At the time of this writing, it is shortly after the conclusion of the 2020 Presidential election in the US, and the inauguration of a new president. This has been a turbulent time in the history of our nation, but instructive nevertheless.
If you were tuned into the events of the world in 2009 and 2010, possibly you recall Harold Camping, a radio personality and Christian evangelist best known for predicting the End of the World on May 21, 2011, 6:00 PM. When the day and time arrived for that great event, his devoted followers were prepared for what they called "the Rapture".
Many had sold all their belongings and said goodbye to friends and loved ones. At 5:58, they breathlessly anticipated the long-awaited fulfillment of the promise that they would be snatched up to Heaven before God laid waste to the world for its wickedness. 5:59 arrived. Then finally the clock ticked off the seconds until 6:00, then 6:05, 6:10, 7:00, 8:00, and so on. Nothing happened. The world rolled placidly on its course around the sun.
In the aftermath of that event, Camping decided that the event actually did take place, but that it was a Spiritual Judgment, and the physical destruction would take place later that year on October 21st. In the course of time, this milestone date arrived and soon receded in the rear view mirror. Probably there was both relief and disappointment mingled in the hearts of his followers.
Over time, many churches and their leaders have predicted the end of the world. Some have done it time after time, revising the dates, updating the reasons why the predictions were wrong.
Why is this important, and why is it relevant to the 2020 election? It's because, more than any election in my memory, this one had distinct, overtly religious overtones. Thanks to the miracle of digital video and the internet, I have been able to observe many instances of influential people prophesying about the outcome of the election to large congregations. Many were absolutely certain that God wanted the then-president to serve two terms. This meant that the outcome of the election took on doctrinal importance. That is, it took the election results out of the every-day realm of ballots and voting machines, and thrust it into the ethereal realm of faith. So when the election didn't go the expected way, the doctrinal status of the electoral outcome made it impossible for many people to accept the results. The election MUST have been stolen, there MUST have been fraud at an unprecedented scale because the thing that pastors said God wanted did not come to pass. And this matters because it led directly to the first (and hopefully only) coup attempt on the United States government.
Many people will no doubt see this occurrence as an opportunity to criticize religion and religious belief. But I think that is not a productive activity. Religion is too important an aspect of many peoples' lives, and too great a part of our history to simply critique in such a broad manner. In fact, religion itself is simply too large, too varied, too complex for almost any generalization we wish to make about it to be valid.
This is where we arrive at the point of this essay: the fatal flaw in the heart of faith. Faith can be a wonderful thing. It is of inestimable value in the lives of billions of people. Faith can help people endure hardship, bear the otherwise unbearable, make the right choice even when it's unpopular, and simply be better people and live better lives than they would otherwise. But faith has a dark side. Faith is directly responsible for the January 6th fiasco at the US Capitol. Faith is at the heart of inquisitions, pogroms, wars, and genocides across the globe and throughout history. The problem is that faith has a terrible vulnerability at its very core, a fatal flaw in its heart.
The strength of faith is that it relies on the unseen, the ineffable, the unprovable. And this strength is also its fatal vulnerability. Because faith is not anchored to a story that can be unambiguously verified with reference to the observable world, it is easy for unscrupulous power seekers to claim that God says this or that, and easy for people to give credence to those claims. This is not just a problem with religion, by the way. Demagogues of every stripe, political, commercial, military, and religious take frequent advantage of the human ability to believe, and our deep hunger for transcendence, to accomplish their goals, and we can see the terrible results of this fact littering the path of history.
The important lesson I think we should derive from this experience is for everyone to simply be aware of the potential for harm that is deeply embedded in the heart of faith. When faith is completely unconnected with the aspects of the Cosmos that we can observe, that we can firmly ground in the empirically verifiable, then it is impossible to detect from within the faith when it has become a danger to us all. This exact phenomenon has just placed our nation and its democratic institutions at great risk, and that danger is still extant, indeed has not abated at all.
So by all means embrace a Faith that urges you to do good, but never forget the fatal vulnerability that lies at its heart. Take notice of when good people whom you respect look with wary eyes at your actions or your claims. Never be 100% certain of what you believe. Be very skeptical when your faith asks you to disobey the law, to burn everything to the ground, or to expect the end of the world at any time. When faced with those directives, try to step outside your beliefs and and view them with the eyes of a non-adherent to your faith.
Look around the world and back through time to see the horrors that Blind Faith and 100% Certainty in political, religious, commercial, and military demagoguery have wrought. And never, ever forget the close call our nation has just had. Never cease to be aware of the Fatal Flaw that resides in the Heart of Faith.
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