Faith

02-07-00

Faith is no mystery, nor is it about one. Faith is trust.

Trust comes from promises kept and a word that is true.

Faith and trust are learned from our parents (or not), our

friends and culture and life experiences. There is no

common rule for faith. We all must believe what we

can and prove what we must. The Bible is a book ,

ink marks upon paper made by the hand of fallible

creatures genetically 99% monkey. Not too encouraging.

Yet what we don’t know about men, inspiration,

revelation, and the possible would fill the galaxy with

books yet written. Believe that!

By faith we merely attempt to trust in the word of a

being said to have created everything, and is everywhere

at the same time…except we cannot see, hear, or touch

him. No small task. Yet we all have faith in something.

We all trust that the physical world really exists. “I

think therefore I am”. Right? Are you sure? There are

philosophers that would deny we know anything for

sure just because we think and feel. They say our

perceptions are imperfect, after the fact (a posteriori)

biochemical ‘interpretations’ or recreations of ‘some

sort’ of stimuli, the true nature of which we cannot

know. The truth as I see it is that position may be

somewhat extreme, but in general they are right – we

merely believe, have faith in, trust that our perceptions

are true, yet psychology studies of perception/recollection

glaringly reveal how much of what we think we see is

colored by pre-conceptions, expectations, and emotions

drawn from the personal experiences and cultural

prejudices of the perceiver. Get hold of some of the

reports of these studies. You will be astounded at what

they reveal about the mind.

These facts lead me to a hypothetical question. If so

much of what we think we see is ‘subjective’, what if

some of what we really do see is ‘subjective’? Now this

may sound like your standard existentialist fare but stay

with me here (suspend belief and disbelief – ‘an open mind’).

If you have read any of my other essays you may already

suspect that I am going in a different direction. The

existentialists, and then the empirists, phenomenologists,

nihilists, logical positivists, Marxists, etc., that followed

use similar ideas to create a philosophy that believes all is

subjective, that all perception, all experience, and therefore

(this is where they got lost) all truth is relative. To their

ears my Absolute Relativity is the relative relation of

all things to the absolute. Exactly the opposite. So when

I asked that question what is my answer? My answer is ,

“If you have the faith of a mustard seed, you will say to

the mountain, get thee hence’, and it shall move”.

Now that would seem to be preposterous, but those

are the words of Christ. So are they true? Suspending

disbelief again, let’s presume it to be unequivocal. How

could it be so? What if it were possible to make a few

logical connections ( if thus and thus are so then…) that

would at least make it plausible? Lets start, at the

beginning. Do you believe in God? An omnipotent all

powerful God who can do anything? Okay, then as a

general statement we can say that if there is a God then

anything is possible. Do you believe in miracles?

Thousands of otherwise normal people throughout

history have witnessed or experienced miraculous events

ranging from healing to levitation to Lazarus.

General statement: Either every one of these people

were delusional or something supernatural took place,

i.e., anything is possible.

Do you believe in Angels? What about demons?

Again either thousands throughout history who

witnessed these beings or those themselves ‘possessed’

were nuts, or there is more to our reality that physics

in the 21st Century has discovered a way to ‘measure’.

Lets say the latter is more plausible. So if ‘anything

is possible’ then Christ’s axiom on faith is ‘plausible’.

Now we know that miracles are not happening to

everybody everyday. So lets qualify our statement.

At certain times or places or under certain circumstances

or conditions miracles do happen, angels do appear, and

faith can move physical objects of any size. Some may

be saying “What’s this got to do with our original

question of ,“What if some of what we really do see is

subjective”?” Some people, under certain conditions

may see things that are real which others not under those

conditions may not or cannot see. That is what I meant

by the “really do see” phrase.

This would perhaps be a special case of the possible,

where a person is more ‘sensitive’ or open to such normally

unseen phenomena. Among the circumstances or

conditions that might make a person ‘receptive’ are severe

physical or emotional trauma, mental conditioning or

training (such as Yoga), prayer, believing as true what

others see as merely possible – or not. This is the so-called

secret of faith but it’s never been a secret. It’s been

revealed all along in the words of Christ: “What ye bind

on earth shall be bound in heaven, and what ye loose on

earth shall be loosed in heaven”. This is the key to the

metaphysics of faith, prayer and love. The power of love

joined to the keys to the doors of the possible can move

mountains, heal the sick, raise the dead!

When I was young I read the words of Christ and

was caught up in the vision of a world of peace, love,

and brotherhood. I was filled with the joy of hope

that all men would also see the truth and the truth

would set them free, and we would all join hands,

and together we would make a world holy and pure.

As I grew into manhood I learned that most people

had but little use for the truth or ‘brotherhood’ in

their everyday lives. The hopes and dreams of my

youth were forced to recede deep into the recesses

of my heart until the turn of the new millennium,

as the spark of the possible seems at least momentarily

to have lit a small fire in the hearts of many around

the world, that we truly can change the world if

we all just agreed to.

The vision of a new way of life, born into the world

two thousand years ago this year (more or less), is still

living in the hearts of many, and if you believe there

could be more to life than chemical reactions, it you

see the beauty and design, the art and the heart of our

spirit as more than biological imperative and the

highest aspirations of our souls to be unaccounted in

mere evolutionary survival instincts, then you and I

are brothers standing together on faith in a higher

place and a better way.

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