Pending: Navigating Uncertainty With Faith

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0:22Let's talk about uncertainty. Navigating a challenging moment in a close friendship, weighing a new job or a change in your career, seeing news about political instability, extreme weather from the climate crisis, and figuring out what to do about it. An uncertain medical diagnosis or tending to a loved one in the hospital or in hospice. Uncertainty about what to do can strike in any part of your life, big or small. And for about three quarters of the world's population, more than 6 billion people, they might turn to religious faith in moments like these, faith in a God or in what a text says about a God.

1:03For some people, faith springs from ritual. And for many, many millions of people, faith, if they use it, comes from somewhere else, not in religious ideas, but maybe in their personal values. We're already hearing from you about how you use faith in these moments. I was baptized in the Christian church last Easter, and I was raised Catholic, but I found so much peace in health problems and health issues with just praying. Praying has just helped me find so much peace and comfort in reading Bible verses aloud. I was encountering going through a divorce at the same time as dealing with a substance abuse issue with alcohol.

1:50I was literally at rock bottom and didn't know if there was a way that I was going to be able to crawl out of the hole. Ultimately, I leaned into my faith very hard. That was, in my opinion, what helped me to climb out of that hole. Hannah and Ben, thank you for those messages. For the latest in our ongoing series on uncertainty that we're calling Pending, we take a look at faith, how faith can help you face uncertainty, or when it might not help you at all. Already in this series, we've talked about what uncertainty is and how to make decisions more effectively. I'm Todd Zwillick, in for Jen White.

2:36You're listening to the 1A podcast. We'll be back with more after a short break. Stay with us.

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3:26Solving humanity's biggest threats. Part of the NPR network. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the 1A podcast. For the latest installment of Pending, our series on uncertainty, we're talking about faith and the unknown. Joining us from Tampa, Florida, is J.S. Park. He's a hospital interfaith chaplain and author of the upcoming book, We Are Made of Us. He's also author of the book, As Long As You Need Permission to Grieve. June, welcome to 1A. Hey, happy and honored to be here. Love to my family and coworkers. Thank you. Very happy to have you. And joining us from Somerville, Massachusetts, is Greg Epstein.

4:05He's the humanist chaplain at Harvard University and MIT. He's also author of Tech Agnostic, How Technology Became the World's Most Powerful Religion and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation. Greg, welcome to you as well. Thanks, Todd. Great to be with you. One note, we did invite a third guest for our discussion. Sahara Siddiqui was due to join us, a professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown University in Doha in Qatar. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to join, had a last-minute family issue. We're going to miss her, but we hope to have her on the show at another time soon. We do want to hear from you.

4:41How have you turned to faith at your most uncertain moments? And what did faith allow you to do in the face of difficult decisions or crisis? What are the limits of faith for you, religious and non-religious? We're going to find out there are all kinds of faiths. Some of them come from religion. Many of them don't. We want to hear from you. You can email us, 1a at wamu.org. Well, Greg Epstein, a lot of us might have an idea of what a chaplain does. You're the humanist chaplain at Harvard and MIT. Not a bad pedigree, as I mentioned. But you advise people on a whole range of concerns. how does uncertainty in someone's life show up in your chaplaincy work, especially recently?

5:24What are you hearing? What does work like for you? Well, the first thing I think listeners need to understand is that I'm a non-religious chaplain, which is a minority of chaplains for sure, but it's a growing minority. And so that means, my title is humanist chaplain. I work primarily with people who identify as atheists or agnostics or otherwise non-religious. And the way that I would describe it is people are, in my walk of life, dealing with a kind of three-headed monster of uncertainty right now. There's, of course, this generational topic of climate change, which a lot of the people that I work with as a chaplain have been thinking about being told about their whole lives, that this force is radically changing our world and going to radically change it even more.

6:25But then we're also dealing with an enormous amount of technological change. We're being told at any moment that new technologies, AI, etc., are either going to make the world some kind of technological paradise where we're not going to recognize it because it's going to be so great and there's going to be a kind of technical god, or that we're all going to a kind of tech hell where, you know, people tell us that AI has a decent-sized chance of killing us all in this century. And then we're also changing our values so much. We're changing the ways that we believe or don't believe, affiliate or don't affiliate.

7:03We're changing, you know, people can now change their gender, their sexuality. We've got a changing relationship with democracy, et cetera. So for me, I want people to understand that it's not them if they're feeling an amazing amount, an incredible amount of uncertainty. It's the situation they're in. And, you know, we can't change that situation. We have to change our response to it. June Park, your chaplaincy practice is a little bit different. You're in a hospital where people are unwell and their families are upset, I'm sure, and in hospice. Does what Greg is saying about his work resonate with you and how is your work different?

