Thursday 18 July 2019

Faith is needed for objective understanding

Faith is usually understood to mean something like wishful thinking - "It is so because I want it so"... Faith is contrasted with objective understanding.

But the opposite is true - faith is Necessary for objective understanding. Since this world was created by God, we can understand it only by seeing it from God's perspective, rather than from any of the hypothetical perspectives that did Not lead to creation.

For example, many people see the world from their own perspective, as if the world was, or should be, designed to make them constantly happy.

Others, in the mass media for instance, depict the world from a demonic perspective; a world of predators and prey, exploiters and exploited...

But if this actually is a created world, made by a God who loves us - then these and other alternatives are objectively wrong.

Faith is a felt acknowledgement of God's love, and it leads to understanding because we can empathically identify with God's perspective, we can personally know what kind of things God would and wouldn't be aiming-at.

This is possible because there is something of God in each of us, something divine; because we are God's children - and we have divinity by inheritance.

This can be called an inner guidance system, or conceptualized as the way in which we each may share in the divine understanding, the True understanding of reality.


4 comments:

S.K. Orr said...

This strikes me as deep truth. It also sobers me because the post points me to how wrong I've been about so many things, and how at this late stage of life I am finally (I hope) starting to see a few things more clearly. Even the way in which I have viewed faith has led me into some pretty rocky paths.

William Wildblood said...

I think of faith as something like a flower opening up to receive the rays of the sun. If the bud remains closed then no light can penetrate. Lack of faith is the ultimate example of a closed mind.

Zach said...

"In your light we see light"

seriouslypleasedropit said...

When trying to comprehend complex systems, the right constant is invaluable. All we can deduce from material reality is that "anything is possible" --- the material evidence supports everything from Descartes's demon to a loving Heavenly family.

Thus the lens we choose matters a great deal.