Faith
Some Stories for you.
Three blind men all are trying to descern the nature of an elephant. One graps the trunks and believes it to be a snake. One graps a leg and believes it to be a tree. And another graps the ear, and believes it to be a fan.
Another story.
A group of men spend their life in a cave, watching shadow puppets on the wall. For these men, the shadow puppets are all that exist. One man escapes and returns to tell the others of the real world. But the men are unconvinced, and will not go with the man into the real world.
And another.
A philosopher is held captive by an evil demon. This demon creates a sophesticated illusion, controlling everything the philosopher sees, hears, tastes, smells, and touches. The philosopher is unable to tell this illusion from reality.
To any body who has studied philosophy, these are familar stories. Why did I tell you them? Our senses are not absolute. They are imperfect. Things we see are distorted. Things we hear are unclear. Things we taste are tainted. And our mind takes what little information we have, and translates it into colour, sound and taste. How can we be certain that what one person sees and hears is completely different from what another person sees or hears? How can we be sure that what we call reality is real at all? Could we be trapped by an evil demon, or within a computer, or could we be computer programs, sophesticated, designed to immitate life.
We are not certain about reality at all; not in the manner our society would like. Our society demands sure things. It demands dependable knowlegde. But for better or worse, we have very little to be certain about.
So we make assumptions. I am not ashamed of us for this, and neither should you. These basic assumptions are based on our guts, what we believe deep down. From these assumptions, we can build paradigms, and make decisions on what is the nature of reality, leading to science, religion, and philosophy, and all other studies and ideologies that speak of the very nature of existance.
These assumptions, in the end, cannot be backed up by rational thinking. Even science has assumptions at its very base, the assumption of a essentially rational and clockwork universe that is predictable enough to be studied (which is why the human sciences bear very little resemblence to the rest of the scientific community; humans are unpredictable). Belief with our reason. Faith, I say.
Faith, for me, is very much about what you believe in, and what you put your trust in. Its the foundation of what we call knowlegde. But I do not mean to say it only deals with worldviews; just as a person can have Faith in science, so too he can have Faith in a friend. This person believes this friend will help them out; in effect, its a kind of knowlegde. If you are astute, you will see very clearly, that there is a flaw in my thinking; I am combining faith(belief) with faith(trust). But I do not believe it is a real flaw. Trust and belief are two sides of the same coin; you must have trust in something to believe in it.
But often we are disapointed in those things we have faith in; science, family, religion, friends, humanity, nations, all seem the fall short.
You know what should come next, but I am going to try and surprise you.
Sometimes, we are even disapointed in God. Maybe we shouldn't feel this way (I would say that God's wisdom is much greater then we know), but often we do. I know I have sometimes felt this way, God forgive. But God loves us, more then we can know, and he has a plan; hang on, dear readers, it may not seem this way right now, but he will lead us to the green pasture, and everything that happens to us will be turned to good.
Does this mean that we stop having faith in other things? No! Faith in God does not preclude faith in other things. We do not cease to become scientists just because we become followers of the path of love. No! If anything, we become better scientists. And we become better friends. Better Patriots. Better brothers and sisters. Better humans. Heck, we can even become better communists and capitalists. Why? Because the central core of the message that God has given mankind is Love. And now, we bring this one supreme message to all of our faith-relationships. Faith without love is dangerous to say the least; Just as hope without love is futile. Men with Faith, but no Love, these are empty men. Even Christians, if they have no Love, are useless; oh you Christians, believe those words, for they come straight from our book. Tempered by Love, we can use our believes to bring joy to the world.
I felt pretty good about this post. I know its a bit more prickily then my other posts, it requires a few more jumps (of Faith), but I felt good about it. Thank you, and keep me in your prayers.
Three blind men all are trying to descern the nature of an elephant. One graps the trunks and believes it to be a snake. One graps a leg and believes it to be a tree. And another graps the ear, and believes it to be a fan.
Another story.
A group of men spend their life in a cave, watching shadow puppets on the wall. For these men, the shadow puppets are all that exist. One man escapes and returns to tell the others of the real world. But the men are unconvinced, and will not go with the man into the real world.
And another.
