My Greatest Fear

Someone asked me what my greatest fear was recently. I told them bluntly my greatest fear is that there is no God. It is a simple truth, and one I think every theist in his heart can identify with. I think that believers can be split into two camps: those that would admit this fear and those that won't. It is hard to imagine that all of this is illusion, and that all these grand experiences that point to eternity are nought but lies. This world is marvelous if meaningful but nothing but a tale told by an idiot if it is not. Nothingness whispers into the ear of every faithful person, and oh how terrible is that nothingness. Another voice tells us that oblivion is a liar, that it is not ultimate, and not god, but that Life, Being and Love are truly God. To imagine a world where the reverse is true, it is almost unthinkable. It is frightening in the extreme.

Perhaps part of the problem is that I'm more an immortalist than I used to be. I believe in an afterlife not only because I believe in God, but alongside my belief in God. And the possibility that life is eternal but God is not over all is similarly frightening. An endless line of life like the one we know in this world, with all the horrors included, is almost too terrible a thought to bare. The idea that life just ends, too, is quite terrible. The best defense of the proposition that oblivion is something to be hated and feared can be found in Miguel De Unamuno's THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LIFE. I could not make a better case than the one found there.

Anyways, I know why some of my fellow theists make a pretense to certainty and knowledge where it seems clear to me that only experience and faith can exist. For this fear, that God does not exist, is too terrible for most to face. To face the fear is to acknowledge the possibility that it is true. I know it is possible that God does not exist. I believe God does. I know I could just be delusional when it comes to my sublime experiences. I choose to trust them for oh so many reasons. But to admit that trust is necessary is to already admit of the possibility of error. I cannot tell a lie: this is who I am.

I suspect, though, that atheists fear that they are wrong as much as I fear I am wrong. After all, they have staked their lives.. and their lives should look differently because of this... they have staked their lives on the proposition that there is no God. It would be terrible, I would think, to have pained God so greatly as to deny His existence and then to fall into His very hands. Judgment, an absolute right or wrong, separation from one's Very Source, all these would be falling in all at once. And their behavior decries their fear. Atheists engage in too much insistence and hand waving to be as certain as the pretend to be. They doth protest too much.

And indeed, there are atheists who admit this fear, like Thomas Nagel. Maybe that is why atheists like Nagel always seem like brothers to me. I feel kinship with those who share my pain, the pain of unknowing, the pain of uncertainty, the pain of fear in the face of the Mystery of the Unknowable. It is in that shared fear that brotherhood is found. Isn't that what Christ is all about? God sharing in that same condition? God knowing the confusion and fear of not knowing if God really cares?