CHRISTIANS believe for a multitude of different reasons. For some, it is a habit, (and nothing wrong with that); for others, it rests on an overwhelming experience; for others, it is intellectual conviction. For me, the core of the matter is a sense of congruence. Believing in God makes sense of the world.

In the past few years, I have been drawn to two writers who have helped me to understand why this congruence matters. The first is Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and his Emissary and The Matter With Things. Dr McGilchrist studied English literature before turning to neuroscience and psychology. He is fascinated by the human brain, and particularly by the way in which the right and left hemispheres produce complementary views of the world.

The left brain is specialised for facts, maps, theories, and detail, while the right tends to see the whole picture, how things relate to one another, and to myths, emotion, and music. He argues that our Western world overvalues left-brain thinking, but it is the right brain that is superior. Consciousness and belonging to one another, and to the whole flow of being, matter.

Theology and religious doctrine tend to be left-brain constructs, but religious experience comes from the right. The sense of being an individual is most fulfilled in the encounter with the “all”. The practice of faith opens me up to the totality of things, to what it means to hope in God, and to see in the resurrection of Christ the destiny of all reality.

My other mentor is the American orthodox writer David Bentley Hart. He is, like Dr McGilchrist, a polymath, with an extraordinary range of knowledge of religion, philosophy, and language. His insights draw on the Indian philosophy of Vedanta, as well as a wide range of Christian theological traditions. He, like Dr McGilchrist, argues that consciousness is no mere accident, but is the basic reality from which everything emerges in all its variety. As the physicist Freeman Dyson once remarked, “The universe in some sense must have known we were coming.” From exploding stars to breaking buds, there is a pattern of death seeding new life that runs through all reality.

In the Easter liturgy, when the deacon sings the Exsultet, the Church acknowledges that the whole universe resounds to the resurrection of Christ. Faith is participation in what is truly going on. This does not solve the problem of evil, or release us from the burden of suffering. The cross is not dismantled, though it now shines with resurrection light. So, this Eastertide prayer:

Author of the world’s joy,
Bearer of the world’s pain,
In the heart of all our distress
Let unconquerable gladness dwell.

I associate those words with A. M. Allchin, the priest, ecumenist, and spiritual writer who died in 2010. But, if anyone knows the source of the quote, I would be very glad to know. Happy Eastertide!