A philosopher is held captive by an evil demon. This demon creates a sophesticated illusion, controlling everything the philosopher sees, hears, tastes, smells, and touches. The philosopher is unable to tell this illusion from reality.
To any body who has studied philosophy, these are familar stories. Why did I tell you them? Our senses are not absolute. They are imperfect. Things we see are distorted. Things we hear are unclear. Things we taste are tainted. And our mind takes what little information we have, and translates it into colour, sound and taste. How can we be certain that what one person sees and hears is completely different from what another person sees or hears? How can we be sure that what we call reality is real at all? Could we be trapped by an evil demon, or within a computer, or could we be computer programs, sophesticated, designed to immitate life.
We are not certain about reality at all; not in the manner our society would like. Our society demands sure things. It demands dependable knowlegde. But for better or worse, we have very little to be certain about.
So we make assumptions. I am not ashamed of us for this, and neither should you. These basic assumptions are based on our guts, what we believe deep down. From these assumptions, we can build paradigms, and make decisions on what is the nature of reality, leading to science, religion, and philosophy, and all other studies and ideologies that speak of the very nature of existance.
These assumptions, in the end, cannot be backed up by rational thinking. Even science has assumptions at its very base, the assumption of a essentially rational and clockwork universe that is predictable enough to be studied (which is why the human sciences bear very little resemblence to the rest of the scientific community; humans are unpredictable). Belief with our reason. Faith, I say.
Faith, for me, is very much about what you believe in, and what you put your trust in. Its the foundation of what we call knowlegde. But I do not mean to say it only deals with worldviews; just as a person can have Faith in science, so too he can have Faith in a friend. This person believes this friend will help them out; in effect, its a kind of knowlegde. If you are astute, you will see very clearly, that there is a flaw in my thinking; I am combining faith(belief) with faith(trust). But I do not believe it is a real flaw. Trust and belief are two sides of the same coin; you must have trust in something to believe in it.
But often we are disapointed in those things we have faith in; science, family, religion, friends, humanity, nations, all seem the fall short.
You know what should come next, but I am going to try and surprise you.
Sometimes, we are even disapointed in God. Maybe we shouldn't feel this way (I would say that God's wisdom is much greater then we know), but often we do. I know I have sometimes felt this way, God forgive. But God loves us, more then we can know, and he has a plan; hang on, dear readers, it may not seem this way right now, but he will lead us to the green pasture, and everything that happens to us will be turned to good.
Does this mean that we stop having faith in other things? No! Faith in God does not preclude faith in other things. We do not cease to become scientists just because we become followers of the path of love. No! If anything, we become better scientists. And we become better friends. Better Patriots. Better brothers and sisters. Better humans. Heck, we can even become better communists and capitalists. Why? Because the central core of the message that God has given mankind is Love. And now, we bring this one supreme message to all of our faith-relationships. Faith without love is dangerous to say the least; Just as hope without love is futile. Men with Faith, but no Love, these are empty men. Even Christians, if they have no Love, are useless; oh you Christians, believe those words, for they come straight from our book. Tempered by Love, we can use our believes to bring joy to the world.
I felt pretty good about this post. I know its a bit more prickily then my other posts, it requires a few more jumps (of Faith), but I felt good about it. Thank you, and keep me in your prayers.
posted by King O' Mauve at 4:42 PM
1 Comments:
Hebrews 11 talks about how people had faith and received gifts from God because they had faith in him with no real concrete proof to start with. However the physical results of having faith should be physical evidence and proof that the faith was correct. Because they believed they received proof of God. I don't think faith can be completely blind - there has to be an element of knowing and believing as well. I believe that God created human beings however so and so believes in evolution. Neither of has concrete proof of our belief - and whatever science says they have not ultimately proved evolution beyond a shadow of a doubt. To me evolution is like saying I put a puzzle in a bag and shook it up and magically it came out complete. Human beings are far more complex then a puzzle so if a puzzle can't put itself together how are we to say the puzzle of a human being put itself together by some random chance that had a one in a billion chance of occurring. With all our smarts humans can't recreate nature - we make crude attempts. If we require knowledge and study and smarts to recreate nature how can we say that nature wasn't created by a knowledgeable being?
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