God, Faith, and Reason Read online

  As I take you on this journey with me, I ask you to have patience, for I am neither a prophet nor a holy man. I am just a man who has thought about the questions we will explore together in the pages that follow since the beginning of my consciousness. Why was I put here? Why were you put here? Why are we born if we’re born to die? Why must we suffer? Why does God forsake even the good among us? Why do little children suffer so terribly in cancer wards around the world? Why are so many good men and women slaughtered in war? Why do evil men thrive, unpunished in their lifetimes?

  Many of you have given up on God. You think it’s nonsense. You haven’t been in a church or a synagogue your entire adult life. Some of you are Jewish. You had a bar mitzvah and that was the last time you were in a temple. Oh, once in a while, you observe Rosh Hashanah. You do the mumbo jumbo; you put on the hat. And then you go and have a meal and think you did your thing. Or you come back to do a thing for the dead.

  You tell yourself you don’t really believe in it, but there’s a little tiny part of you that does. And what will happen is, as you get older, it will become bigger and bigger and bigger. When you’re young, you can believe in nothing except your pleasure center. That’s the norm. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. But as you get older, as things happen to you, as things break in your body, you want to turn to somebody. But you don’t know where to turn. These questions have plagued me to such an extent that I have lost my faith many times along the rocky road we all walk. But we all must walk along this road, no matter how much our feet bleed, no matter how they ache.

  Years ago, I stumbled upon a small book entitled Peace of Mind. In it, the author wrote that he does not believe that God is omnipotent. He is omnipresent, meaning He is everywhere at all times, but He does not control everything that occurs. He wrote that if he believed that God was omnipotent and controlled everything that happens—babies with cancer, innocent men and women slaughtered, innocent children raped—he would cease to believe and become an atheist on the spot.

  But he concluded that God is in fact not omnipotent but only omnipresent, meaning we do have free will and control our destinies. Yes, there are things encoded in us, perhaps through genetics, perhaps through faith, that we cannot control. Perhaps we are born for certain faiths. But within the parameters of these genetic or predetermined destinies, we have wide latitude. And that is why we need the guidebook called the Holy Bible.

  Fear thou not, for I am with thee,

  Be not dismayed, for I am thy God;

  I strengthen thee, yea, I help thee;

  Yea, I uphold thee with My victorious right hand.

  —Isaiah 41:10

  Faith and Reason

  Now, why would I throw the word reason in when faith is the opposite of reason? If you’re an educated person who also believes in God, there is almost a dichotomy there. People call my show, The Savage Nation, and ask, “How can you believe in God and be a rational man? How can a rational man believe in a figment of the imagination, some kind of voodoo that was created to hoodwink people thousands of years ago in ancient Palestine?”

  Judaism was the progenitor of the three major religions, the other two being Christianity and Islam. Many people may not know that it was Judaism first, then Christianity, then Islam. So the three Abrahamic religions, the three monotheistic religions, go back to Judaism.

  Many people still ask, “How do you know?” They argue that people were so wild in those days in Israel, those ancient olive growers, there had to be controls. So they came up with some myth about Heaven and a burning bush to scare them that if they didn’t do the right thing, they’d be punished in the next world. How can a rational person believe in God?

  Well, I’m a very rational person, as evidenced by many things I’ve achieved. I think logically, up to a point. But faith is something different from reason, isn’t it? That’s why the title of this book is God, Faith, and Reason. I do not believe that reason is incompatible with faith. Faith is believing in something, whether it’s reasonable or not.

  And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

  Your old men shall dream dreams,

  Your young men shall see visions;

  —Joel 3:1

  I believe in God. I’m a superrational man, up to a point. But I’m also a believer. The mystical Jews say the actual writings about God are in the white spaces between the letters. That’s a conundrum unto itself. Well, it’s the blank spaces in talk radio that explain who the host is. What you don’t hear in between what you do hear is what you should hear.

  I have often thought about arguments concerning reason and religion. Are reason and religion compatible? I need to hear them from an educated person who believes in God. In other words, I’m not knocking you if you didn’t have the chance to go to college and get a higher degree and become a doctor or lawyer or engineer, but I often wonder about engineers who are rationalists and also believe in God, because if you’re an engineer you are an utter rationalist. How do you make that compatible? How does that work?

  The photographer who took the cover pic for Teddy and Me also took the picture for the cover of this book. The session didn’t go well at first. I don’t like posing for pictures. I don’t like to do television. I’m a terrible author for my publisher’s marketing department. I don’t like to be seen; I like to be heard.

  I said to him, “Look, I’m not a hero. I’m simply a writer and a broadcaster. What you see is what you get. If you want a heroic pose, you’ll have to hire an actor.” But just before he left, he tried one more time to get what he wanted. It was drizzling outside, and I was sitting on the edge of a sofa with rain falling behind me. And he caught something in my eyes that reveals a different Michael Savage. Maybe it was another part of me. Maybe it was the real me, the essence of me. I’m not sure, but it’s the Michael Savage I want you to see. I’m not trying to convert you to religion or sell you on religion. I just want you to feel what I’ve seen in these snapshots of God.