7:47Yeah, absolutely. I'm in the hospital context and also at a level one trauma center. I've been there now for 11 years. You may have seen a level one trauma center very accurately depicted on the show The Pit. So I am with many people very often in the worst day, even in the worst moment of their lives. And the thing that I'm seeing that I absolutely agree with Greg about, I see patients who have faith, what I identify with not having any faith at all. It's a wide range of different worldviews. But anytime there is crisis, injury, illness, when life unfolds and we're interrupted by something we didn't plan for, and there's a before and after, the worldview that we carry or the theological or philosophical, spiritual, emotional infrastructure that we inherited or learned, it becomes unraveled and undone.

8:39And I've seen that now over and over with patients and their families, where what we once thought about the universe, what we once thought about order, about the natural way of things, about if I did one unit of input, I should get one unit of outcome. My effort should equal some sort of reward. All of that seems to become undone. And so we all enter at some point in our lives into periods of uncertainty, sometimes a lifetime of uncertainty, in which our former theology or worldview becomes shattered and shaken, and it doesn't hold us anymore. And so I'm at ground zero with patients and families where uncertainty becomes the main narrative.

9:21It becomes the overwhelming thing that has to be dealt with. And that's going to be for all of us. And now, especially with when we look outside the window, it seems the world is burning outside and it's approaching faster. We can't ignore what's happening both personally and politically. and we're seeing now that the worldview that we may carry, the political views we may have, the things that may have held us spiritually, emotionally are not holding us the way that we thought that they would. And there is a big turn of the tide, there's a big sea change in the way that we think about what holds us, what's going to manage us through this crisis.

9:57Well, let's talk briefly about first principles then. June, I'll ask you first and then Greg, are there any first principles or axioms of the kind of faith you're talking about that you, in your case, June, offer to patients who you advise when they're in these moments where a worldview or a reliable faith can get shattered? You know, I think Greg touched on it in a really great way. I alluded to it in that to expect the uncertainty, that there is nothing wrong with you when you feel uncertain or anxious. I feel a lot of folks that will, I hear a lot from them in which they feel, God must be punishing me.

10:40I must have done something wrong. There must be some moral reason that this is happening. And so suffering will become moralized. It'll turn into a punishment or penalty. And I think that first principle or axiom is to sort of get into that place and not contradict right away. not say that you're wrong, but to question what we learned about the meaning of what is happening right now, the meaning of that suffering, and to allow patients to be able to sit in that uncertainty and say, it's okay that we're feeling uncertain. It's natural that you feel anxious that the world is burning or that you got this new diagnosis or that your world has changed.

11:23And so that first principle, that axiom of sitting in the uncertainty, expecting it, knowing that it's here, and how do we tangle with that? Greg Epstein, we're going to take a break, but what about you, first principles? I mean, June is also describing the problem of suffering and the interaction with faith. That's a four-hour show by itself. But what first principle do you apply on campus? Yeah, I love the work that June does, and it reminds me of why I, as a non-religious person, chose to do my work as a chaplain. But I would say we have to think about what's most important to us, and for a lot of non-religious people, it's human caring, human relationships, finding meaning in relationship with one another.

12:11We have to look to what can build that when we're feeling this intense uncertainty. One of you emails this. I've been in 12-step for over 40 years, and over that time, I've had faith in principles that I saw work in the lives of others. I call it God. It doesn't mean I disengage my brain or fail to take action, but faith inclines me to positivity and to gratitude and a feeling of always having someone or something close at hand. Much more to come. Faith is a practice and how to think about uncertainty a little bit differently. We'll be right back.

12:50Are We Doomed looks at big problems. Nobody would rationally want nuclear war. That's not quite correct. How can we add friction? Put the launch codes inside somebody's chest cavity and you have to kill them to get them out. Are We Doomed? Solving humanity's biggest threats. part of the NPR network. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. GLP-1s are best known as weight loss drugs, but they may also help people cut back on alcohol, cigarettes, and opioids. They seem to work for many types of addiction. Maybe these effects are much broader than we previously thought. Ideas about the brain, addiction, and empathy.

13:32That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. On NPR's Wildcard podcast, musician Rishi Keshe Hirwe tries to remind himself how miraculous it is that we're alive at all. Like, that's unbelievable. Everything is unbelievable. We should all be walking around all the time saying, oh, my God, I can't believe any of this is happening. Watch or listen to that Wildcard conversation on the NPR app or on YouTube at NPR Wildcard. Welcome back. It's 1A. I'm Todd Zwillick. We're talking about uncertainty and faith in the face of uncertainty, how faith can help us when there aren't any clear answers in life.

14:14And that can be personal faith, faith in your own values. Even if it's not religious faith per se, it could be a practice or something else. It's part of our ongoing series on uncertainty that we're calling Pending. And we've been hearing from you. Brian in Tampa emails, as a child, faith in general had a negative effect on my well-being. My mindset as a kid was that adults knew more than I did. As I grew older, I gradually realized that faith isn't that related to the knowledge or wisdom a person gains as they become an adult. Faith eventually changed from a negative to a positive thing for me because I gained faith in myself.

