The Challenge of Faith

In the second episode of Bill Moyers's "Faith & Reason," the guest is Mary Gordon. Gordon, a prolific novelist, essayist, short story writer and memoirist (as well a practicing Catholic) was speaking about the challenge of faith: "I think there are many more good reasons for not believing than for believing. If you look at the evil and suffering in the world, it's very hard to believe there is a personal god looking out for us, watching the sparrow, counting the hairs on the head. If you look at the behavior of institutional religions, it's very scandalizing. Not just my own church, which is the Catholic church, but the history of religion proves that religious people are no better than people who are not religious. It seems to not make a lot of difference in terms of virtue. And often, if a religion is connected with power, it enables them to act worse than people who have less power. So I think it's a very strange thing, a very mysterious thing, to believe."

Yet, she believes -- though precisely why, she cannot say. Or does not choose to say. But the conversation was nonetheless fascinating.