Blessed are those who haven’t felt God and still believe

Have you ever known someone who has had a profound conversion experience or perhaps a mystical moment with God that changed the trajectory of their life and faith? And have you ever felt just a little bit envious of them? I certainly have. In fact, when I was a teenager and pursuing the spiritual life most ardently, my weekends were full of religious devotion and experimentation. On Saturday evenings, I would attend a Catholic Mass with my family; Sunday mornings I would accompany my best friend to her Presbyterian church service, and Sunday evenings I would drive an hour north, with the same friend, to a non-denominational beachy-surfer church called God’s House. There the preaching was dialed up a notch, and the Christian rock band aroused ecstatic praise and worship in a crowd of mostly teens and young adults. There was a lot of attention given to having a highly charged, emotional relationship with Christ. Some of that relationship was nurtured or heightened through the music, but when I spoke with these born-again Christians, including my best friend, I learned that their encounters with Christ very often began before the music—in their rooms, at a Bible study, the beach or a quiet church pew. That marked my first brush with holy envy. I wanted to know the living God the way these people did, or the way the early disciples knew Jesus and experienced the tongues of fire at Pentecost. I wanted at least one transcendent experience that would bring conviction and clarity of purpose to my life. And even amid my suspicion that this might all be hormonally driven and musically intoxicated religious fervor, I wanted that Holy Spirit to visit me, too. And now, more than two decades later, I listened to Matt Maher, our guest on “The Spiritual Life” podcast, tell our host James Martin, S.J., “Thank goodness that a life of faith isn’t dependent on those experiences.” Matt Maher is a sensationally talented Catholic musician, with nine Grammy nominations, six number 1 radio singles, and a catalogue of praise and worship songs that have shaped the spiritual expression of millions, including myself. This conversation on “The Spiritual Life” is fascinating for so many reasons, whether you’re a music history buff, liturgical musician or a long-time fan of Matt’s music. But at the heart of it is a question that has haunted me since high school: Do we need to have a profound and direct experience of God in order to lead a life of faith and discipleship? If you had asked me this question as a teen, listening to Matt Maher’s music, I probably would have said yes. Or I would have mentally divided the world into two camps of believers—those who got to experience divine transcendence and those who had to take their word for it. But instead, Maher rebuffed the idea that such an experience is required for the spiritual life, saying: “Jesus thought of you when he said, ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed’” (Jn 20:24-29). He said this in reference to the Gospel story often called “The Doubting Thomas.” You may recall that Thomas was not present when the resurrected Jesus first appeared to the rest of the disciples. Thomas, perhaps marked with holy envy, doubt or skepticism, said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” Thomas was insisting that such a direct and palpable experience of the risen Lord was necessary for him to believe. A week later, the resurrected Jesus returned and invited Thomas to place his fingers in his hands and side, thereby giving Thomas exactly what he asked for—proof in the wounds of his crucifixion that this was indeed the Jesus he knew and followed, raised from the dead. And then Jesus adds something crucial for all of us who have had to take the disciples’ word for it: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Reflecting upon this passage, Maher adds: “I think ‘seen’ is a sensory experience. So I think feeling is another way of saying seen. And so blessed are those who haven’t felt anything and still believe.” What a relief! Here is Matt Maher, a seminal figure in Christian praise and worship music, which is so often characterized by emotional catharsis, saying that one does not need to have purely affective or other-worldly experiences in order to be faithful. And in fact, Jesus calls us who have not seen, not felt, not transcended but still believe “blessed.” This may heal the part of ourselves that places our piety in comparison to others, or the admittedly juvenile tendency to construct two camps of believers: those who have felt God and those who have not. But I think we’re fooling ourselves if we think this will magically quiet the yearning to see, feel and know God more intimately. Nor should it. Because while the envy we have toward other believers may be problematic and self-defeating, the desire for God remains a holy one. Even when evaluating the mark of a great song, Maher has asked himself: “Did it make the hairs on my arm stand up? Did it move me physically?” He knows we don’t need to feel to believe, but that doesn’t remove the desire to feel! We are human beings who come to know and appreciate truth through embodied experiences. And that’s exactly how God made us. So why wouldn’t we hope to know God through our senses, our emotions and our bodies? And at the same time, I think it’s important to look at the whole picture of the spiritual life Matt Maher describes. Yes, he hopes that the songs he writes, sacred or secular, will be powerful enough to make his hairs stand on end. But he does not expect these goosebump-raising tunes to write themselves or fall out of thin air. He must first show up to his notepad or keyboard or guitar to engage in the uncertain, experimental process of writing music. And what an apt analogy for the spiritual life! We can’t engineer or control divine connection, but we can certainly show up to a regular spiritual practice—be it prayer, journaling, spiritual direction, retreats, contemplative walks—and make some space for God to be heard, seen or felt through our flesh-and-blood senses.