understand faith

The Question of God is the name of the humanities class I’m taking this semester. After one lecture, I’m betting it’s going to be a good one. Prof Alex Nova teaches, and so far does a good job. He explained faith in a pretty decent manner last Thursday and it certainly got me thinking. He said that faith is a risk in the face of uncertainty. And without uncertainty, there need not be faith—that is to say, if you’re certain in your beliefs, it’s no longer faith. The credibility of faith is only determined in the course of one’s life, and can only make sense through human experience. Most of these ideals come from the ideals of theologian St. Anslem, but I think they hold true today. Faith isn’t something that can be understood on an intellectual level. Maybe that’s my problem, I’ve been approaching the subject in the wrong way? How do you let go of intellectual instinct and let your experimental understanding take over? Hopefully something covered in a future lecture…

People believe anything. People believe in things that are completely disprovable. I do. I used to believe God himself would deliver some food from the sky if I asked him hard enough. He didn’t. Or He did, in His mysterious ways, but I can’t got no proof, so it’s up to me and only me.

Faith allows me to believe in things unseen. Faith today goes so far as to let me believe in things I know NOT to be true, and my megachurch backs me up on it. It’s like that Matt Groening cartoon of the kid who’s just broken the vase and he’s cowering in the corner. Dude, just have faith and you don’t have to prove anything, just say it’s so.

Thus, I want to understand faith.