"Of Atheists and Foxholes"

I first heard the old adage, "There are no atheists in foxholes," I was sitting in the parlor waiting for a friend. My friend's dad shared this bit of wisdom with me. He, like his son, were also members of the church where I grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. Greg and I were a part of the youth group, youth choir and Sunday school. Greg's father didn't come to church much, as I remember it. But he remembered believing in God and faithfully saying his prayers when he ducked into his foxhole during World War II.

This anecdote came back to me as I was watching a snippet of the PBS series, "A Brief History of Disbelief," last night. I don't know where I was in the series, although it was obvious that this was not the first program. The presenter was talking about the time of transition in Europe between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

It was difficult being a disbeliever, or even seeming to question accepted belief in 15th and 16th centuries, as Copernicus and Galileo, among others, learned. It was much easier to go along with the powers-that-be (the Church) than it was to buck the tide.

One of the interesting bits of the discussion was the dynamic between the more materialistic philosophy that was emerging in the new approaches to the arts and sciences of the day and the spiritualistic dogma that the Church sought to impose on all thought and practice. Both sought to make sense of life and the universe.

The Church dogma of the day was very systematic and orderly (almost scientific) in its revision of the logic of Greek philosophy to fit into its view of the world. But dogma came first, observation and analysis came afterward. That is, they wouldn't ask how was it possible for the bread and wine of Holy Communion to become Jesus' body and blood (The doctrine of Transubstantiation). Rather, in assuming the absolute truth of this doctrine, they would then look to fit the realities of the physical world into this belief.

The emerging materialism increasingly employed the scientific method of observation, experimentation, measurement and calculation to understand the way life "worked". And, even though both Copernicus and Galileo were staunch Catholics , their discovery that the earth was not the center of the universe was too much for the Church to overcome in its assertion of the centrality of humanity within God's creation. (I once read a book that asserted just this argument: that Galileo's assertion of that the earth was not the center of the universe was deemed heretical specifically because it called into question the doctrine of Transubstantiation.)

As we know the materialistic philosophy as increasingly employed by science eventually pushed spirituality off to the edges of society. In fact in the western world it seems far easier to disbelieve than to believe. Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, put the materialists case most succinctly, "I don't see any God up here."

So, back to our foxhole, it's very possible that many a foxhole has been host to many an atheist. And, just maybe the only time that the atheist becomes a believer is for those moments when death, or rather the fear of oblivion becomes real.

I know that I have observed the difference between believers and disbelievers as they have laid a loved one to rest in the earthen hole dug for their grave. There is a grief and a despondency that rise up from fear among the disbelievers, I have noticed.

The believers are sad, yes, maybe even very hurt. But there is also a sense of peace, of perspective, of a knowledge born in faith, that the end of this body is not the end of us.

Last night's segment of "A Brief History of Disbelief" made another interesting point. Part of the emergence of doubt and questioning of established belief came about at the end of the Middle Ages because of the widening world that many Europeans were experiencing. Travel and trade exposed Europe to different cultures, races, and religions. While this challenged their worldview, it also broadened and enhanced it.

Broadening one's worldview is a good thing, I think. How much wiser would the church have been to embrace these changes rather than to hunker down and fight them every step of the way. Change and new ideas can help our understanding, even of tried and true traditions and deeply held beliefs.

To this extent I am so glad whenever I hear of one of our churches engaging people (whether Christian or not) in other lands and from other cultures. To see the photos and read the articles in the Homer Congregational Church newsletter from the trip of a group of youth and adults to rural Mexico is exciting.

My own experience with Nathan Wright in visiting our sisters and brother of Mision Cristiana in Nicaragua inspires me to grow into their sense of spiritual abundance in the midst of poverty.

And, I pray (and ask your prayers) for the group of nine New Yorkers who are presently in Honduras, working and living over the next week or so with our sisters and brothers there.

In the final analysis it's not whether we view the world from the material or spiritual point of view. There is room for both. As James said,

"What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have
faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or
sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,' and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. But someone will say, 'You have faith and I have works.' Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my
faith.'" (James 2:14-18)

Blessings,

Rick Cowles