Is it possible to have faith and still be objective?
The brilliant thing about faith is it invites us to be curious, seeking and objective. A whole planet of wonder always awaits our notice. It’s unavoidable. While we are still in grade school, we are taught to be observant and to test our hypotheses. To develop a logical view of life, we must be methodical. B must follow A. We can’t go off half-cocked believing any old thing just because it might seem to be true at first glance. We must test our evaluations to make sure they are based on reality, and that our conclusions can carry us through.
- Some of the biggest faith barriers are those maintained by faulty perceptions based on incorrect or unexamined beliefs, mistaken behaviour, information and habit.
Since science has provided millions of rational explanations for the natural world, it is an easily made mistake to assume that every web of logic we weave will result in the only pattern possible, or in some unalterable truth. It will not. As a society, we seem to suppose that we have everything pretty well figured out; yet we’re always back engineering, reconstructing what we know in the present to understand what has already happened, what has already come into being. New discoveries can swiftly change what we think, toppling ideas and beliefs that suddenly seem faulty, inadequate, unsophisticated, superstitious or simply infantile.
- Some beliefs practiced and developed, mature and strengthen us.
- Other beliefs allow understanding to atrophy. Such beliefs are closed, and we tend to cling to them irrationally even when the evidence around us points to serious errors in our thinking.
Peace on Earth, good will and unanimous agreement may elude our grasp at the moment, or even in this era, but that does not mean that mutual understanding will always be beyond our reach. And even though there may be no explanations now for certain mysterious phenomena, it does not mean that current conundrums will never be wrapped in logic and explanation, to exist as an unremarkable part of our daily lives.
- A very real barrier exists when we limit our understanding only to what can be proven in our own lifetime. It is constructed from our irrationality: our desire for proof before we engage faith, a contradiction in terms, ignored.
Faith is not merely blind belief. Rather than a replacement for rational thought, faith is a synthesis of both logical and intuitive knowledge. On a most specific and limited level, faith is the emotion that lets us keep moving forward into the unknown.
- Faith is the parent of twins: Logic and Emotion
- Belief is specific; faith is all-encompassing
- What belief is to hope, faith is to knowledge
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