14:53Realizing I have no dependence or need for a God, I'm much happier being independent and having confidence in myself. Send in your thoughts on faith and uncertainty. What do you see as the benefits of belief or its limitations when you face intense moments of uncertainty? What questions do you have about what faith does for us at our darkest moments? Or maybe faith doesn't play any role in your life. We want to hear from you too. Email us, 1a at wamu.org. June Park, to what extent do you think does popular culture in America, the way things are right now online or in the pop culture affect how prepared we are to handle the biggest uncertainties in life?

15:39Are people still people? Are they more fragile now? I don't know if I should use that word. What about the current culture and uncertainty? Yeah, I see two things at least. That's a great question, by the way. At least two things in which I would say that certainty more than ever is something that is sought after hard. You'll see it especially in churches and religious settings where pastors, clergy will preach a sort of dogmatic sort of certainty in which the rightness of doctrine or these things, these reasons are the why things happen. That's preached and perpetuated in such a way where the universe is given a very, very strict and rigid order.

16:23So a box of faith is prescribed in which this is how things have to work out. And at the same time, I also see online more and more, and this I see as a positive change, is being able to contend with ambiguity, uncertainty, unresolved questions, and not having things wrap up in a 20-minute sitcom episode by the end. And so that there are less bow ties, no more sort of happily ever after. And so those two sort of schools of thought are becoming more polarized against each other. But at the same time, we're seeing now within Christian churches, that sort of certainty is what can lead to sort of the dogmatic Christian nationalism and sort of the, this is our faith and it's right and overbearing, imposing it on others.

17:12But then as we see the growing ambiguity and saying, we don't have to have the answers, It's not about the rightness of our doctrine. And sometimes bad things happen, but it doesn't mean that you're bad. And so I'm seeing now more and more within the culture a growing questioning that I believe is healthy and a good thing. Well, Greg, what about that? I mean religion is less popular in America. In the past 50 years, the number of people who identify with religion has dropped in this country. Two-thirds of American people identify with a religion now. Now, I dare say they may or may not all be deep believers, even if they belong to a religious group for ethnic or community reasons.

17:52Some people might never have been religious, even when they do identify. In the big picture sense, religion in America is not really at the core of popular culture. In other parts of our culture, media and technology especially, they've replaced religion for a lot of people. How do you see these things interacting with the students and faculty who you talk to when they're in moments of crisis or feeling very uncertain in a world that you described? Yeah, I've spent 22 years as a chaplain at Harvard, which is obviously a certain kind of place. And then the last eight years I've been at MIT as well.

18:36And these are places that for a long time have been less religious than the general population. But what you're really starting to see right now is a culture in those institutions that's quite secular. And at one point before I joined MIT as a chaplain, I was part of a group that was reviewing religious life on campus at MIT. and administrators at the institute were saying to us, well, religion is a big deal here. 49 % of our students are religious. And so, you know, there was this sort of pride that although religious belief was a minority, at least it was a significant minority. And so, you know, within that, I first of all wanna make really clear, I am not anybody that believes that, you know, you have to be non-religious or a humanist like myself to be a good person, to deal with uncertainty effectively.

19:34I learn a tremendous amount from my religious colleagues and communities that are my neighbors. And I think all of these different traditions, including my own, have that wisdom to share about how to confront this really extraordinary situation we find ourselves in, in the world today, where I would say that if you look at what the biggest religion in the world is now. It's not any of the traditional religions or the humanism to which I subscribe. It's really technology. It's the religion of what you might call Silicon Valley, the latest iteration of which is dominated by ideas about AI. It's the idea that we can build technologies that will answer all questions, see and know all things.

20:27you know, make life perfect. And, you know, you just have to genuflect properly, not one time a day, but perhaps hundreds of times a day before the stained glass black mirror altar. Greg, you're describing what was regular religion 200 years ago, right? You're describing the same human supernatural sort of savior dynamic that has been part of religion for millennia and is now sort of being replaced with maybe different details. Yeah, we're turning to these inventions as the kind of higher power that we're so often told is at the heart of traditional religion, right? We're turning to these new technologies to, you know, literally people are going on to the AI chatbot and asking it questions about, you know, what is the meaning?

21:21What is the purpose? How should I address my relationship issues, my spiritual issues, whatever? We're treating it as something that knows more than a human-to-human relationship. And that's where I feel we're going wrong. I think we aren't ever going to be certain what's true or what's good in human-to-human relationships and human communities. But I don't think we need to be certain in order to be confident that we have love, we have caring. You know, I work around people who have the option to go out and make as much money as they possibly can to in often oftentimes to become famous or influential in all sorts of ways.

