation was its biggest lure, and now that people can find that AND comfort in science, they’ve grown our of their imaginary friends.