Dear Editor,
I refer to Ian McDonald’s piece ‘I try my best to believe’ (Sunday Stabroek, December 20).
Without realizing it, Ian McDonald himself becomes the “rationalist” (albeit whimsically, perhaps self-pityingly and certainly fatalistically so) in this astonishing piece of self-indulgent agonizing. This is a ‘nothing’ piece, one that did not have to be written!
The last time we saw such a gross attempt to feed self-indulgence to the masses (you will know the pieces by their inevitably anti-Christian, grandly defeatist undertones) was when BC Pires tried to denigrate Caricom’s idea of the ‘Ideal Caribbean Person.’ Whether or not it was intended, Dr McDonald now writes a treatment in hopelessness and despair that surely must now baffle his fellow churchmen.
Now the first reason we have to disagree with his fatalism is the fact that nowhere in his treatment does he refer to the logic and comfort of the Bible, or of the finished work of Jesus. He speaks instead of “the truths of poetry,” and “stories told on his mother’s knee.” The compass is clearly skewed, and rather than tasting Dawkins’ mess to see if it is real (“I suffer when I read their books”), Dr McDonald in his distress will do well to return to the unambiguity of the Bible, as say, in Proverbs.
We will find that Proverbs also has an answer for McDonald’s belief in “the truths of poetry,” his apparent high “regard” for Dawkins, and his subsequent agony and despair as ‘poetic’ lines in that book testify.
Proverbs 1:26 is instructive to Dr McDonald’s torment, as is Ecclesiastes 1:16-18 (verse 16 will compete to be his loudest claim to fame, and perhaps explains his claim of a (sic) “growing tide of God-denial which is emptying churches and trying mightily to suck dry the wells of belief”).
Perhaps he speaks for himself, for the Catholic Church, or for the Church of England, because the attendance at all evangelical locations throughout England and Guyana on Christmas Eve 2009 will be truly spectacular!
And if all else fails, Dr McDonald is welcome to try to “rationalize” or “poeticize” Psalm 14:1 – the first part.
Others like Dawkins have tried to deny the existence of God before and ultimately failed. We did not need A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism or Survival of the Fakest to prove that they have descended to the depths of academic depravity and skulduggery to so do. Perhaps the next item on McDonald’s reading list should be Lee Strobel’s The Case For Christ!
Dr McDonald will find that the wisdom of this world – Dawkins’ world of ‘rationalism’ – turns out to be foolishness with God. His real wisdom, and comfort, will begin with the fear of God, not in the rationalizing of God’s existence or reading Dawkins’ works to that end when he has the Bible to search out instead!
Yours faithfully,
Roger Williams
