Faith

Eliot wrote: “I said to my soul be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing: wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing.”

“There is yet faith. But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought. So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

There are many approaches to faith, and here is woman’s struggle toward understanding.

Example: The effort to understand God’s word with logic and science for him, is like building the tower of Babel.  It is a doomed failure.  Faith must overcome reason.  His blind faith and exhortations exasperate me most times but sometimes it almost seems enviable.  At least, he, being a happy man in nature, cruise life with the unquestioning, unswerving faith as the solid ground of being.  His faith in God offers his identity, the meaning and purpose of life.  He simply answers to everyday life with ‘Yes’.

The journey of science to understand these mysteries with reason that bases itself in order has come to its own limit.  Like the human ear that only hears certain range of sound, the logic of science, the orderliness of things apply only to the certain range of the physical reality.  Like the sound that is too small or too loud does not reach human ear, understanding the very small, subatomic world and the very big the world(s) beyond the observable universe do not succumb to reason and order as we know.  Sproul states that the primal myths that answered the human existential questions are not in themselves factual, but they involve the value and meaning.  They have direct relation to the attitudes toward reality, the experience of life.  On the other hand, science though concerns with the same questions is about facts.  No matter how close it sounds to mythical language, science in itself does not ascribe the attitude to our experiences of life or the meaning of it.   However, as modern physics is facing realms that are essentially unknowable in facts, I think it might need the spice of myth.  Science can be used to take the leap of faith toward the meaning of our existence.  Modern science since 20th century is beginning to acknowledge the unknowable frontiers of the physical reality.  They are beginning to acknowledge that we need higher level of consciousness (beyond reason as we know now) to understand the scientific puzzles of our time.  Grace Park