Self Deceit and Faith
Continuing reading the pages of this thread I find a polarization arising on the one hand whether faith is all or in part deceptive, deceitful, misconstrued or superfluous; on the other hand that faith is an absolute godly necessity for the eternal welfare of mankind and his universe. Again I find the necessity of taking a flying leap over many excellent posts and but wish to express acknowledgement of them.
In my previous post (page 6, post #12) Hillary asks:
Does "faith" itself not demand certainty. Is that not what religious faith is. The more you have, the closer you supposedly are to God?
If this is the case then surely you are agreeing with me that faith is a form of self-deception?
I discussed this question with my wife and asked her to state briefly a reply to these questions. Her viewpoint is that faith is not in the realm of measurability. It is not a thing to be dissected, analyzed like a piece of meat. It is more in the artistic realm, the realm of emotions and intuition.
My comments about faith are not only in the realm of religiosity, but apply to any endeavor of man to influence the future for the good. Faith also sprouts up in the present, for example holding to principles such as crime does not pay or caring for widows and orphans. One also has faith towards the past by not dismissing whole civilizations as backward, superstitious ignorant. Faith in the past leads us to a realization that myths legends, fairy tales have meaning behind them. The past has parented us, faith leads to honoring our parents.
Faith is intangible: something that cannot be measured. It has been compared that an amount equal to the size of the smallest seeds would be enough to move a mountain. One can have little faith, be weak in faith, be steadfast in faith. One can have blind faith, credulity rather than faith. It can be shipwrecked. We are admonished to be constant in faith, to add to it. We can go to sleep at night in total despair and wake up next morning, without any circumstances changing and have an optimistic, gung ho attitude. Or it can be the contrary, we can hit the bottle. Or one may wait for centuries for the demonstration of ones faith. For me, faith itself demands uncertainty. Part of that uncertainty allows for self-deceptive crippled fenced-in faith to present itself.
Hillary asks:
Is that not what religious faith is. The more you have, the closer you supposedly are to God?
No, I maintain that uncertainty presents itself here also, for why then the words: My God, My God,why have you forsaken me? Also the prophet’s words in a cry of despair, Take me away, Sovereign, for I am no better than my forefathers.
I, more and more, am being led to the conclusion that uncertainty does not only dominate the atomic world, but everything, including the concept of God itself, comes into existence from nothing, remains in borrowed relative time, and then sinks back to nothingness. Just as we fall asleep at the end of a tiring day, we wake up refreshed in the morning and sing with the birds.
belbab