22:13But it's not usually making them happy. You know, it's actually sort of rare that you see somebody finding tremendous success and also true lasting satisfaction or fulfillment with it. Oftentimes, people really need to discover, you know, a way to dial back some of the success and some of the winning and turn to one another, turn to human connection. Well, we've been hearing from so many of you during this conversation. Let me give voice to a couple of people who are calling and writing in. Tracy emails this. What about when faith adds to your uncertainty? I've been dealing with this issue because a close family member has been looking for work for over two years with no luck.

23:01I heard this person say recently that if they didn't find something by a certain date, that they would probably have to commit suicide, which shattered my trust in any kind of loving God. I've lost count of the number of hours I've spent in prayer on this. Not asking for a specific outcome, but simply for guidance. The God I was taught to believe in sometimes maintains a stony silence. And we got this from Liz in Silver Spring, Maryland. I always say I'm not sure if there is a God or a higher being or not, but I sure hope so. It's brought up very Catholic, but that is not my faith. When my husband was dying of lung cancer in 2009-2010, I had a dear friend who was a nun, and she had all the nuns.

23:49She knew praying for my Jewish husband. He died in August 5th of 2010. That says to me that there is no God listening. So that turning to faith in a time of stress and fear and hope even, faith didn't help at all. And I still hope there is something bigger than us. Thank you for listening. June, we've heard from two people there. And thank you for sharing your intimate thoughts with us, Tracy and Liz. We heard from two people there who had their faith answered either by stony silence or the answer that no God was listening at all. I'm sure you encounter this all the time. how do you counsel people who find themselves in situations like this where they had faith and lost it or they pray and nothing comes back to help them feel a little more certain?

24:52Yeah, thank you for that question and for sharing their stories too. I, you know, my role as a chaplain is never to persuade someone back into faith, is never to persuade them back to going into church. but instead to be present to this person's loss and their sudden shattered world. You know, in the 11 years that I've been working at the hospital, I can say that I've lost my faith at least a couple times. I've come back each time but very changed. That box of faith was completely undone and rebuilt and that box now looks like a very misshapen trapezoid. That faith changed. And I remember one of my chaplain colleagues, Chaplain Amy, she worked palliative.

25:40And she would be with a family, I learned this from her, where the family suddenly realizes the interventions, compressions, chemicals, shocks, they're not gonna bring their loved one back to life. The time for resuscitation has passed. It's probably better to allow their loved one to pass peacefully, however that may look. And so she would ask this gentle question, how do we relocate our hope? because the hope was in the intervention, but now the hope is going to be how do we dignify this death? And so we're still holding on to some tangible ritual, something that will bring strength in all of this wreckage of loss.

26:18You know, when I get called to the NICU and a baby has died or there is an IUFD in utero fetal demise, I get sometimes asked to baptize very, very young infants who have died. And when I get asked there, I find out about maybe half the time that these families are not religious at all. They just need something or anything. Or these families have decided faith is no longer for me, but still ask for the baptism, still ask for a blessing, something. So I see these two very hard conflicts at odds. I see that internal conflict of, I don't believe anymore, but I need something. I hate that this is happening, but I need to believe that there's something bigger than me that can hold us through this.

27:09You're talking about sort of a ritual or a practice of faith associated with faith that can sort of help, even if somebody doesn't have religious belief, or if you asked them, they would say they don't have faith, something that really helps solidify certainty for them going through the ritual? Yes, because the question that I ask is not necessarily what religion are you, what faith background are you, but I will ask, what do you draw strength from or what is giving you strength right now? And it doesn't need to attach a religion or the name of God to it because so many have lost faith, but they're still trying to draw strength from something.

27:50And so for me, it's the ritual, it's something tangible in a world of ambiguity and uncertainty in which I can hold an anchor point. I could hold something that I feel is fixed and stable when things are unstable. Greg, how does the humanist approach a kind of skill of faith or a ritual of faith, if it helps? I mean, there's no davening. There's no Shabbat ritual. There's no rosary. There's no praying five times a day. You get my point here. Religion has ritual that frames faith and can solidify it for people. What about you? Yeah, Todd, I mean, it's a great question as well. And what I would say is that there's no requirement for any of these things.

28:35There's no dogmatic assertion that you must do these things, but that doesn't mean that we can't choose to do some of these kinds of rituals in our own way, and in my case, in our own humanistic way. So, you know, humanists like myself, atheists, agnostics, and others, including allies that want to get together in communities, we do this all the time. You know, there are humanistic groups or even just small groups or even just friends can get together and say, all right, look, you know, I'm an atheist, you're an agnostic, but let's, you know, let's spend time together either through meditation, mindfulness practice, which is really just focusing on the present moment and on what is really important rather than, you know, sort of allowing ourselves to spend our whole lives like anxious about what's coming next or what came before.