  I don’t know of a man or woman on earth, not even an atheist or communist, who hasn’t explored this question. I would say that even the leftists who listen to my show purely to mock me afterward have at some point in their lives thought about God. It amazes me that people won’t even talk about it anymore. They’re afraid or ashamed to show their vulnerability to this higher power. They don’t want to reveal that they are not all-powerful themselves.

  Everyone wants to act like a macho person who controls everything. I think that’s the basis of it all, the narcissism, the ego, the vanity. Who was it who said, “All is vanity”?

  Are faith and reason incompatible? I know some highly educated people who are very religious. And I know scoffers who say, “How can you, as an educated man, believe in God?”

  Reason leads to faith. In fact, the greater your reasoning powers, the purer your reasoning powers, the greater your mathematical abilities, ultimately they will lead to an understanding of God.

  I will cite one example. Albert Einstein said the further he got out into the thought process of the universe, the more he realized there had to be a greater power that had created it all. There was no other explanation. You’ll find that the higher your own reasoning power becomes, the more you’ll realize that reason doesn’t answer every question. Instead, it leads you to faith. If it doesn’t lead you to faith, you’ll really be in trouble. It will lead you to drugs and rehab and the destruction of your soul.

  The whole head is sick,

  And the whole heart faint;

  —Isaiah 1:5

  To me, reason and faith are twins. They aren’t identical twins; they’re fraternal twins.

  One day, I asked my producer to lead into a show segment with the song “I Believe.” The lyrics are astounding:

  Every time I hear a newborn baby cry,

  Or touch a leaf, or see the sky,

  Then I know why I believe.

  For fathers reading this book, think back to when your first child was born. Think about what it
was like to be in that delivery room when your child came into this world. I have spoken to men who have told me it changed their lives forever. That’s when a man becomes a different person. He may have been a tough guy before, but he’s a different man afterward. When he sees the head of his daughter or his son enter this world, he changes forever.

  You can’t talk about it. There are no words for this. There is no painting for it. All the sonograms in the world don’t do for you what that does for you. That’s why I recommend that all men be present when their children are born. It will make you a different man, forever. It won’t perfect you in any way. You’ll probably be the same person, but you’ll be a different same person.

  I devoted most of an entire episode of The Savage Nation to the question of whether faith and reason are compatible. I put the question to my listeners and invited them to call in with their thoughts on the matter. Some of their insights were quite remarkable. One was particularly interesting to me.

  It was a man whose wife was very sick. She was really suffering and in a lot of pain. Her doctors, “in their infinite wisdom,” as he put it, took her pain medication away. The poor woman screamed for two straight days. It got so bad she actually told the man she wanted to die.

  As you can probably imagine, that put a lot of pressure on him, too. He became so desperate himself that he prayed, “God, please take me out of here. I can’t bear to hear this, not one second more. I can’t take it.”

  God answered his prayer, although not the way he expected Him to. The man said he suddenly felt like he was hurtling downward, even though he was still on the couch with his wife. The world as he knew it seemed to disappear as he descended.

  Then he found himself standing in a very dark place. But he wasn’t alone. He could feel the presence of several entities next to him. And somehow he knew those beings were vile and meant him harm. They spoke to him, telling him what they were going to do to him, and he said their words seemed to go right through him. And although his story sounded like a nightmare, he said he could also feel how very real what was happening was and how real that place was.

  There was only one thing he could say at that moment. “Please, God, save me,” he prayed. As soon as he spoke those words, it was apparent that the beings speaking to him could not bear to hear God’s name. Immediately, he had the sensation of ascending. He was now rising out of that dark place even faster than he had fallen into it. All the while, he was still on the same couch he had sat on with his wife, now ascending at dizzying speed. Finally his spirit rejoined his body. He described the sensation as being like “sticking a finger into an outlet with no pain.” Then he heard a voice speaking to him that said, “I’ve given you what you asked for.”

  Just then his wife looked at him and said she felt very tired and wanted to go to sleep. And she slept for ten straight hours without any pain medicine, a more peaceful rest than she’d had in months.

  The man said the experience had taught him about how much power lies within each human being. “You have the power to give up your spirit,” he said, “to give up the right that you have to live.” But ultimately God will save you if you ask him to. When the man was literally in Hell, being threatened by demons, God did not leave him there for a moment after he asked for God’s help. There was no Purgatory for him. God did not remind him of all the sins he had committed and make him suffer in the darkness to atone for them. The moment he asked for salvation, he was saved.

  no shrub of the field was yet in the earth,

  And no herb of the field had yet sprung up;

  —Genesis 2:5

  What a call that was. The caller said he had seen Hell. Now, if you’re not living in a place called Hell, if you’re not suffering at the moment, that’s great. But that’s not going to be the way it is all the way to the end. I don’t care if you’re the coolest rap star on Earth, Mr. Cool, you’re made of the same flesh and bone as we are.

