Confessions of a Seventh Day Agnostic

Sam Smith, 2017 - Last Sunday I laid aside my Seventh Day Agnostic status to perform as a navipascua – one who goes to church mainly on Christmas and Easter. I did this to share the holiday with my wife but also because I believe that one’s intellectual evaluations should not interfere excessively with cultural traditions. When someone noted a horseshoe over Einstein’s door and asked, “You don’t believe in that, do you?” the scientist responded, “Of course not, but they tell me it works.”

My own sloppy view of such matters stems in part from having been an anthropology major. Anthropology teaches you, among other things, the power and significance of mythology even as one is examining rationally the culture that embraces it. Myth is universal and exists even if what it claims doesn’t. Myth can either strengthen a culture or weaken it, but it doesn’t go away.

I am also the product of Quaker education, a religion that shares with existentialists the notion that action is more important than faith. Or as I sometimes put it, I don’t give a shit what you believe; just what you do about it,

This mushy approach towards religion has stood me in good stead. During the 1960s, for example, I had quite a few good friends who were priests or ministers in part because we had too many things to do together to even talk about the possible theology behind it.

I didn’t luck out as well with my grandfather.  He would be senior warden of his church for 60 years and scolded me after a service, “Young man, in the old prayer book, it said, ‘And take thy humble confession, devotedly kneeling ON YOUR KNEES!’” I merely had my butt on the pew. Now parishioners were taking communion while standing.

The irony of this heretic worrying about such matters was a reminder of how tradition and myth can hang on even with a Seventh Day Agnostic. The fact that we aim to pursue reality does not mean that we shouldn’t have read Winnie the Pooh when we were growing up, sung hymns on Sunday, or prayed for a friend in need. We still need some magic; we just need to know when to call upon it and when to call 911 instead.