Thursday 8 June 2017

Good Without God?

The BBC World Service runs a programme called 'Heart and Soul' which describes itself as, "a weekly half-hour programme that has the scope and understanding to explore different experiences of spirituality from around the world. Whether examining religious faith or any other belief-system, the programme talks to believers and non-believers, and tries to get beyond superficial notions of spirituality and religion"

Last week they broadcast a conversation between Tony Campolo, who is American pastor and well known as being the spiritual adviser to Bill Clinton, and his son Bart Campolo who was a Christian and pastor for 30 years before becoming a secular humanist. The show, titled 'Good without God?', can be accessed here.

The two Campolo's have a great relationship even with their differences of opinion over religion and are very generous, open and honest towards each other. They show us that having different religious views do not need to cause families to descend into arguments and breakdown.

To give you a flavour of some of what they talk about and how they interact, here are some quotes from the programme.
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Tony: "My wife sitting at my side, he said, 'I need to tell you that I don't believe in God anymore'. Whoa! It was like a knife went into my gut and I felt pain go all the way down to my toes and up to the top of my head. I remember bowing my head in my hands, and my wife went to prayer, I mean it was an incredible moment...So if there was an explosion like Vesuvius it would not have matched what was going on inside of me."

Bart: "Well I'm not sure it was exactly like coming out as gay but I think that in some ways there were some parallels in the sense that you could keep it to yourself and it would cause less outward conflict, but if you did that you would no longer be authentic with the people around you."

Bart: "I never would say to my Dad, 'I've chosen not be be a Christian' or, 'I've renounced God'. I just couldn't believe it anymore. It's not a matter of wouldn't: I couldn't."

Tony: "I continue to feel that I've failed as a parent. For me, any father in the situation into which I had been thrust would feel the same way - what could I have done to have kept this from happening?"

...

Bart: "Given the motivations in my life, given the situation in my life if I could have chosen to stay a Christian it would have certainly been the smart move. I mean I had a job, it was all my friends, all my family, my identity. I was good at being a Christian, I was well known as being a Christian. And so, no, believe me if there was a pill I could take and truly believe and be convinced there's a good and loving God who is going to make everything right in the end, who wouldn't want to take that pill?"

Tony: "My own sense is that in the end there are choices to be made and I chose to be a Christian and once I chose to be a Christian I developed all kinds of arguments to under-gird my a priori convictions."

Bart: "What I felt like I was rejecting was the container of love, but I still stayed committed to all the same values"

...

Tony: "I have to say my son...He's doing a good thing and I really do hope and pray that this continues."

...

Bart: "I appreciate the New Atheists, but the problem is that I don't think you can build a life around what you don't believe; that's why I don't call myself an Atheist. I don't want to be defined as somebody who doesn't believe in God. I don't believe in God, but that's not who I am and that's not what I'm about...I don't believe in God, but I'm deeply committed to life. I'm religiously committed to life."

Bart: "If religion has to do with believing in Supernatural Spirits, count me out. But if religion is the collective effort of human beings to try to answer life's ultimate questions: where do we come from, what happens when we die, what makes life meaningful? I am deeply committed to those questions."

Tony: "[Bart] studied people like Paul Tillich who said religion is one's 'Ultimate Concern'. That's a great definition. What is ultimately important to you? What is that for which you will sacrifice all else? Bart has an Ultimate Concern, it's about Humanism. Now let me just say: there we agree...Bart and me are different only in one thing: how we get there. He thinks you can get there without Christ. I don't think you can get there without Christ."

Bart: "Some people say, 'Your Dad would love for you to come back to Jesus.' He would. They go, 'I bet you would love for him to leave Jesus behind.' And I say, 'Oh, no I wouldn't."

Tony: "In the end I think we have to transcend theology. I think that being 'saved', to use the fundamentalist evangelical word, is not a matter of accepting certain propositional truths as valid. As important as that is - I don't want to minimise the importance - it's having a personal relationship with Jesus."

Bart: "When our relationship is at its strongest...I'm trying to understand what it is like to pursue goodness as a Christian. And he's trying to understand what it's like to pursue goodness as a Secular Humanist. And we're not trying to tear each other's foundation down, but rather trying to build each other up."
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They have a film that is due to be released soon, and I for one am looking forward to it. Here's the trailer....

Trailer: "Far From the Tree" from John Wright on Vimeo.

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