  Get back to me when you’re seventy-eight and in the throes of cancer, if you get that far, and let me know what you believe in then. I guarantee you’ll come back to your grandmother’s faith at that point. You’ll hear your grandmother sing to you when you’re in that cancer ward, I can guarantee it as I’m standing here. You’ll see the strongest man break down and cry and beg for his mother when he’s in pain. I’ve seen that, too.

  You’ll see it all, believe me, if you haven’t seen it already, because the mind is a kaleidoscope. Go back to the old Beatles song about me being you, and you being me, and we being all together. There is a lot of truth in some of those psychedelic songs.

  I had another caller who was a biology professor, a man of science. He had this to say: “Dr. Savage, I’m a biology professor with six earned degrees. I’ve written a book about God and science, and I believe that history, logic, and philosophy actually lead to a belief in God. So I think that faith is reasonable and that faith is rational.”

  “Hold on,” I said. “I want to take your first statement and go with it. You’re saying sort of what I said, in your own way, which is that ultimately logic leads us to faith. Isn’t that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes, I think so,” he replied. “I think it’s something that’s discoverable by faith and there are a lot of good, logical, philosophical arguments that make belief in God a reasonable thing and a rational thing.”

  I myself go back and forth between a fervent belief that God exists and not believing there is anything out there. I’m not alone in that. It was a great day for me when I read about Mother Teresa’s own struggles with this question. What a selfless woman she was, working with the sick, and not just in a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving like the liberals of San Francisco dishing out mashed potatoes and then holding their noses as they run away, to make believe how good they are. Mother Teresa worked with the poor and the sick every day.

  But in her last days, her journals were published, and in them she said there were many days she had completely lost faith in the idea that God exists. And other days, she’d get it back. That’s a real human being.

  Mother Teresa also inspired another caller on my show, who started out answering my question about faith and reason but then brought up a separate but related question not about belief in God, per se, but belief in eternal life. We had the following interesting exchange. It began with his answer to my question on faith and reason.

  “I’m a math major and also a believer in God and I like the title of your book, God, Faith, and Reason, because I believe faith serves as a bridge between the gap of man’s finite ability to reason and God’s infinite ability to do so.”

  I replied, “The skeptics are going to say, ‘What’s the reason for God giving cancer to children?’”

  He answered, “I think there’s three things at play, Dr. Savage. There is God’s will, free will, and evil. And I don’t think it’s God’s will for things like that to happen. I think it’s free will and evil that take a role when God merely allows things like that to happen.”

  I said, “In other words, He doesn’t control everything that happens everywhere at all times.”

  “Right,” he said. “You make mention of the Old Testament. You look at the Book of Job, and God allows Satan to take away everything Job had achieved.”

  “That’s what we all fear,” I told him. “We all fear that with one mistake in our later years, everything will be wiped away from us. The Jewish writers, the old-timers, would write that a man could spend his entire life creating his reputation, and with one mistake he could destroy his entire life. So we walk on these hot coals right to the end, don’t we?”

  “Yes,” replied my caller, “but there’s also knowing, and that’s where faith kicks in, about eternal life.”

  I told him, “I don’t know about eternal life. I don’t profess to have seen any proof of it. But I’ve been seeking evidence of God my whole life, wherever I’ve gone. In all the years I was alone in the islands, picking plants, whether it was Fiji, Taga, Samoa, the Marquesas, in
the most remote places on Earth, in every plant I picked, in every leaf I picked, in every medicinal plant I studied, I basically saw confirmation that God exists.

  “If I was obsessed as I was for fifteen years, maybe longer, with finding healing properties in plants, what was I really trying to confirm? That God created these plants with these healing properties. This was God’s medicine right there.”

  “Right,” he said. “And you mentioned Mother Teresa. I cannot believe, with all the good that she did on this earth, that she is not in a better place and having eternal life.”

  Glimpses in Literature

  I remember when I was a teenager and didn’t know who I was; I remember very well the sufferings of being young. The adolescent years are very hard for all of us. They form us in many ways. I was an ordinary kid in so many ways and am today an ordinary man in many ways. But I remember, as a teenager, I would go to dances like everyone else, race cars illegally on Sunrise Highway like everyone else. I’d get grease on my hands like everyone else; I’d get into car wrecks like everyone else. I’d chase girls like everyone else.

  But I wasn’t like everyone else. I was uniquely myself. And when I got into that corner of trying to understand it all, I would turn to reading. I read a lot of Jack Kerouac, which may surprise you. But he led me to some great places. I read Henry Miller. You may say, “Oh, Henry Miller is a sex writer.” No, he wasn’t. He wrote about sex, but all his writings about sex were really leading to questions about existence.

  I read those books from cover to cover, and I found some things in them that saved me. I remember reading Black Spring during one of my black springs. I was living through a black spring because of the social engineers attempting to deprive me of my birthright in this country. They deprived me of my right to make a living to give people who were less qualified than me positions I should have been offered. They passed me by because I was a white male.