Nothingness Without End

I have been a fan of actor Ryan Gosling in recent years and believe him to be one of the finest young actors in Hollywood today. His versatility extends to playing a Jewish Neo-Nazi to a buff young man who sleeps with a different woman every night to a man in a troubled marriage to a political staffer to a mentally challenged man in love with an inflatable doll. Yesterday I watched The Believer about the Jewish Neo-Nazi. The plot resolves around a hater who is searching for a theology in which he can believe.

The problem, as Dan Balint sees it, is that the Jews as a culture were too docile and unmanly from the beginning. When Abraham is asked to sacrifice his son Isaac, he obeys God's voice without question. When the Jews suffered atrocities in World War II, they do not fight back against the Germans. Dan is rebelling against his religious heritage that asks him to obey the laws of the faith and to do good for others. There is no promise of eternal life after this one, just "nothingness without end." He longs for a faith he can understand, and he believes he finds it in the far right group to which he becomes attached. As the movie progresses, however, he finds his childhood teaching cannot be so easily shed.

I too have longed for some freedom through the years regarding the faith of my childhood, Southern Baptist theology, which like Judaism demands strict adherence to a set of do's and don'ts. While we give lip service to the idea that Jesus replaced the law with grace, we live as if we don't really believe it. In my search for more freedom I have moved to the Episcopal faith. I have found all the freedom I could ever want there, but it is a stretch to say there is a set of beliefs I can adhere to. Some have even joked that "Episcopal theology" is an oxymoron. Once more I find myself like my mother who continued to refine her faith until her death. I am now re-evaluating my membership in the Episcopal faith since I find it perhaps too intellectual--too much in the realm of the scientific, humanistic, and atheistic. The final straw could be the promotion of a concert Sunday night at the church which will feature witches and warlocks. I am still too much of a Southern Baptist to believe in the appropriateness of such an event within the church.

Can I too believe in "nothingness without end"? Thankfully not.