With regard to your essay The Final Question -- you have a gift for putting your deepest personal struggles into words. You are a generous (and courageous) person to share these hidden depths from within your soul.
A person I greatly admire, who shares this gift with you, is Episcopal priest Frederick Buechner. If you have never read any of his books, I recommend them wholeheartedly. Especially his autobiographical works, which begin with A Sacred Journey. His main theme, which he touches on in all of his writing, is that God is present everywhere in our lives, but usually unseen and unnoticed, until much, much later (if ever). The world is, in many ways, a horrible place, where people are murdered, children molested and abused, fathers commit suicide (in Buechner's case), mothers are alcoholic, etc. Still, on looking back, Buechner *thinks* he sees (he is quick to point out that nothing is certain -- it all might be coincidence) evidence of God leading him in certain directions, usually through the most mundane and seemingly unimportant events in his life. The remark made by a friend, the insight gained from reading a novel, the little decisions made that seemed trivial at the time. His faith is built on believing that God was indeed involved in these moments, although there can never be any proof.
A quote from Now and Then, the sequel to A Sacred Journey: "There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all the more compellingly and hauntingly ....If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace."
Buechner acknowledges that he himself has doubts about his faith sometimes, when he hears about a child dying at the hands of abusive parents (Where was God? Why wasn't this child saved?), or watches a friend dying slowly from cancer, or remembers the fact that his family did not discuss his father after the suicide. There are always questions: why was Buechner able to sell his first novel to a publisher, and know some measure of success, when an old school friend who had appeared to have a bright future was reduced to working as a clerk in the same building as the publisher? Why do some doors open, and others close? Is God really there in the moments when we can't believe that there is a God anywhere?
This is why I trust Buechner's writing above any other Christian writer's, or theologian's. He acknowledges the doubts. Because, as you pointed out in your essay, "Over the next few years, my heart became even more hardened by life's experiences. Since I needed a ghost of some kind so badly and none came, well, I guessed there just must not be any ghosts. Look at the thousands of reports of ghostly sightings throughout the ages....if half were mistakes, then why not the other half?" And: "The point is, I started clicking off the things I didn't believe in, and there seemed to be a domino effect. No ghosts. No aliens on earth. No healings - no miracles. Hey, Joe Nickels and James Randi, make room for me." Real doubts, underscored by bitter disappointments, and which the cold light of rationality do nothing to dispel.
These are very legitimate and ultimately unanswerable questions. No one can say they have all the answers. If they do, then they are lying to you, or at least to themselves (some of them really do think they have the answers -- check out the television preachers). Perhaps if there are no ghosts, then there are no angels, no God, no afterlife, no spiritual reality anywhere. Some folks never seem to have those doubts. I'm not sure whether they are blessed with strong faith, are simply lucky that their faith has never really been tested by cruel life experiences, or are living in a fool's paradise.
I have seen a little of what lies under the rock (remember when, as a child, you turned over a pretty rock embedded in the dirt, and found the damp underside was crawling with slugs, centipedes, and other frightening and rather disgusting creatures?). On the first night I served as an on-call hospital chaplain, I was called upon to baptize a two-day old baby, who had just died, and weighed just over a pound. I was fresh from a Southern Baptist seminary (I've since become an Episcopalian), and did not believe in baptizing anyone under the age of informed consent (usually around age 12 or so, for Baptists). I was faced with two agonized, guilt ridden parents (this was the third child they had lost in just this way -- each time, the doctors had assured them that the problem had been solved, and they wouldn't lose another child), who just wanted assurance that their little son would be delivered into God's hands. Who was I to deny them what they so desperately needed -- to have the little one baptized? So, this was my first baptism. I trusted that the child was already with God, and that we all are in God's hands after death, baptism or not, but this was for the two young parents, who were in such terrible pain.
Why did God allow this to happen? Why was it that, a few weeks later, I was called again to baptize a dead infant, this one the victim of his parents' AIDS infections? They were also young, had contracted the disease through sharing needles, and I held them both as they cried, very conscious (and afraid) of the HIV infected tears that were soaking through my clothing onto my skin.
Where is God when we pray for our friends with cancer, but, as you so eloquently put it, "They all followed the same pattern - their emotions have risen and fallen with each new voodoo treatment that comes along. Regardless, all died."?
My anger and sorrow at the "holier-than-thou" attitude adopted by those in power within the Southern Baptist denomination led to my leaving that faith. Indeed, I have friends who have left Christianity completely, because of just the sort of "heart hardening" experiences you describe, and which I, too, have experienced. My husband worships at the altar of James Randi, ;) and is furiously angry at the Catholic church he grew up believing in. He becomes quite frustrated with me, both because of my continuing faith in Christianity, and my open-mindedness about ghosts. As far as he is concerned, anyone who professes belief in ghosts, aliens, ESP, or miracles is either lying or mentally ill. There is no middle ground for him -- no allowing that the person might have actually had an unexplainable encounter with something beyond current scientific understanding. He has passed through that door you spoke of, from which you don't believe there can be any turning back.
I believe that there is always room for turning back, because we can always have an experience which throws our past into a new perspective. I choose (and there's always a choice involved, made anew each day) that God is indeed present in every moment, and so I continue to look for God, and healing, and miracles. But there are days I find myself wondering, and doubting. The old chestnut that "God will never put on you more than you can bear" is simply untrue (as well as unbiblical -- the verse actually says that God will not *tempt* you beyond your capacity to resist, which is quite another thing altogether). Jesus himself was given more than his faith ("Why have you forsaken me?") or his body (he died -- from torture) could bear.
Like you, I struggle to keep that door propped open. It can't be better stated than you yourself have, in your essay: "Why not “suspend disbelief” - like we do in a movie or at the theater - and just “go with it” for a few days? What would it hurt? What do I have to lose by just TRYING to have faith?
"Of course the answer is, nothing. I have nothing to lose by experimenting with faith. Unlike Joe Nickel and James Randi, I do not have a career at stake on the outcome. My whole world will not cave in upon itself if I believe - even for just a moment.....
"So why not try? Suspend disbelief - put aside fear - give it a go. There is nothing to lose. There just might be everything to gain."
Amen. Some days, it will be too much to attempt, to "give it a go." Other days, good days, you and I (and Frederick Buechner) will be able to try. This may well be all that God can ask of us, when we stand before God, and God wants to know what life has taught us about eternity.
May the Lord bless you and keep you, and may you know the peace that passes all understanding. Amen.