+Strange and Stranger

I just met a young man (19) who has perhaps the strangest approach to God I’ve ever encountered.  He’s a student of mine;  quite bright, enthusiastic, easy to work with and easy to talk to.  We got to talking about faith after we were done with math for the day. (I asked him what he was doing for Easter.)

His mom’s an Old Believer (ie, an offshoot of the Russian Orthodox), and his dad’s at least nominally Catholic.  He himself is just strange. 🙂  Not attending any church, though that’s scarcely unusual in a college student.

He believes in God.  God is the Creator, the transcendant.  God was incarnate in Jesus.  He accepts the Gospels (and apparently the Pentateuch, though he only mentioned Genesis) as authentic revelation.  While he agrees that the rest of the Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit (and thus God), he thinks it isn’t quite on the same level:  The Gospels, in particular, are the direct words of God, and therefore on an entirely different plane.  I can definitely see where he’s coming from there, though of course there are any number of caveats along the way.

He also seems to think that faith is primarily about being a good person.  This also is scarcely unusual.  The weird part is coming.

He views God as being completely unknowable.  He does not see any possibility of having a direct relationship of any kind with God – at any rate from his own side.  He was emphatic that he is not a deist – he believes God is doing all sorts of things in the universe, including with him.  But he can’t even begin to comprehend what those things might be and doesn’t try.  He claims to be unable, personally, to comprehend what it could possibly mean to love God.

At this point I brought up Jesus, of course.  "Whoever has seen me, has seen the Father."  He said that Jesus is God, and therefore equally unknowable.  (He says he cannot relate to Jesus as a human being because he can’t conceive how human and divine natures could be one.  Neither can anyone else of course, but that doesn’t seem to stop us from loving him…)  He agrees amiably that Jesus died on the Cross for his salvation.  I asked him if he felt grateful for that.  He said not really, because he can’t comprehend salvation.  He accepts that Heaven and Hell exist, but he says they are entirely irrelevant to his life.  (I tried talking about Heaven as union with God – that’s when I found out that his brain simply excludes the idea of such union.)

I think his problem is excessive rationalism.  If he can’t understand something and walk all ’round it, it goes into a box that he can’t do anything with.  (He’s very careful to distinguish between "rational proof" and "belief".)  But it puzzles me why such a person would even call himself a believer at all, and he does.  He says he doesn’t fully understand it himself and can’t explain it.

In practice, even if not in theory, it’s agnosticism.  I just wish I could find a way to penetrate it.  He was not opposed to the idea of coming to Mass with me, though he didn’t think he’d at all be able to relate to it.  He was opposed to praying with me, because he said it made him uncomfortable.  I think that discomfort has to be at the root of whatever it is.

It’s going to be an interesting term with this guy.  He isn’t at all opposed to talking about it, and even waxes enthusiastic about the topic.