It may seem that way; maybe you’re right. A bit more Beuchner:
Q: And the skepticism?
A: I think that just comes from having a mind. I mean, if with part of yourself you believe in this reality that you [feel] you have in these various subtle and elusive ways encountered, which is, above all things, loving, healing, creative. Because you read the newspapers and listen to the radio and watch what goes on next door or upstairs — there’s a lot of horror in the world. Sadness and brokenness and disappointment. So how do you put these two things together? You cannot help, if you are honest with yourself, say[ing], “Well, maybe this whole holy business is just a lot of hogwash. How do I know I’m not just trying to keep my spirits up? How do I know I’m not just inventing it for my own comfort?” But I have never come out on that side. I’ve never given up this conviction, faith, profound sense that all ultimately is well. Beneath the worst the world can do, there is always the glimmer of the best.
Q: What do you say to people who can’t come out that way?
A: You might be right. You might be right. Maybe I’m kidding myself. But don’t write it off too easily. Don’t write off the possibility of the holy too easily. Keep looking. Keep listening. Don’t just decide. It’s very easy in a way, horrible in some ways, but simply to give up the whole thing, to say, “Well, the hell with it, as far as I’m concerned life is pointless and [so] live the fullest, most successfully self-fulfilling life you can and let the rest go hang” — I’ve never reached that point in my life.
Q: How do you keep your faith in spite of so much suffering in the world?
A: Well, it is in spite of it. You can’t pretend it doesn’t exist. You can’t somehow theologize it away, as people have tried to do. I think of Christian Science disposing of the problem of evil by saying it’s just an error of mortal mind. Nor can I imagine myself saying with the Buddhists that it’s just the result of bad things we’ve done in the past for which we now have to pay a price. None of those things works for me. I think you simply have to say this is in spite of faith. This is the shadow side. [There is] that great remark of [Paul] Tillich: “Doubt is not the opposite of faith. It is an element of faith.” You can’t believe in an all-powerful, all-loving God and look at the horrors that are going on in the world — and never more so, as far as I’m concerned, than right now in this world and in this country — without saying, “How can I hold these two things together?” I have no formula for doing that. But my answer to myself is, don’t give up hope. Don’t give up hope. God is in all those things. The holier, “the More,” transcends all of the wretchedness that goes on in the world.
The interview itself is short but pithy. You would probably enjoy the freshness of it. I did.
pbs.org/wnet/religionandethi … iew/15358/