Saturday, May 10, 2008

Silk and Steel: a thesis on faith.

Faith is not a solely Christian force, nor, does it belong really to any one faith. Faith as a whole can actually be ascribed as part of the human charictor. Even die-hard aethists can be said to show faith in somethings. I have come to the realization that it is the people that lack faith that are dangerous. The socially destabalizing affect they have is evident in the slow decline of this nation after Vietnam.

People have a frevent and almost Die Hard lack of faith in government and their leaders, and that cynism about everything makes life very difficult. People see Faith as a bad thing. It can be, if it's blind, but far worse is the is the lack of it. Watching the race for president makes that clear.

For me faith is something that must be soft, and flexable in times without strain. The Greensburo Baptist church and their ardent anti-american protests at military funerals is an example of inflexibility in the wrong time. All the insanity in the middle east doesn't even need to be mentioned it's so insainly obvious. As the Bible says "God is Love". It is not your place to judge people. Obey the laws of man, but in the end we are all judged by God's law. In my opinion people should be allowed the right to self determination, and I am a firm believer that you can neither support those that won't support themselves, nor can you turn a blind eye to those in need. Although this seems contradictory it's really not.

Faith in my view, needs to be soft in times of tragity. The loss of a child, wife, brother, friend, or even when the world seems to have turned agenst you, but that same faith should be harder then steel when you need it. When you can't find the strength to go on. When you can't walk anymore and can't find the strength to crawl. When you stand against insurmountable odds, and sometimes, perhaps most especially when you chose the hard right over the easy wrong. When you know that you're doing the right thing even though it's going to hurt.

I am not espousing that you HAVE to have faith in the God of Abraham (i will not say the Christain, Jewish, or Muslim God, becasue, really they are all one in the same) but you have to have faith in a higher power. When Faith is in solely worldly things, then atrocities are all too easy to commit as see in the communist states of the world (especially the Soviet and Chinese) but you can not allow your Faith to blind you. That leads to tragities like September 11th, the crusaids, and all the varrious Jihads past present and future.

It is perhaps strange that Faith is such a paradox, but then if it weren't it would not be a human thing. If you think about it closely, all of humanity is filled with paradoxes that defy logic, both from an internal and external point of view. Faith, Love, Hate, and yes even Logic, are all part of what it means to be human. You can live without some of the myriad of complexities that make up a person, but somehow it makes you less. We as humans, and subjects of intelligent design must embrace our Faith, and our Humanity, if we as a race, are to survive.

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