Do you believe in miracles? 

Do you believe that strange things that can’t be explained by science can best be explained in other, more religious ways?

Those beliefs have never really been part of my life. Ross Douthat’s recent book, “Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious,” has changed my mind, not because I’m jump-up-and-shout convinced or very religious, but because the book offers such an interesting and inviting path.

There’s a huge difference between Douthat’s goals and my life. Douthat, a practicing Catholic, ultimately argues that everyone would benefit from becoming a Christian.

I’m Jewish. As a Jewish comedian once said, Jews are not the chosen people. They are the choosing people. Our holy books have sidebar commentaries. But that’s a far cry and a gigantic leap to becoming Christian. It ain’t gonna happen.

Still, the book speaks to me because Douthat’s goal is to speak to people like me. And it’s an enticing, useful path to take.

Brief note to keep your interest and stifle your bad memories of summer Bible camp or bar mitzvah speech writing: Douthat’s arguments are not theological. They are empirical and based on evidence. You may not believe the evidence, but at least you don’t have to be a religious tome-reader to decide.

Respectful, But I Didn’t Take Them Seriously

Why do I find Douthat’s arguments so relevant? Let me start with a story about myself.

His book would have helped me get a better grasp on something important I did three decades ago. Over the years, I’ve realized that I have skated right by this importance because I did not have the wherewithal to appreciate what I had found.

Thirty or so years ago, I spent months in London talking to unconventional healers, like psychics with spirit guides, clergy who taught exorcism techniques to new Bible college students, off-the-body hands healers, and psychologists and physicians who use these methods as part of their clinical practice. I looked at Church of England exorcism case studies.

This was an academic research project. I wanted to learn what they believed and how they worked.

It was great fun. I learned a lot. It taught me, and I taught my students over the years, some very important things about how and where law plays a role in everyday life, and how much freedom laws allow for this kind of work. All of us are guided and compelled by rules. How does it work if these rules and guides come from, let’s call it, somewhere else?

But all these years later, I’ve realized how narrow and distancing my approach was. Missed opportunities. Encounters that seemed rich at the time. They still do, but they have also felt puny and diminished as time has passed.

When I first talked to my friends and colleagues about my experiences, I was polite enough about these healers, respectful of what they did, but in a sweet, academic sort of way. I did not take their ideas seriously.

I empathized with what they were doing, but never thought seriously about whether their beliefs were valid. Did they actually heal?

“I wasn’t interested in investigating their truth claims,” I would tell people. As if doing that investigation was dangerous, unseemly, out of bounds and not kosher.

Do these forces — chi, spirit, Jesus’s healing power — really exist? I hadn’t a clue.

Exiting The Comfort Zone

I relegated these healing notions — with full kindness and respect of course — to the dustbin of “religious experiences” and ”things that simply cannot  be explained.”

I paid my professional dues by obeying what Douthat calls science’s “guild rules.” And then stopped. 

Keeping myself on the usual path of reality, I avoided a broader reality. I missed the bigger picture that Douthat frames. Now, let’s consider what he is trying to do.

Overall, it’s a dispatch to move out of a very common comfort zone.

“Staying in the natural and material and psychological — focusing on the therapeutic possibilities of healing for example,” he writes, “is less risky and less embarrassing because that way you don’t lose anyone by mentioning the bigger, vaguer concepts like heaven or an equivalent unseen force.”

Like the reality of sheer numbers. Polls show that one-third of Americans have either experienced or witnessed alternative healing. It’s even higher in the rest of the world.

That’s just one indicator of the difference between what Douthat calls “Official Knowledge” and the way people live.

“When intellectuals stopped taking mystical experiences seriously,” he wrote, “actual human beings kept on having the experiences.”

“When Official Knowledge ruled out the supernatural, in ordinary life it kept on breaking in. Science supplanted prayer, for good reason, as the primary means of seeking healing, but people kept on reporting that they’d been healed by intercessory prayer.”

What do you do with this gap between “Official Knowledge” and what people believe? Well, you can do as many do and dismiss this kind of popular healing as pseudoscience. Maybe the placebo effect. You might see it as some sort of residue, as in “sometimes really weird shit just happens.”

But those are more dismissals than explanations.

For Douthat, the answer is religion: “It is the religious perspective that asks you to bear the full weight of being human. It is the religious perspective that grounds both intellectual rigor and moral idealism.”

And most important, he says, “It is the religious perspective that has the better case by far for being true.”

I am nowhere near there and probably will never be. Still, the search and the inquiry, including a truly open look at Douthat’s ideas, are valuable because they lead me to looking for answers.

What Might You Be Open To?

Why is this a good idea? Three reasons.

First, it is a way to deal with our awful soul-crushing political world that can, if you are not careful, occupy every bit of space in your head and heart. Life needs to be more than that. Considering Douthat’s ideas is not escapism. It’s another form of engagement — a counter-thrust to, well, you know what.

The second reason brings us back to sheer numbers. Americans typically consider themselves spiritual even if they do not identify with a particular religion.

When asked about their religion, close to 30% of Americans list “none.” They seldom if ever go to religious services.

Yet it’s easy to see how this large number of, for lack of a better term, “irreligious” people could benefit from Douthat’s journey.

They are already on their way. These “nones” are not atheists. They make no elaborate, principled argument against God’s existence.

Most of them believe in God or some other higher power. Most say religion does some harm, but many of them also say it also does some good.

I’m not saying “nones” are secretly seekers or potential converts. But possibly in their own unself-conscious way, they make themselves open to the combination of secular and sacred knowledge Douthat advocates.

The third reason is about humility. You probably find many things that are totally mysterious and inexplicable.

Others throughout history and across the world have offered explanations. You don’t find these explanations convincing, but you don’t have a convincing explanation in return.

Look at it this way: They got something. You got nothing.

That doesn’t exactly make you master of the universe.