a long-winded response

After reading my last blog, my friend Austin, posted an interesting response. I like what he had to say and I feel like I owe him a well-thought out response, so here's his comment followed by my thoughts.

Again, I completely agree with you on "the one" concept. I was just wondering, though, how big the difference is between saying, "I just know he's the one," and, "I just know He's the one." It seems to me that both statements employ a blind faith in the service of relenting any doubt that the object of that faith will fail. I guess if you believe that there is a sovereign governing power controlling the life that may house the changes, imperfections, and variable outcomes you mention then there is no worry associated with those experiences, and a person consequently submits to God, Providence, etc. That said, I do think it's important to believe in something larger than oneself and one's total ambient experience or to, as it were, allow oneself to be convinced of the extraordinary, the sacred, the divine mystery. In order to do so, though, it often helps to have empirical evidence rather than an interpretation of an occurrence or action. Of course, I don't want my entire experience of things like love and passion to stem from science. Though it's blasphemous to say this as a writer, there are many things I'd prefer to simply feel and not understand or be able to articulate. I do, however, suspect anything based entirely on a feeling someone has, in spite of the romantic notion that a gut feeling will determine the correct answer and save the day. I guess it just seems that the only ultimate defense of a belief in religion is, "You just have to believe/trust/have faith" or, in other words, "I just know. Because the Bible, or my physiological response to pheromones says so."

AT

And sorry to offend your many Christian readers, as well as you; I have the utmost respect for your (collective) belief.

You're right of course that despite any evidence we might have of God's existance, it does take a leap of faith at some point to move beyond that to belief. However, I don't think it's as complicated as people make it out to be sometimes. Faith isn't some mystical, magical thing. We use it every day, in every aspect of life. To quote Memento, "I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world's still there." When I sit in a chair, I have faith that it's going to hold me. When I flip a light switch, I have faith that there will be light. If you're talking to a friend and he walks into another room, do you sit there and contemplate whether he still exists or not? I highly doubt it. Faith is nothing more than making assumptions based on the evidence at hand and what's happened in the past. Let's take my friend Britney for example. We met online. I've read her blogs and seen her pictures and we've chatted over AIM, but we've never met in person. If you were to provide me with enough evidence, you might could convince me that Britney's not who I think she is. Maybe the pictures she posts are of a friend. Maybe her name's not really Britney. Maybe she's actually a thirty-seven-year old bald man from Queens. But somebody wrote those blog entries and somebody typed to me over AIM, so the person I know as Britney does, in fact, exist. The same could be said for God. I've seen His creation. I've felt His prescence. And I've seen His hand working in my life. Maybe my concept of Him isn't perfect, but He most definitely exists.

I don't have a problem with someone asserting that their significant other exists. I don't think it makes you crazy to believe in Thomas Jefferson or Julius Ceasar. How is believing in God any different? And if I do believe in Him, then why wouldn't I worship and praise the being who created everythings and gave me life? I don't think it's wrong to have faith or make assumptions. When I flip that light switch, unless there's a power outage I don't know about, it's pretty safe to assume that the light will turn on. I could probably guess when my roommates will come home tonight with some degree of success. If a really crappy football team was playing a really great one, I could probably predict the winner. Making educated guesses is different from claiming certainty though, and predicting what will happen five minutes from now is different than claiming I can see thirty years into the future. Maybe I'm using semantics or splitting hairs, but it seems to me that having faith in God and having faith in some fairy tale life with a significant other are two entirely different things.