Faith

Faith in God is for some, elusive.  “If only I could be sure.”  Why doesn’t God simply make it undeniably plain and clear that He exists?  Why are we left to doubt, even to deny?  And yet, for some, their faith is more valuable than life itself.

Why, then, this dichotomy between believers and unbelievers?

 

For those who espouse reason as their basis for belief or disbelief, in anything, faith is often decried.  To believe something without proof seems the utmost folly.

 

The late Bishop Fulton J Sheen stated that faith cannot be arrived at through reason, but that once faith is used as the starting point, it enhances reason.

 

A loose analogy can be made between faith and romantic love.  One does not arrive at love through a process of reason.  To be sure, reason can play a useful moderating role, but one does not begin from a neutral start and then reason his way to falling in love.  A man may list certain requirements that a prospective wife must have, but he does not compile a list of candidates, review their résumés, and then without meeting any of them, select one, and sight unseen, fall in love with her.  There is a necessary emotional component, a compulsion to love one’s spouse that arises from intangible factors, not from a structured format.  This love can even develop over time in the context of an arranged marriage.

 

Granted, no analogy is perfect, and this one surely has its weaknesses, but the comparison can be useful.  Faith is more than just an academic belief that, there must be a God.  It may begin with that, but along the way there must develop a relationship, a continuum of experience that either reinforces or else undermines one’s faith.  For those who live their faith, they find that it does not violate reason, but rather that it transcends reason; it imbues their lives with a sense of purpose and value that neither violates mathematics, nor can be formulated by it.

 

This explains much of the chasm between faithful people and unbelievers, for they speak two different languages, neither of which can be readily translated into the other.  The reasoning person may become frustrated at his inability to communicate his skepticism to a believer, while the believer suffers from an inability to persuade the doubter, an inability that is increased by attempts to persuade by means of reason alone.

 

There is no shortcut.  People of faith do well simply to attest that they believe in God, to bear witness to the fruits of their faith, but then to leave it at that.  The unbeliever will, when he is ready, observe how his own life is going, observe the lives of the faithful, and then make his own decision.

 

That decision may disappoint us, but as our faith increases, we come to understand that God allows each individual to freely choose for himself.  As Joshua in the Bible said, as for me and my family, we will serve the Lord.