How Some of Us Can Believe, Others (me) Cannot

A few years ago an Aunt of mine, a widow, married a preacher widower while both were in their 90's. At the wedding dinner in their assisted living facility I sat at a table with some of the groom's grandsons. There were, of course, adults. One of them had an Arab name but I assumed, based on the Christian flavor of the event, he and all members of that family were evangelical Christians. Later I learned this young man is a Muslim and that his wife's grandfather, the groom preacher, was very wary of that marriage. According to a family story, he said at the time of the granddaughter's marriage, "Ok, let's give (Benny) a year to find Jesus. No more." That was years before I knew the couple.

It can be argued that one of the very most important aspects of humans, an aspect that has killed millions over time, is this business of believing in one invisible being versus another or believing in none. Could it be that if we understood the stuff that goes through our heads we could resolve religious conflicts before we started shooting at each other?

I'm reading again a book from 2020, How God Become Real. The author, Tanya Marie Luhrmann, has spent her career listening, even trying to experience, people's inner life of the supernatural. She has traveled the globe doing this and compared the supernatural on one continent with that on another.

One of her themes is that in U.S. culture, the supernatural, God and the Holy Spirit for example, exist as "real" to believers but they are not the same kind of real as the chair they are sitting on. This can be seen in the view there is "discernment." That the chair is present does not require discernment. That God has told one to take the out-of-state job does require discernment.

In the U.S. culture it is accepted that "discernment" takes place inside the mind. It is something internal. Today I read of Luhrmann's visits in African Angola. We know Christianity has made big gains on the continent of Africa. Luhrmann found after many months of living among religious people there that in their spiritual world, Christian or other, the supernatural lives not in the mind but outside of it. One person can have a bad thought about another person and harm the victim. The word "hex" from Voodooism was not used but it provides the only starting point for me to understand. African preachers often write about Christianity on a site I look at every day, Christian Post, and their views reflect some much different version of the faith than U.S. Christians.

Author Luhrmann is certain some people have more ability to invite into their minds notions of the invisible and supernatural than others. I am weak in this talent.