Is it possible to be an agnostic? Many would say yes! I say – no!
The idea of being an agnostic goes completely against the idea of ‘worldview’. Worldviews are not intellectual ideas. Worldviews are the ‘Big Stories’ that can mug us and captivate our lives and imaginations. These stories are often invisible and under the surface. You have to dig them out. It’s hard work! We are talking about the deep, spiritual commitments that drive our lives.
Now the agnostic believes that he or she can simply ignore all this. She can sit on the fence. She can be the detached observer of worldviews without having a worldview herself!
This is very misleading. The agnostic has to live in a particular way. The agnostic has to live in a story. By being born we enter a world of choices and decisions. Show me a self-proclaimed agnostic and her bank statement will tell me what she is hiding. The way we make and use our moolah betrays the Story that we trust in. Those who call themselves agnostics are often materialist believers who live in the western story. Often they are blissfully unaware that they are living in a story.
Today we must challenge the epithet ‘agnostic’. It is dangerously misleading and spiritually bankrupt.
Mark is a lively storyteller and the author of four books, including The Spy, the Rat and the Bed of Nails: Creative Ways of Talking about Christian Faith. His work is focused on storytelling and how this can help us to communicate the Christian faith. He has written many articles for the Baptist Times, RE Today, Youthscape, Direction magazine and the Christian Teachers Journal.
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