[BigV]

Originally Posted by LabRat

Yeah, what Warch and Jaguar said is what I meant.
–snip—
Occasionally I actually envy those who wholehartedly believe in their faith, and wonder why I am broken for questioning things. I interpret BigV's story as coincidence that he looked at that particular billboard at that time. Ever notice that when someone mentions something, that's all you see for awhile? Like the ribbon thread. After reading that, all I saw were cars with those stupid magnetic ribbons. Should I take that as a sign that I should go out and buy one? I think, no. Because the human mind is SO suceptible to the power of suggestion, I just noticed things I previously was ignoring but were still there before I noticed them. I hope I am making sense. What if BigV happened to look at his gas gauge instead and noticed it was on E, and took that as a sign instead he was at the end of the line? Or reinterpreted the 'you are not alone' to mean 'there are four people trying for this job, and they're all just as qualified as you? I would give the reasoning that he saw what he saw and interpreted it the way he did because he was looking for SOMEONE to tell him, "it's going to be OK, give it your best shot". Because he is Christian, he believed it was God/Jesus whoever encouraging him. (Not that that is a bad thing!) I think, eh- coincidence.

LB: Your observations are right on target. I agree with you about the suggestability of the human mind, and mine in particular. Let me clear up an important detail first, please.

Faith is a choice to believe in the absence of evidence.

I have faith in God, not because I worked it out to 10 decimal places, but because I have chosen to. It’s a provisional conclusion, since my faith is tested often. I don’t mean I’m out in the desert with the devil for a month, but I often, no, constantly try to reconcile what I believe with what I experience. Sometimes the evidence at hand does not match my estimation of what it should be. Some things that are especially hard to jive are the suffering of innocents, or, hey MY suffering. Why, God, why? Or the sheer inscrutability of His communication with me. A burning bush? Come on, just say it.

I’m not being funny, these are real questions of mine. As I reflect on circumstances like these, I usually have the most satisfying results when I slow down, calm down, and enlarge the scope of what’s involved. There’s not always a reason for what happens. Let me expand that a little—not always a reason I understand, or not always a reason that can be traced back to “God’s will”. For example, I do not believe that the tragedy of the recent tsunami is “God’s judgment”. Nor do I understand why I give all my pocket change to the guy on the corner with the cardboard sign (or why I feel convicted with I don’t).

When I do open myself to more inputs and observations, a few points come up again and again that help settle me. One, God knows more than I do (duh). I mean, when the kids were small, and I took away something from them that they wanted but was harmful for them, they wailed but I persisted. I can hear them now “But WHY!!??” Sometimes I could reason with them to a point, sometimes not. I don’t always have the whole story, but so far, it’s always worked out in my favor. I mean, I’m still here, ain’t I?

Suffering is not always bad. Ooh. Tough one. I can’t always get this one settled, but usually the suffering is a result of the difference between my expectations and my realities. It’s uncomfortable but true that both sides of that equations can be moved toward meeting somewhere in the middle. And another thing, sometimes, I bring the suffering on myself. I still manage to be surprised and pissed off sometimes, but I shouldn’t be.

I leave room for myself to live peaceably with some uncertainty. Hey, I know lots of things now that were once perfectly opaque mysteries to me. Just because I don’t know everything about how something works really doesn’t impinge on the truth. Sometimes it’s true and I’m ignorant (understatement of the century).

I remember similar situations in the past and how they were resolved. There’s something of a positive feedback cycle at work here, for sure. But this is not a cop-out. I don’t re-figure out how to tie my shoes every day, or re-learn how to get to work or re-evaluate if my family is worthy of my love,—I re-member. If I switch from laces to Velcro, time to reconsider. If I get a new job, it’s time to remap my commute. If I come home and my clothes are flung over the lawn and the locks are changed, I better regroup. In the meantime, the working hypothesis is in place and functioning.

Let me give you an example: Money. Faith in money is no different. A Dollar? A piece of paper. Seriously. But I trust it, have faith in it. Heck, that’s the doggone definition of money. We all share the idea that the dollar can be exchanged uniformly for some service or product. But without that faith in that intangible idea, the money is worthless. Faith in God is like that for me. It’s a decision. I have listened to people who’s opinion I trust and value, I’ve read what I can, I listened and learned what I could and I have concluded that it’s true. God exists (and a bunch more…). Science, or a reasonable facsimile of the scientific method, test, evaluate, verify, led me here, but it is Faith, not Science that brought me this last step.